January 7, 2011
Ben's Story – Episode 2
Managed to get to the training venue with 20 minutes to spare, even though my dear pregnant wife was feeling a bit hormonally challenged this morning and needed a shoulder to cry on for a moment before I had to sprint off to catch the train! Bless Louise. It’s been 12 years since she last had a baby and she’s feeling a little nervous! As for me, I’m just trying to be the best breadwinner I can…which means turning up on time for roleplay gigs and getting on brilliantly with every client. There’s no scope for getting on anyone’s bad side when you’re a freelancer, that’s for sure!
Thankfully I’ve only had positive client feedback so far and Jill and Anna in the RoleplayUK office always make a point of letting the actors know when they’ve received praise. Nice touch. Very motivating. I know the roleplay work isn’t about giving a performance as such but it’s still nice to know that people recognize the skill involved in it all. Today’s training centre went well too. Nice team from RoleplayUK, all very focused but fun to be around, plus the client kept us in the loop all throughout the day, really made it a collaborative effort, which works so much better than the ‘them and us’ thing that sometimes kicks in.
We were a team of 4 roleplayers so we did about 6 roleplays each in the end. May not sound like much but takes a lot of concentration to retain the info from the brief, depict the required behaviours and respond appropriately for each participant. One participant was being so confrontational in the scenario today that I had to threaten to walk out – in character of course! What was useful was that I could then give him some feedback from the point of view of that character, after which he accepted that his style may have been a bit aggressive! When we ran the scene again he’d really taken the feedback on board and the conversation felt so much more effective.
Nice lunch today as well. Not always the case by any means! Have been on some gigs where we’ve been given sausage rolls, chips and quiche three days in a row. Today they had nice fresh sarnies and a cous cous salad…with chocolate cake for pud. Can’t complain. Perks of the job. Definitely 8/10 for lunch!