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.