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.