Week 7 Generosity (second part)

Hello Everyone, 

Here is the second part to the "Generosity" entry.  As we approach our production date for "Shakuntala" at Santa Clara University, I'm realizing the need to be continually generous with the students in giving specific feedback and guidance to develop their performance... and so I need to be generous with myself after long rehearsals.  I'm going to strive for more regular entries, even if they are partial ones... maybe as I did with this one, giving the overview and stories on one day, and the suggestions on another.  Thanks for reading and its been great hearing from those of you who find these reflections and practices helpful.

Suggestions:

1. Make a list of the top five qualities you most value in a scene partner.  The next time you begin to work, see if you are able to incorporate those values into what you give.

2. Ask three friends what qualities they most value in you.  Notice if you are conscious of working at those qualities or if they just come naturally.  If you work at them, see how you might apply that same approach to other values.  If they come naturally see if you can determine what it is that keeps you on track, what gives you pleasure in it, or why it holds importance to you.

3. Think of an actor that you think is particularly generous.  (one friend noted that anyone who appears opposite Katherine Hepburn  always seems to do their best.) Watch a film or video with them in it and notice what they do.

4. Try cooking something without a recipe.  Taste it many times along the way to see “what can make this better.”

5. Risk being audacious in believing that you have something to give.  Notice which of your qualities might be a gift to someone else, and see how easy or hard it is to give it consciously.

6. See how long it takes in the course of a day before you witness a generous action.  Continue this for a week and see if your ablilty to notice generosity broadens, or if you notice it sooner in the day

7. Pick one day, or a morning or afternoon and focus on listening. 

Other suggestions:  make a list of good deeds,  try to “light up” an elevator or waiting room with only your presence or your smile, remember to count yourself as someone you can be generous to.

Part I of Week 7 - Generosity

Week 7 – Generosity

Once we are aware enough to notice what is happening, and flexible enough to make any necessary adjustments, we can incorporate one of the most necessary skills for a graceful actor: generosity.  Can I understand what is needed in a moment so well that I am responsive not only to my own needs but to the needs of the other actor as well?  Generosity on stage can make many demands, yet each time we are pressed upon to be generous, it can only help us to respond with a big “yes.”  There are some actors we think of as accomplished because of a virtuosity in their own performance, and there are others who we recognize have an even greater gift—the ability to bring out the best in anyone else on stage.  This attention to the other can in turn only make my own performance more believable, more virtuous, more moving. Generosity should not be confused with self-abnegation.  It is not a cheap false humility that weighs down everything by eliminating brilliance.  It is rather an ability to give from my brilliance so that the entire stage can be illuminated, a giving of my focus fully to the other when I am receiving, and giving the best of who I am not in order to attract attention to myself, but to bring out the best in everyone.  Both the dullness of false generosity and the brilliance of true generosity can be  contagious.  Some actors may refuse to take risks on stage because they are afraid to draw attention away from others. But attention should bounce about the stage like a big colorful ball in a children’s game. There is nothing wrong with grabbing the attention of the audience for a moment.  The problem emerges if I refuse to give that attention to the most important part of the overall dramatic action at any given moment.  A momentary taking of the attention of the audience, followed by a generous giving it over again does not divide the audience’s attention, it amplifies it.  I can only give of what is my best if I truly know who I am.  Knowing who I am and seeing what value my gifts can be to the action is when I am truly giving of myself not suppressing myself. Whether I am acting or reacting, being fully engaged and focused makes me generous.  This is true not only in performance but also in process.  I can give of my experiences, my risks, my failures, my details and offer the fullness of who I am in rehearsal.  And yet listening is also generous. I do not shut off myself when I listen, my attention is seeking out and affirming the value of what my partner has to offer by being present to it.

Life story:

By now I’ve spoken often enough of Ellen Stewart that it is clear how she formed me as an artist, but I’m also grateful how she has formed me as a person.  She is truly one of the most generous people I have ever met in my life, truly putting her attention and resources at the service of the artists whose work she felt was important somehow.  Sam Shepard says that of all the individuals responsible for the birth of Off-Off Broadway, “Ellen was the most generous, she just put on plays. I could bring her something written on an envelope and she would put it up the next day.”  I experienced Ellen’s generosity not only in her welcoming me into her artistic family, but in her life lessons that she would give in one to one conversations.  Diane Lane once called these Ellen’s “oracle moments.”  She saw things and said what she felt. In one conversation she said to me “baby, when you walk into a room, you gotta light it up!” That is certainly what Ellen did.  She lit up the room.  The wonderful thing about light is that it really is at its best when it lets you see what is there.  We don’t look at the light, we see everything because of the light. At first I was uncomfortable thinking that Ellen was telling me to draw attention to myself, but getting to know her more and more, I realized it was different. What she did was to bring what she loved in herself completely to others, lighting up the room with her appreciation of others, and trusting that what she saw in others was worth proclaiming out loud.

Work Story: 

When I studied with Isabelle Anderson I was in my first year of graduate studies.  I was keenly aware that I was at least ten years older than most of my classmates.  I also began my studies somewhat intimidated by the powerhouse faculty that we had on board.  Isabelle worked with neutral mask with our class, and over the course of the semester, she got to know each of the actors quite simply but deeply through the way we approached the work in physical form.  At the end of the semester she had conversations with us about our progress.  She gave me one of the best notes I ever received from an acting teacher.  After commenting on the technical aspects of my work, she then paused and looked hard at me.  It felt as if she were looking into my soul.  Then she said “you’re very considerate, and it’s keeping you from being generous.” At first I was taken a bit aback by the insight.  It felt too close, too personal, perhaps too true.  But she was right.  Much of the first year I spent trying to fit in, which basically meant that I was denying ten years of life experience to try to equalize myself to my classmates.  The program was very egalitarian, and while it was good to strive for equal voice, some of the group dynamics destroyed particular voice. I was a particular person, with my own set of experiences and in the interests of the group I found myself holding back, not speaking, not offering who I was because I did not want to stand out or interfere.  After thinking about Isabelle’s note to me I realized how it was both an affirmation and a challenge; affirming the particularity of my experience and challenging me to share it generously.  I wonder if I did not go to the other extreme after this, being bold in my participation and my offering my perspective. I may have had to learn later not to smother my classmates with my generosity, but to find a balance; reverencing my own particularity and honoring theirs as well.

Further investigation:

Read a biography about your favorite generous person.  Ellen is one of mine, and Liz Swados is a close second.  You can get a taste of both of them by listening to Liz’s work “The La MaMa Cantata” on her website:

http://lizswados.com/theater-and-music/broadwayoffbroadway/the-la-mama-cantata-2011/

Week 6- Adjusting

Week 6 – Adjusting

One of the refrains I use most in my teaching is “Notice and Adjust.” It is at the core of what we do in rehearsal and the reason why we must repeat things again and again when we work.  We are looking for an even better fit, an even clearer path, an even deeper filling of a moment.  When I work with beginning actors, adjusting is one of the most difficult things to do.  They become attached to the first impulse and reluctant to modify it.  They think that they will lose something if they make an adjustment or they imagine that it is so fragile that it will not stand up to playing with it to understand it better.  They think there is something flawed in them as artists if they can’t come up with the perfect balance immediately. We’ve all been there.  But once we’ve experienced the deepening of what adjustment can do for the process, we open up and begin to crave this way of playing.  Looking back on our week of “noticing” will be helpful for this.  In a sense, our attention to adjustment could have followed noticing immediately, but it is important to really have a practice of noticing already in the body before we jump to the next level of making adjustments.  Adjustments can come from my own intuition, from a director’s note, or from something that happens by chance in the process.  We need to remain open and available to whatever comes up and ready to embrace it, even if this means we must look past the immediate sting we feel when we admit that it can indeed be done better. The best adjustments are based on clear observations in our noticing of what is really going on.  Unless we have an appreciation of the multiple facets of any given moment, we won’t have a clear perspective on how the best adjustments can happen.  Unless I notice the facets of myself or my character, I can’t be free in my adjustments. What are my default settings that I keep settling into when I’m faced with change?  Fighting or surrendering? Pushing or collapsing?  Denying or commenting? Criticizing or overthinking? Dismissing or punishing?  Notice what you do naturally and with each repetition try a different option, maybe even the opposite of what you would normally do.  See the new possibility as a fun option.  You can always go on to something else or back to what you already had before.  Notice fully, adjust accordingly.    

Life story: 

Some of the greatest advancements in science and in thinking have come from simple adjustments based on new information we receive by noticing what seems out of place.  Once Copernicus allowed himself to imagine the solar system where the earth was not the center of everything as Ptolemy had thought (fourteen hundred years earlier), then suddenly the data about the movement of planets made sense.  The word Eureka that we use to celebrate the moment of discovery is the Greek word for “I have fount it”  It’s attributed to Archimedes who understood the concept of volume once he got into the tub and noticed the water level rising.  We can never find something unless we notice what is happening.  We can never allow the new experience to make adjustments for us unless we are first open to change in the first place.  It also helps to remember the fun of “eureka” when we are in the grind of experiments.

Work Story: 

I’m a big fan of Cherry Jones, not only because of her fine work but because of her openness in process.  She spoke to our class in graduate school, and a while later I ran into her on the street when she was preparing for her role in “Doubt.”  Of course she was working as she was walking.  Nonetheless, she stopped and we had a brief conversation about work, people we had worked with, etc.  I was so impressed that she took time, adjusted what she was doing to take in this new moment of our conversation.  I heard a friends speak about the way her attention is totally with whomever she is speaking to at the moment.  As actors we are too aware of the fact that everyone seems to have an opinion about our work.  Often we spend lots of energy disregarding these opinions to protect our own, but Cherry listens.  When asked why she does this so openly she quite naturally exclaimed. “Oh its all information!” What a great way to look at an adjustment.  Seeing what comes to us as being “information” takes away the sting of trying something new.  It’s no longer personal, it’s just new.  We can take it, or leave it, but if we don’t even open ourselves to it, we deprive ourselves of new colors and textures as we continue to work on our craft.

Further investigation:

Thomas Kuhn’s book The Nature of Scientific Revolutions examines the idea of a paradigm shift in thinking and how often our attentiveness to data that do not seem to fit our ideas will break open our thinking about the nature of what it is that we are considering.  If this seems too academic for you, take a look at Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson.  It’s a delightful parable about how we can deal with change productively.

Suggestions:

1. Pick three small commonplace but interesting objects and place them on your  desk or windowsill in any arrangement.  Does the arrangement suggest an impression to you?  A title? Make one adjustment to the arrangement each day and notice how it changes the character of  the arrangement.

2. Notice yourself as you compose a message or an email.  What are the things that make you go back and make changes?  What do you notice about yourself in that process?

3. See if you can remember the best note or adjustment that you got from an acting teacher or director.  What was it about that note that made it so productive for you?  Write about it.  Then think of the most difficult or annoying note you ever got, and see if you can adjust your understanding of what the information was in the note now that you have a little distance from it. 

4. Write random adjectives on slips of paper and put them in a hat or bowl or bag. (words like red, effervescent, gravelly, legato) Pick one and just keep it in mind the next time you go through a scene or monologue.  What does that small adjustment do?  What is it like when you try three or four, and then drop them all and go back to the scene without special attention to the adjustment?  Has anything changed?

5. Try and find a different way of getting someplace you go to frequently.  What happens when you take another route?

6. Move something slightly in your apartment or workplace and see if others notice, and if they do notice see how they react or what they do.

7. Add, subtract, or substitute one ingredient in a recipe or dish that you cook often.

Other suggestions:  look at some images that are considered optical illusions and notice what happens when your eyes adjust, think of a friend and imagine doing an activity that you do regularly as if you were that person, try a dance move in reverse or read the first ten words in todays news backwards.

Week 5 – Action

 If answering the question “what do I want?” gets you to name your objective, then answering the question “what do I do to get what I want?”  gives the action.

Some actions are deliberate and conscious, some are immediate, reflex responses to the want or the need and a person may not even realize what they are doing until they have already engaged in the action.  What all actions have in common is they are focused, in one manner or another of achieving the objective.  The fun part for the actor can be trying out a hundred different possibilities in rehearsal and then decide what suits the moment the best.  Eventually the objective and the action will work together in what Stanislavski calls “the score” of a role:  the symphony of wants and actions that play the character each night in performance.  It’s important to notice the things that allow us to try different actions and also the things that cut off action or make us feel stuck.  In rehearsal, try to maximize free access to the want and let the action follow from the impulse.  Like the score of a piece of music, where different phrases and movements have different durations and colors, so the score of a role will have actions of different lengths and tactics.  Dramatic action is engaging for an audience when a character is totally committed to finding the right action to achieve the objective.  This means that the actor is usually trying different actions to get results.  Each moment eventually has to be crafted for performance.  Too many actions can confuse the throughline of actions, and too few can make the action stall.  In rehearsal generate as many as possible, making sure that you remain flexible enough to let go of any actions that really interfere with the scene rather than supporting it.   When does an action change? -- when something else is needed.  This usually shows itself in two ways.  1) when it is clear that the current action is not getting you what you want, or 2) when you have achieved the objective and a new objective takes its place.   A good director will be on the look out for the shifts that make the scene most engaging and will accompany the actor in the investigation of many possible actions.  Often a young artist will get in the way by judging.  A course of action is suggested or tried out and the investigation is stopped too soon with a comment like “this character would never do that.”  Leave decisions like that for later, and accept the sad truth that in face of some of our most immediate and most pressing wants there is very little that a human being will NOT do.  The dark comedy “Burn After Reading” seems to be a veritable study in rash actions that destroy lives all spurred by one character’s obsessive want for cosmetic surgery.  Try a variety of actions for the same end.  Have fun and have courage as you explore and leave the sorting out for later.

Life story:  I always ask my students to ride the subway and to observe impulses.  As a teacher I’ve found that this opens up the work to beginning students, and as an actor I find it crucial when I study for a role.  One night ,I was on a fairly empty subway train.  It is amazing what people will reveal in public, or perhaps they don’t even realize that they are revealing it; they are simply continuing a string of actions that began before they moved to a public space.   I watched one couple in the middle of an argument.  Neither of them were particularly attractive but the man seemed to think he was in a different category than his companion.  The woman was silent and unmoving as she listened to the man try to address her objection to his infidelity.   He had a long string of actions that he tried. Defending his autonomy “why should it matter to you what I do when I’m away?” Belittling the concern:  “she doesn’t mean anything to me.”  Denying responsibility “it just happened, we were drunk.”  Deflecting “you always do this.”  None of these had any results.  She remained unmoved, stern, jaw clenched, brow furrowed.  Then… and I wish I did not witness this… he looked at her and realized that none of these actions were getting him what he wanted.  He paused, changed his tone of voice, and almost sang the words “I’m gonna marry you.”  Immediately her face melted, her tension released, and she looked at him with very wide eyes.  The subway car pulled into my stop and as I was getting off the car I wanted to give her a piece of advice in the form of another action: Run!  But it was too late, she believed him.

Work Story: 

I’ve had the great privilege to work for several years on Fragments of a Greek Trilogy.  The original production was developed by director Andrei Serban, composer Elizabeth Swados, and the actors of the Great Jones Repertory of La MaMa.  It was the hope of Ellen Stewart, the founder of La MaMa  to create a new kind of theatrical experience that was not dependant on words to tell the story.  Ellen’s vision was to have a kind of theatre where people from all over the world could stand side by side and experience the show in a way that was not dependant on what language they spoke or understood.  In order to do this, they began with ancient languages that no one spoke, and eventually for The Trojan Women Elizabeth composed language based on the sounds of many different languages.  By removing a cognitive understanding of words, the process made the actors work on conveying the essential action of each scene in other ways.  The language of the play was the language of actions, and the words became music that underscored and supported each action. It didn’t matter to the audience that they did not understand the meaning of the words, the actions were enough to engage them, and to tell the story in a way that was clear… at least enough for the New York Times to say “no words were needed.”  When we performed in Korea, a man who saw the show recognized a group of on the street the next day.  He spoke no English and we spoke no Korean.  He came over to us very excitedly and said the name of the show pointing to us as if to confirm that we were the same people he had seen the night before, and we nodded yes.  Then he conveyed his experience to us without a shared spoken language.  He pointed to himself,  placed his hand over his heart and fluttered it, and then brought his hands to his face and traced several lines from his eyes down his cheeks.  We understood each other quite well.

Further investigation:

Stanislavski lays out the process of establishing the “score” according to objectives and actions in his book Creating a Role.   It outlines his process for analysis, emotional experience and physical embodiment of the action of a play.  It’s a foundational work for understanding this kind of work with objectives and actions. 

Suggestions:

1. Go to a public place, bus, train, or anywhere that you might be able to watch a conversation as it unfolds.  See if you can see the different actions from moment to moment, the way they are laid out in the story above.  Distinguish between the objective (what they want) and the various actions (what are they doing to get what they want) 

2. Select a page at random from your favorite novel or piece of literature and make a list of all all of the active verbs used on one page.  Look at the list in the sequence as you have written it down and see if you can imagine an objective or an aim for all of those actions or for any cluster of three or four actions.

3. Go back to a role that you have done before, a script from a show you’ ve done, or a monologue that you have prepared.  See if you can keep the objectives that you decided on and try to pick a different set of actions that still aim at the same objective. 

4. Before you go to sleep see if you can go over the day in your mind and list 10 significant actions you did that day.  Keep a new list each day for several days and then see how the lists compare and contrast.

5. Go back to any list of actions (either from these exercises or from your own work,) select the first ten, and see if you can articulate the opposite action.  (examples:  follow/ lead, convince/dissuade, praise/condemn, cajole/enfuriate.)

6. Recall a moment when you were at your best and a different moment when you were at your worst.  Try to remember things that you did in these moments and then compare the actions.

7. Listen to a symphony and imagine the music having an action.  As the music changes from movement to movement or from phrase to phrase, name the action of each new section.

Other suggestions:  watch a movie in another language without subtitles and see how much you can understand from the actions,  repeat some of the suggestions for the previous section on objectives, this time noticing instead the actions people use to achieve their objectives.

A few guidelines…

This blog is meant to work with you at your own speed.  I’ve been working with these concepts over the years and putting them together has been really great for me.  Most of these ideas are meant to be lived with for a while, so I suggest that anyone using this would do a bit at a time.  Each section (the explanation, the life story, the work story) can be read all together, or separately on successive days, or repeated as you like.  The suggestions are for those who want to develop a habit of doing something each day.  You can pick one suggestion and do it all week, or pick a different one each day.  Different practices will speak to each person differently.  What is important is to notice what attracts you.  The book will be organized into 52 weekly sections so that those who like a regular practice can have enough material, enough variety to keep it fresh and engaged.  This does not mean that you need to move on to the next section if you are still finding things where you are.  You can stay with any section you like, or skip any section that doesn’t particularly appeal to you.  What is important is that you allow your practice to be both challenging and pleasurable.  Any questions?  Feel free to email me: actorsdailyworkbook@gmail.com

Feedback is always welcome and helpful.  Either by comment here on the blog, or by email.

Enjoy!

Week 4 – Objective

Whether you call it motivation, intention, objective, or any other name, it’s important to decide what makes the character do what is necessary for the dramatic action to continue.  The impulse to act is identified by answering the question: What do I want? To understand what the character wants I have to notice my own wants, to get in touch with real desire that spurs real impulse.  I also have to allow for the fact that my wants (as the actor) may be different than the character’s wants.  Getting them mixed up at first is inevitable, and part of the process.  Wants are fleeting, changeable and capricious.  We should not expect them to be consistent or easy to grasp.  They can be conflicted, complex and puzzling.  They can be conscious or unconscious.  Getting to the core desire, may be a roundabout journey through many seemingly unrelated desires.  Wants don’t happen logically, they happen viscerally.  Unmask them and don’t judge them too quickly.   You’ll be able to sort through the possible wants later once you’ve discovered them, but if you haven’t allowed yourself to discover any because you’re waiting for the “right” one, then you’ll have fewer options to choose from and fewer colors to fill in the objective that you eventually choose.  Allow the objective to be active in you and articulate it in an active verb.  I want to dance with joy, I want to take back what I just said, I want to comfort, I want to defy, I want to soar… Articulating an active verb allows all our attention to focus on that one verb, that one objective, and musters the energy to make that desire find its object.  Objectives tend to change when one want is fulfilled, or when a stronger want displaces it.

Life story:  Whether advising students, consulting for teachers, or counseling artists, the question “what do you want?” is sure to come up in the course of the conversation.  Often people begin by saying, “I don’t know what I want” or “I want everything.” These responses are opposite ends of the spectrum, and neither is specific.  Addressing the “everything” is easier, but needs to be focused.  It becomes matter of choosing one specific objective as a starting point, and then letting the awareness of other objectives follow.  Often we find it hard to choose one objective or one want because we are afraid to limit our options.  We’re afraid we’ll be missing out on something.  But we forget that the next moment allows us to bring in more.  We just have to wait until we truly experience one.  It is also difficult when someone says ‘I don’t feel desire for anything at the moment.” Often this is a fear of desiring anything because we fear disappointment of our objective not being realized.  We may have unconsciously trained ourselves not to want anything to protect ourselves from the desire not being fulfilled.  Then we need trust.  What do you do then?  Ignatius Loyola would say that if you feel you do not have the desire, then try to desire to have the desire.  Again, it is a clear single choice that can be expanded once desire is ignited.  In these extremes, naming any starting point, no matter how unrelated it seems, can begin a process of digging into the deepest desire.  By entertaining the possibility of desire, I can ignite a want and draw more wants to it.  The objective becomes clear when the wants line up, we connect the dots,  and it becomes clear where they are aiming.  This goal then provides the impulse to work, to act, in order  to achieve the objective

Work Story:  I was teaching some students who were doing a scene from Uncle Vanya.  Helena and Astrov are in looking at maps while Helena is trying to find a moment to speak to him about her stepdaughter Sonia.  Of course deep down Helena wants to talk about herself to Astrov as well but she has hidden this even from herself.  In the course of the first part of the scene when Helena is listening to Astrov, the actress playing Helena tells me she is lost.  She doesn’t know what she wants.  She feels fidgety and disengaged from what is going on.  As she tells me this I notice that she is picking at layers of tape that have become stuck to the rehearsal table.   I say to her,  “do you notice what you are doing right now?”  “No,” she replies.  I’m fidgeting, I’m not involved at all.”  I asked her “you are doing more than fidgeting, you are peeling away layers and layers that have been stuck to that table… and you don’t see that Helena is doing the same thing? She wants to expose herself, peel off the layers of propriety and decorum and free herself from the overlays that have buried her true self.  This is her moment, and her fidgeting is actually accomplishing metaphorically what she is longing for in herself.”  Even though it seemed unrelated or disengaged, noticing the spark of desire in what was really happening at the moment, got her in touch with what was truly her deepest desire.  Once this was done the rest followed, and the scene opened up for her.

Further investigation:

One of the best resources for getting into the objective is a book by William Ball called A Sense of Direction.  The chapter on Objectives gives a great overview of how to get into the objective, how to layer it and adjust it, and how to make sure it is doing what you want it to do for you in the scene.  It’s clear and practical.  Though it’s written for directors, it is one of the best introductions to the objective that I know.

Suggestions:

1. Examine a choice that you made in the recent past.  Did you deliberate about it?  Or just go with the flow.  Ask yourself “what did I want?”

2. Watch a pet or an animal.  Look for the impulses in how it moves.  Try to name the desires behind each impulse

3. Notice the things that you do when you are bored.  Name them specifically, then ask yourself “Why am I doing this now?  What do I unconsciously believe that I am accomplishing?”  You’ll be surprised at how clearly your unconscious behavior points to what you want in the moment.

4. Try to remember back to when you were a kid and someone asked you “what do you want to be when you grow up?”  See what feelings come up with that memory.  Write for a few minutes about what comes up.

5. Notice when a friend, co-worker or family member changes their mind about something.  Notice how immediate it is.  Think about how their inner wants changed and see if you can imagine or articulate what those wants might be.

6. Watch a big, over-the-top, movie from a bye gone era.  See how passionately the main characters pursue what they want. 

7. Ask yourself “what would I do with ten dollars right now?”  Then give yourself ten dollars and see what you really do with it.

Week 3 – Noticing

 As actors we recreate life on stage. A huge portion of what we do has its foundation in sharpening our ability to notice. Whether we work intuitively or technically, from the inside out or from the outside in, the raw material of what we work with is harvested through our ability to notice.  Our reactions in reading a script can be appropriated only if we’ve developed a way in noticing how something affects us.  The choices we make as character can be made only if we are able to notice the choices we make for our selves in real life.  How we respond to a scene partner in rehearsal or on stage can be open and attentive only if we can notice the subtle cues and invitations that are present in the moment that is being created right in front of us.   Noticing what attracts our attention helps us to gather more and more possibilities. The more we find the world around us fascinating, and the more we can begin and maintain and enjoyable fascination, then everything we do on staged will be drenched in this same fascination.  We sometimes think that enjoyment is something that just happens to us depending on something external.  While the hook is definitely grounded in the external, the ability to enjoy something depends on how much of our attention we can bring to really experience it.  Without the ability to notice, things just pass us by.  Without the ability to notice, even the most precious things don’t even register.  The more we notice, the more we see how intricate life is.  We not only see it we begin to enjoy it.

Life story:  One of the truly emblematic pieces of American Theatre is Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.”  While studying it as a youngster I probably learned more about theatre and literature from the way this play was taught to me than any other single work I had experienced up until that point in my life.  I remember getting to the Third Act when Emily wants to go back to re-live her twelfth birthday.  I was puzzled at the reactions of the other characters who told her not to do it because it would be too painful.  As she noticed the things that she overlooked while she was alive it became unbearable for her.  She asked the stage manager “do any human beings realize life while they live it? Every every minute?”  His response to her was “No. The saints and poets, they do some.”  This interchange made a huge impact on me.  How much there is to notice in life… and how like the saints and poets we are when we are able to notice it in the moment.

Work Story:  I was in Tuscany working with Ellen Stewart, the founder and director of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, on a site specific piece based on Ambrose Bierce’s novel The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter.  The theatre group in Italy had scouted out several locations but none of them were exactly what Ellen was looking for to tell the story.  As the team was driving Ellen from Arcidosso to Bagnore, Ellen said “Stop the car, pull over.”  There was a little chapel there and a wall that opened into a huge field, a grove, and an old farmhouse that belonged to a local family.  It was the perfect spot to do the show.  Someone asked Ellen, “how did you know to stop here?”  She said “I heard a bird.”  Ellen noticed everything.  She noticed things in artists that others overlooked.  She saw things in many of today’s great artists that no one ever saw before and presented them to an audience in a way that allowed them to see the special qualities that she noticed in them.  Her ability to notice launched the careers of Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Diane Lane, Wallace Shawn,  and hundreds of others,  and gave us the first productions of “Godspell,” “Hair,” and Blue Man Group.  Just listing every person whose career or  life was influenced by Ellen’s ability to notice would probably fill this whole book.

Further investigation:  Richard Boleslavsky’s book Acting : The First Six Lessons has a great section on Observation.  I use this book when I teach and students respond very well to it.  One of my students Emily Bridges and her father Beau made a stage play of the book.

Suggestions:

1. Spend 10 minutes in one spot: on a bus or train, on a park bench, at a window and just watch what is going on.  What do you see? People? Birds? Movement? Colors? Notice what attracts your eye from moment to moment and name it.

2.  The next time you eat spend some time noticing the complexity of temperature, texture, aroma, and flavor.  Notice how each chew will change the equation slightly and feature one or more of the components slightly differently. Each new bite will be different proportions.  Take your time and enjoy the intricacy of the tastes.

3. Watch your favorite movie and ask yourself what are the first images presented to the viewer?  Why did they select those images.  What was it that the makers of the film noticed in that moment that made them decide it was necessary to tell the story.

4. Sit in a chair or lie on the ground in a constructive rest posture.  Begin to notice your breathing.  Start first with the air as it enters your nostrils and as it leaves.  What do you notice is different between the in breath and the out breath?  Temperature, sensation?  Then notice how your lungs expand and the various tugs on your muscles just from breathing.  Allow your attention to float through the body and notice all that you can around your toes, ankles, legs etc.  Notice your attention relocalizing through your body and notice how with each new phase you can pick up on greater detail

5.  Look at your favorite piece of art or your favorite souvenir.  What was it that you noticed about it that made you want to keep it?  What can  you notice about it today that you never really noticed before?

6. If you are working on memorizing a scene or a monologue, notice if there is one word, phrase or line that just doesn’t really stick in your mind.  Look at it more closely.  See if you can notice what it is about the line, phrase or word that makes you want to skip it or substitute something else.  Quite often that detail will be the key to the line.

7. Go through a photo album and pick one person that you care about.  Look at them in the different pictures of the album.  What details are different from photo to photo? From moment to moment? From year to year?

Other ideas:  Re-read your favorite poem and look for something new,  watch an animal and see how much of its surroundings it is taking in at all times,  do a “taste test” of different brands of the same product and see if you can articulate the differences.

Week 2 – Practice

Practice can be a word that needs a little unpacking.  We may have baggage associated with the word as it gets layered by the various disciplines that use it.  In its essence, the idea is very simple and very clean.  Webster defines it in several ways:  1) to carry out, to apply   2) to do or perform often, customarily, or habitually 3) to be professionally engaged in.  The dictionary’s secondary treatment of the word is even closer to the heart of the matter for artists: a) to perform or work at repeatedly so as to become proficient b) to train by repeated exercises. 

To synthesize all these, we might say that practice is repeated action that we engage as we aim toward excellence.  This all sounds great in theory, yet there is something about the words “work” and “habitual” that seem life-draining rather than life-giving.  However, anyone who has made a commitment to a practice, allowing it to become natural, will tell you that the effort gives back a hundredfold.  It still requires effort, but the effort energizes us, restores us, empowers us.  The key seems to be in making the commitment to find the joy in it and in understanding that the repetition is not a wearing thin of the initial joy.  It can be, with the right adjustment, a real deepening of that joy with each repetition.

Life story:  Probably the most common example I’ve heard actors talk about in terms of their regular practice is going to the gym.  I’ve noticed that they experience it differently before and after actually going and doing it.  Before going they often resist, and often look for excuses not to go.  However if they are able to muster their determination and get there, the practice takes over.  The actions themselves carry the effort through and by the end of the workout, inevitably the feeling is “I’m glad I went.”  What we want to do is remember that feeling that we get after completing the practice before we start it.  If we can consciously call to mind experiences where the practice has paid off then we enter it with enthusiasm, and with energy.  It becomes easy to devote ourselves to the effort because we have already remembered the feeling we get when we complete it.   In training actors I’ve experienced the same thing.  The actors who leave a training session look very different than when they walked in.  Even on the gloomiest day when people seem to have to drag themselves to training, they usually leave smiling, energized and inspired to go and do more.

Work story:  Uta Hagen in her book Respect for Acting reminds us that the word rehearsal in different languages enlightens something about the process.  In French the word is répétition and in German it is die probe.  Yes, rehearsing is certainly repeating something over and over, but as we do it, can we remind ourselves that we are probing, digging deeper, consciously looking for something new that we had not been able to notice before but that we now can appropriate because we have the luxury of being able to do it once more.  In graduate school our yoga teacher Dolphi Wertenbaker would always stress that a practice needs to be designed to your needs and needs to be reassessed when circumstances make the commitment difficult or when the desire seems to be waning.  She would say to us “I’m going to share with you the greatest secret about practice: the greatest secret about practice is that you DO it.”  Practice should be challenging yet achievable, regular yet flexible.  If we can’t aim for real results or adjust to the real limits of the moment, then we risk making practice a burden rather than a joy.  It’s not that I have to do this again, it’s that I get to do this again!

Further investigation:

Uta Hagen’s book Respect for Acting  remains one of the best resources for basic focus areas with achievable specific goals.  Her “basic object exercises” are simple, specific, and totally doable.

Suggestions:

1.  Give yourself a half hour to design a 5-10 minute practice that you will commit to for three days.  It could be a physical exercise, a spiritual discipline, an artistic practice, anything at all.  At the end of the three days, look back and see how differently you feel about what you’re doing.  Adjust as needed

2.  Pick your favorite monologue and commit to reciting it once a day for a week. 

3.  Try the practice at different times of the day : one week try it in the morning, the next week  try it in the evening.  Notice what time of day is most fruitful for the practice you’ve chosen.

4. Come up with a list of adjectives that describe how you feel when you’ve achieved something that you’ve set out to do.  Write them on post-its and put them in places that will remind you of how you will feel once you do your practice.

5. Come up with a playlist of songs that reminds you of your goal.  Occasionally listen to it as you do the practice.   At times when you feel resistance to do the practice, play one of the songs.

6.  Pick 5-10 of your favorite suggestions from these lists (things that you can do easily and with enthusiasm), write them on slips of paper, place them in a small box or bowl.  Each day pick out one slip of paper and do what you’ve written immediately.  Feel free to retire some activities and replace them with new ones that you’d like to try.

7. Make a list of possible rewards to give yourself each time you complete the practice three times in a row.  Then suspend the reward for five times, or seven times.  Eventually, you see that the practice is itself the reward.

Other ideas:  Find a friend to exercise with, or read a scene out loud, or something else you can do with someone who will be there with you to keep each other invested in what you are doing. Make a list of practices you’ve had in the past,  and try some of them out again.