Your Stage : To die is easy, to be funny is hard, but waiting to taste the pudding is the hardest by Craig Walker

It’s that time of year when projects you are in start bearing fruit. This is always the proof of the pudding time, and as such whether it be for students, or for Independent Producers or even Professionals, actors wait with anticipation to see how attractive (or not) the look of that ‘pudding’ may be. I was fortunate enough to do a quick piece of work with a supporting actor late last year, and to my pleasant surprise he then penned, and helped to run auditions for, a web-series which I was fortunate enough to get an episode for, earlier this year. Ensemble pieces, and web-series’, seem to be de rigueur, and my episode in the newly released web-series “In Transit” has just gone live. What’s it like coming in as a Day-Player on a web-series which has a established family of ensemble players? It’s strikingly like coming in on a normal TV Series, except there are fewer egos which come into play, and the personnel are more welcoming. The Crew and the Players all have an investment in the project, and as such everyone who comes in to work on the show is instantly treated as part of the family. They want you to have a good time working on set, because that will translate to your performance and to making their project look good – and every actor wants to look good (and I mean this in the non-physical attractiveness stakes, moreso in the performance stakes). I was made to feel very welcome on set (inasmuch as a busy set can take time out to do such a thing). Everyone from Lighting, though to Makeup, established Ensemble players, and the Director all made me feel welcome and were open to performance ideas and fostered a very enjoyable set to work on. The enjoyment of working on “In Transit” comes through in the series, too (well, the first 4 episodes I have watched) and the storylines seem to be nicely progressing. The humour is nice, too, not too over-the-top, and that’s a hard thing to write – and harder to perform (just ask any stand-up comedian). If you try to be funny, you often aren’t. If you’re true to the scene and it’s content, and the writing works, the humour will come out of the truth in the situations in those scenes. Comedy is not easy, but it is rewarding when it works. That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? Truth in storyline and character development are important. It all depends on what you are trying to achieve and the format for that, but overall it’s story, character, and look. These are people who have a passion for what they are doing, enjoy the process (and are apparently already penning Season 2 of the series). It’s my hope that ‘Phil, the Talent Agent’ may get a return appearance, but of course that’s up to The-Powers-That-Be. To see the episode, feel free to either go through to my Facebook Page [ https://www.facebook.com/craigwalker.performer ] (and while you’re there feel free to ‘like’ it), or just go straight through the “In Transit” website, itself [ http://intransitwebseries.com/ ].