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.  

Week 1 - Beginning

Whether we are beginning something we have not experienced or “beginning again,” getting back to something we’ve done in the past, very often the first step is the most difficult.  The unknown of what lies before us can be intimidating, daunting, paralyzing.  We can experience even more setbacks if  our memories of trying in the past are not pleasant ones. Rather than take the first step we spin our wheels about the many possible first steps, expecting  a definitive direction and forgetting that we can always make adjustments along the way.  When a infant ventures into walking, there is a certain amount of wobbling and falling that is expected  and understood as part of the process.  And yet there is joy and intense curiosity of a new possibility that fuels the infant to get up and begin again and again.  The first step is after all just one step.  When it becomes two, and three, a possible pattern emerges, a possible direction presents itself, and the fun of connecting the dots takes over. Pick a dot, any dot.  You can always adjust later.

Life story:  I was a volunteer working in the motor coordination unit of a State Hospital.  Many of the hospital residents has reduced hand-eye coordination because of the medication they were taking.  One of the residents had a therapy of removing the pegs from a pegboard: about fifty wooden pegs that fit into snug grooves.  I used to fill the board and he would remove them.  One day, the supervisor called in sick and I had the unit to myself. After filling the board twice,  he came to me with the pegs and board a third time. I was overwhelmed with the other residents and I said to him. “I bet you can fill that board yourself.”  He shook his head “no.”  I said “I’ll make a deal with you, if you can put one peg in that board, just one, I’ll fill the rest of it for you.”  He struggled, the peg wobbled and skipped around the groove in his fingers, until he found the groove and the peg slipped in.  When he saw that he could do one,  he himself picked up another… and another… and another.

Work Story:  Working with director Anne Bogart and playwright Paula Vogel at the American Repertory Theatre was an opportunity to watch and participate in exemplary collaborative process.  Developing one of Paula’s new scripts, Anne would offer it to the actors to find our intuitions,  then take those impulses and shape them, and offer it back to Paula to make any adjustments she saw fit.  Some of the most exciting work was on composition.  Anne  would give us a game with a few simple elements as a framework.  And then give us a gentle nudge to get things going.  This kind of work was entirely new to me, but I remember as my mind was racing trying to “get things right,”  Anne’s confident voice impelled the action with a simple but firm verbal reminder that “we’ve already begun.”  That was freedom.  That was permission.  That was the first peg slipping into a groove and looking at the many places where then next peg could fit.  All we needed to begin was the reminder that we had already begun.

Further investigation:

Rollo May’s book The Courage to Create  is a great look into the creative process: the things that make it thrilling and the things that make it risky.  His accessible style and clear focus to each chapter make it easy enough to read at one sitting yet  friendly enough to consider one section at a time.

Suggestions:

1. Doodle.  Just put the pencil to the paper and start moving it.  See where it goes and what it does.  Or make a few dots and connect them.

2. Plant a seed.  Or better yet, a few seeds. Could be anything, an orange pit, a seed from a commercial package of seeds, or one from a plant that you walk by every day that might have its own seed pods.  Put it in some soil in a sunny spot, water it and be patient.

3. If you don’t already have a journal or a place to jot your thoughts, start one. Maybe even a blog!

4. Pay attention to the “firsts” of your day as they happen in the moment: your first move, your first thought your first sip of coffee, your first “hello.”

5.  When you go to bed at night, write down something that you want to read immediately when you get up.

6. At the end of the day list 5 beginnings that you had this day

7. Go for a walk and realize that you’re already walking.
Other ideas: start working on a new monologue. Read a new play. Start thinking about a character you've always wanted to play and begin working on the role even before you get the job.

This is my new blog

Here is my my goal: a book organized week by week for a full year of reflection and practice of some of the key concepts and ideas that we as actors and artists treat every day, though some days more intentionally than others.  The goal is to offer possibilities for something practical and focused that can be done every day, but flexible enough to adjust to the unpredictable life that the art and the industry often builds around us.

What I hope to do:

-A theme for each week and a brief plunge into it.

-a story about that theme as it relates to daily life. 

-another story about how it relates to the craft.

-further investigation of the theme.

-a “Seven List” of seven different activities that can be done from day to day to put it into practice.

As you read, feel free to comment and suggest other themes or things that you do that work for you. 

I’m blessed to work with so many amazing people (you included) and would not be able to do what I do each day were it not for the inspiration I get from you.

Please become a faithful reader, try things out, leave me your comments, tell me what works and what needs clarifying.

Enjoy, dream, get inspired, and touch back to what got you into this wonderful world to begin with.

Here is a list of topics I plan on treating in no definite … Cast a vote, add your own, make a suggestion:

Beginning

Focus

Observation

Courage

Flexibility

Energy

Containment

Accumulation

Radiance

Character

Action

Objective

Obstacle

Awareness

Gravity

Momentum

Suspension

Opposition

Resistance

Poise

Guts

Truth

Maintaining

Ending

Consonants

Vowels

Intelligence

Feeling

Embodiment

Vitality

Spirituality

Consciousness

Hiddenness

Process

Collaboration

Moment

Timing

Trust

Challenge

Generosity

Spontaneity

Consistency

Impulse

Stimulus

Response

Perfection

Striving