Timidity

Many actors I know are surprisingly timid. Myself included. In fact, I could be the poster child for acting timidity. It's funny how my study has actually inhibited my ability to be broad and make bold choices. It is easy to use your training as a crutch and an excuse to adhere to "the natural". Sometimes it is the wild, the strange, the super human choice that best suits the piece and, as a director, I would prefer to work with a more inexperienced actor in that situation.

When was the last time you climbed a tree or sat on top of a set of monkey bars? As a kid it was just a natural place to be. As an adult we have a concept of falling, looking stupid, of personal fragility. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The last time I tried to climb some monkey bars I couldn't stop imagining my inevitable fall and the crushing back pain that would surely result. I'm sad to say that I climbed down immediately. I fear pain and looking foolish. Conquering those fears are the requirement of acting. In some cases you must purposefully seek those experiences. You must look stupid. You must experience pain. You must face the difficult and the painful and others must watch you. It is a damn near impossible thing to ask.

And yet, we do.

Why?

Why is there a desire to feel and experience and watch that which we most fear?

Last summer I bought my son a copy of "The Great Glass Elevator" by Roald Dahl. I had never read it, but I love Dahl's twisted work and we must have read "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" at least a dozen times so... I figured... As it turns out Charlie meets up with those rotten, vermicious knids. The scene as it is in the book is actually really suspenseful and creepy. It is set up for the reader to imagine a most torturous and awful death and then it slowly introduces the knids. It's marvelously written, but was too intense for my then four year old son and his friend who happened to join us for this disturbing bedtime story. We had to spend an extra hour coming down from the terror of the book- which had to be put down immediately. I felt terrible for having read it to him and worse for having read it to his friend. After they had finally gone to sleep I vowed to make it up to them the next day.

After breakfast had been served and we were getting ready to go I discovered the kids sitting on the bed together with the offending book. My son had the book in his lap and was flipping slowly through the pages, showing his friends (there were some additions to our crew that morning) the pictures and describing what had scared him the previous night. They huddled around the book and challenged my son to turn that final page to see the picture of the knid. There was rapt attention and a palpable sense of danger as if the knid would surely jump off the page and devour their heads- but they kept going. They all stared at the picture and talked about it while I hid in the background, swelling with pride at their ability to confront the danger with help from their friends. They pulled each other through. They confronted a fear. And what was so stunning about it is that it took no prompting from me or any other adult. They displayed great courage and great friendship as they tackled this psychological impedinment to their daily joy. I'm impressed by that.

I am impressed and inspired. Although I, as an adult, logically know that there was nothing to fear, I know how hard it was for those children to face something so frightening to them. I recognize the fact that I might not make that same choice in my adult life. After all, isn't being afraid of looking foolish or having hurt feelings at about the same level as fearing a knid?

If a four year old can do it...