Would you like to know a secret about the way our studios work? It’s actually not that big a secret if you’ve ever seen one of our classes or read this blog. I don’t even try to keep it a secret, honestly, but the more I tell it, the more I’m surprised when people finally “hear it” for the first time. Ready? You have to give zero f**ks in results. The result — that esoteric, totally random, and ultimately nonexistent “right” way of doing the scene — is actually most often the enemy, and cripples you at so many levels you aren’t even aware of.
As an acting teacher, I am constantly coming up with exercises for my students in the moment. Sometimes they are silly, sometimes they are provocative, and sometimes, to the actor, they are even straight up crazy. These exercises are not designed to figure out how to get the scene done from A to Z. It’s to provoke and stimulate something in the actor right here and now, in the moment.
Because in acting and in life, we often are so intent on the next step, the next audition, the life we’ll have after hitting our goal weight, or getting our dream lover, or booking the latest superhero movie, that we neglect to pay attention to what is happening right now, and how we feel about it. We become afraid that if we look too closely at right now, what will we uncover?
So we default to playing it cool. We become teflon-plated. No matter what is thrown at us, we won’t let it stick. We won’t let it stain us. We behave like the kid in tag who denied being “it”. “Didn’t touch me! Didn’t touch me!” A scene partner could make a devastating emotional choice that if we truly were listening would shatter us to our core, make it impossible to continue life as we know it, and rearrange us on a cellular level, and yet we end up just saying the next line like we’re ordering breakfast at Denny’s.
We all live in a world where people are doing their best just to get by. We all understand that on an intuitive level. One reason we watch films, or go to the theatre, is to see what happens when we don’t have to keep it all together. And as such, it is our job to let go of the teflon exterior and let things impact us on a visceral, human level.
There’s just no getting around it. Until we clone ourselves into other beings, you are all you’ve got. And the only way to move past the things being thrown at us is to move through them, experience them, feel them, and acknowledge them.
Breathe. Relax. Feel. Breathe. Relax. Feel. I know it isn’t always easy. I think these days everyone is walking around holding their breath, bracing for impact. Every morning before I read the newspaper I take a deep breath. Everyone is freaked out all the time. Whether it’s Trump, or terrorism, or our crippling addiction to our phones, it can feel like we’re all in a constant state of low-level anxiety. We close ourselves off from the world so it can’t hurt us.
But we must allow ourselves to feel! Feeling is freedom. Because as we actually allow ourselves to have an experience of deep feeling we simultaneously stand in the openness, vulnerability and awareness of what it means to have finally surrendered. And that is freeing. That is empowerment. That is bravery. That is humanity. And that, ultimately, is why we are here. Not for the end result but for the things along the way that take us there.
actor in video: Sean Scully