I was working with some kids who think I am completely full of it a couple of weeks ago. They desperately needed some relaxation because they were twitchy as hell and passing their twitchiness to one another, making it impossible to concentrate. So I took them through some stretches and repetitive motion and a little chair relaxation. These particular kids have trouble with any activity that asks them to look inside themselves which means acting is a pretty tough choice for them. During the relaxation one of the boys got snarky. "I'll bet Tom Cruise doesn't have to do this."
Involuntarily, I laughed and said, "He should. His forehead could use a break." Oh boy. They all turned on me. Did our teacher just dis Tom Cruise? For real? Yup. I guess I kinda did. But it brought up a real discussion about what professional actors do. Most kids get into acting because of a hero in the movies. Girls pattern themselves after beautiful women who are either spunky tough or extremely elegant. Boys idolize men that move a lot and seem to have a lot of grit and there is a fine line in attitude. There's a big difference between Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee. Guys would like to hang out with Jackie Chan (as would I, he seems a fun fellow) but would like to BE Bruce Lee. A lot of kids get into acting to escape themselves. Oh, they are in for a terrible shock. Especially if you end up working with me.
I hate cool. Cool is the antithesis of the actor's job. Cool means detatched, unaffected, impervious to influence by the outside world. An actor- especially a "cool" actor- must be the exact opposite. They must be receptive and responsive. If they are not, there's no story, no conflict and no need. No one is that self reliant. Nor should they be.
We love the idea of a "Super Person" who can live by his/her own wits and relies on no one else. We all wish we could be this person and that others could point to us as examples of greatness. But this is a fallacy. Even in myth humans have hardwired weaknesses into gods and goddesses and fears into superheroes. These are things that we, as humans, cannot escape. So our art must not try to escape them either.
With the younger kids I often play a game making up a character as a group exercise. Each character has a name, age, important person(s), a wish and a fear. Kids always resist the fear. "He's not afraid of anything!". Oh yes he is. Superman is afraid of losing Lois Lane and he is afraid of Kryptonite. Spiderman is afraid of being exposed and of endangering the people he loves. Everyone is afraid of something, even if that something is "nothing" as in "I am afraid of everything disappearing and then there will be a horrible, horrible nothing." Nothing is a very powerful concept and, on some level, I'd say we were all afraid of nothing. Once the kid accepts that every character has a fear thing soar. They have fun laughing at fears. Once a kid created a character that was afraid of food. When I looked her in the eye and said, "Wow. That must make dinnertime and birthday parties and trips to the grocery store very interesting." Her eyes flew open and she immediately set to work solving problems for this character whose mother had to sneak her vitamins while she slept. She had a good time playing with this character and placing her in circumstantial mine fields. It also opened a window for this little girl, her teachers and her parents into her own behavior. The first step in dealing with a fear is by looking it dead in the eye.
Fears get more complex the longer we try to deny them. This is how fear hides from us. Sometimes fear is so convuluted that we don't even recognize it as fear. We mistake it for anger or sadness. We clothe it in self righteousness and even bigotry. Fear is not going anywhere and we would do well to acknowledge it or else it grows in the dark corners of our collective psyche like poisonous mushrooms. There is no courage in the absence of fear. Fear is a necessary componant of our growth as humans and everyone has it to some degree or another. The key to greatness is not the denial of fear, but the acceptance of it and the strength to move through it.
So. What are you afraid of?
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Monday, February 12, 2007
Playing Emotion
For all the political flap jaw we've had in the past 5 1/2 years about freedom I am surprised to fall upon a preponderance of evidence that mankind is not hardwired to seek freedom. Nor is man hardwired to seek peace, whether it be personal or international. I know this only because I have witnessed scores of people, both in the public sphere and in my private life, consistently choose the opposite.
I would have to include myself in that grouping as I have noticed that I tend to make choices that will lead me down the path of maximum inner trumoil. Others, I've witnessed, make choices that will manifest conflict outside themselves. Both tendancies serve the same purpose- they allow us to avoid taking immediate and decisive action that may bring us fulfillment in some area of our lives. We often make plenty of excuses and justifications for why we are not where we think we ought to be in life when, in reality, if we have decided upon a moral/ethical code and remain consistent life should be pretty darn simple. Not easy, just simple. And yet...
After mulling this over with several friends and colleagues I was surprised to hear a the same basic idea echoed back to me from people who are vastly different from one another in their approaches to life. The idea was this: conflict creates strong emotional responses and if we are not aware of our feelings we do not feel alive. There are many of us who fear numbness over pain and crave feeling above all else.
In acting it is absolutely, painfully dull to watch an actor "play the emotion" or "play the quality" instead of the action indicated in the play. For example, if we watch an actor playing our favorite, evil, hunchback, Richard III, concentrate only on the quality of "being evil" his portrayal will be hollow and showy at best. We would not be able to peek through the language and see a man so wounded and angry that he would destroy anyone and everyone in his need to compensate and dominate. We would just see an actor mustering all the "evil" conventions and cliches available to him and we would, most likely, fall asleep before the winter of our discontent could be made glorious summer by this sun of York. But if we could see an actor stay on track and actually pursue an objective and letting the emotions come without trying to manipulate them we would be in for a treat. We might even learn something about ourselves by watching. As an actor, this is one of the first things that I have learned and have struggled to realize in my work. However, as a human I tend to wallow in the feeling- to play the feeling, if you will- rather than do what my training demands that I do. My habit is to play the emotion and not to pursue my objective. That is why I often find myself feeling stagnant and stuck in life. Bad habits do die hard.
Playing the emotion is self-indulgent in an actor. It is no less so in an everyday human being. This, I believe, is at the heart of why we tend to choose conflict and voluntary bondage over peace and personal freedom. We're addicted to the emotion and we do not trust that the emotion will be there for us if we concetrate on our objective(s). We hang on to feeling as if it were life itself. It is not. Letting go often provides the richest emotional life available, but it requires faith and self confidence. After all, anxiety is nothing but the inherent belief that if something went wrong we would not know how to handle it. Focusing on emotion as a result instead of a by-product of life can stop us from achieving our goals. It can stop us from living our lives to the fullest. Emotion can be so addictive that we can spend lifetimes seeking vague concepts like "Happiness" and "Security" over concrete goals like a savings account or a career in our chosen field.
States of being are unattainable because being is ever changing. Chasing a state of mind is like trying to catch smoke and this frustration can cause us much distress and chip away at our self esteem. As I see it, in life as in acting it is the action that matters. Everything else will fall into place once the action is clearly defined. Then you will be unstoppable.
I would have to include myself in that grouping as I have noticed that I tend to make choices that will lead me down the path of maximum inner trumoil. Others, I've witnessed, make choices that will manifest conflict outside themselves. Both tendancies serve the same purpose- they allow us to avoid taking immediate and decisive action that may bring us fulfillment in some area of our lives. We often make plenty of excuses and justifications for why we are not where we think we ought to be in life when, in reality, if we have decided upon a moral/ethical code and remain consistent life should be pretty darn simple. Not easy, just simple. And yet...
After mulling this over with several friends and colleagues I was surprised to hear a the same basic idea echoed back to me from people who are vastly different from one another in their approaches to life. The idea was this: conflict creates strong emotional responses and if we are not aware of our feelings we do not feel alive. There are many of us who fear numbness over pain and crave feeling above all else.
In acting it is absolutely, painfully dull to watch an actor "play the emotion" or "play the quality" instead of the action indicated in the play. For example, if we watch an actor playing our favorite, evil, hunchback, Richard III, concentrate only on the quality of "being evil" his portrayal will be hollow and showy at best. We would not be able to peek through the language and see a man so wounded and angry that he would destroy anyone and everyone in his need to compensate and dominate. We would just see an actor mustering all the "evil" conventions and cliches available to him and we would, most likely, fall asleep before the winter of our discontent could be made glorious summer by this sun of York. But if we could see an actor stay on track and actually pursue an objective and letting the emotions come without trying to manipulate them we would be in for a treat. We might even learn something about ourselves by watching. As an actor, this is one of the first things that I have learned and have struggled to realize in my work. However, as a human I tend to wallow in the feeling- to play the feeling, if you will- rather than do what my training demands that I do. My habit is to play the emotion and not to pursue my objective. That is why I often find myself feeling stagnant and stuck in life. Bad habits do die hard.
Playing the emotion is self-indulgent in an actor. It is no less so in an everyday human being. This, I believe, is at the heart of why we tend to choose conflict and voluntary bondage over peace and personal freedom. We're addicted to the emotion and we do not trust that the emotion will be there for us if we concetrate on our objective(s). We hang on to feeling as if it were life itself. It is not. Letting go often provides the richest emotional life available, but it requires faith and self confidence. After all, anxiety is nothing but the inherent belief that if something went wrong we would not know how to handle it. Focusing on emotion as a result instead of a by-product of life can stop us from achieving our goals. It can stop us from living our lives to the fullest. Emotion can be so addictive that we can spend lifetimes seeking vague concepts like "Happiness" and "Security" over concrete goals like a savings account or a career in our chosen field.
States of being are unattainable because being is ever changing. Chasing a state of mind is like trying to catch smoke and this frustration can cause us much distress and chip away at our self esteem. As I see it, in life as in acting it is the action that matters. Everything else will fall into place once the action is clearly defined. Then you will be unstoppable.
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