Acting in Pursuit of Truth

In January, I'll be starting a new acting class with Richard Seyd. It's an expensive class and the focus is on acting. It doesn't tie in to my other interests around social interaction and performance. So I asked myself, why do I want to keep developing my acting skills? Why do I want to be a good actor? As I sat with this question, I found some very clear answers.

At the most basic level, I'd liked to be known as a good actor. It appeals to my ego and narcissism. But beyond that, I have to say that I deeply admire and respect the skill of exceptional actors. The skill of the best actors is transparant. To acheive that level of acting skill would be among my prodest accomplishment.

At a deeper level, the study of acting is the study of being human. It's a physical, emotional and spiritual research into the human experience. Acting is away to revela truth to myself and others about what it means to be a human being. That is something I want to understand more deeply and share with others. Acting is a very useful way to do that.

This study, and the skill that I seek to develop, is limited by the barriers within myself. To pursue acting as a path of inquiry into truth reveals the many layers and masks of my identity. I don't want to mistake the mask, the role, the character, etc. as myself. Transparency is achieved by understanding how those masks are tools to reveal what lies beneath. Uncovering the truth beyond the mask reveals another barrier to revealing the Self.

By connecting with my Self, I can connect intimately with others. That is another reason I wish to act. The experience one has on stage, with other actors and with the audience, is very intimate. It is a safe container for exploring dangerous territories of the human experience. And I love that exploration and the intimate connections that it fosters. At times, the intimacy of the stage has been a falst substitute for intimacy in life. That does not interest me anymore. The intimacy on the stage should be an extension of life that also expands one's capabilities in personal life. In the end, I am acting in order to discover how not to act.

My pursuit of acting for discovering truth is related to my interests in psychology, philosophy and spirituality. None of these paths are better than another. They are multiple modalties, each with strengths and limitations for revealing truth.

High Performance & Productivity

Just Be

Last night I had a callback audition for the lead part in "Humble Boy" at Ross Valley Players. The character is my age, has a similar level of education and I resonate with certain aspects of his emotional life. He also stutters, which is something that I did as a child and occasisonally do in extremely emotional situations. In otherwords, the character wasn't too far from myself. There was very little to hang on to to create an external shell. I had to really let myself just be. Of course, being at an audition ads this extra pressure of feeling you have to do something, to show the director your skills, talents, emotions, etc. I fought against that inclination.

The director let a lot of people go after the first round. Maybe ten of us were left for a second round. The energy of the room settled and I started to relax into the character and script. Finally, in the fourth and final scene that I read, I was just being. I barely felt like I was acting, but the centeredness in my body, connection with my partner and emotional responsiveness was clear and real. It was one of the simplist acting experiences I have ever had. This was a real triumph for me and one that I hope I can continue to build on. And ironically, one of the lines my partner said was, "Don't you get it, I'm giving you an opportunity just to be." Art and life, they are so closely intertwined with lessons for living.

My Heart is an Egg

This feeling of not wanting to perform has become increasingly intense for me. I even cancelled two auditions. They just didn't seem that important to me. But it's not that I don't want to continue my commitment to performance as an artist. It really is that I'm tired of performing my identity. I'm interested in pursuing a path of performance that is about contacting Being.

I was feeling said around this issue yesterday. Pausing to take in the experience revealed a sense of wounding in my heart. This is something I have often experienced. As I felt into the wounding, I felt a hole open up and something escaping. It was like a release of heavy air. This lightening effect was soothing. At the end of the experience, my heart appeared to me like a giant white ostrich egg, sitting in a delicate gold stand. This was a completely new experience for me. It felt as if something had finally ended and that something new was waiting to rebirth.

Make-up: Private Performances in Public Spaces

I was riding the BART into work this morning when I noticed two women applying their eye make-up. The application of make-up, which my grandmother refers to as her "mask", is usually done in private. It is a private performance in itself which serves as a preparation for the public performance of persona. In contemporary society, the anonymity of public transporation creates a pseudo-private space. It allowed me to become a voyeuristic audience of this private ritual.

The woman I most closely observed continued to stroke her eyebrows over and over, long after she had applied her make-up. I imagine that this repetive gesture began with a real purpose. She needed to smooth back her eyebrow hairs or blend in her eyeshadow. Somehow along the way, the gesture took on it's own ritual signifigance. Perhaps it allowed her to contemplate her self in the mirror longer, or feel the self-stroking touch of her hand on the face. Something very private was going on in a totally public space.

It reminded me of the amazing gesiha transformation that B. D. Wong made on stage in the Broadway production of M. Butterfly. His performance was highly theatrical, public and private, similar to this woman's BART ride ritual. The performance of make-up application is a private theatre of narcissism. Daily make-up masks hide and reveal who we truelly are and want to be.

Chit-Chat is Chit-Chat

I was sitting in the hot tub today at the gym, listening to a couple of guys talking about which high-end hotels in Singapore and Thailand had the best gym. It was small talk, with a certain performance of their identity and status. Amazing to listen to how the details of the conversation led to a rather involved conversation. Change the details and they could have been two actors talking about which theatres have better dressing rooms, or two financial advisors talking about which mutual funds might have a better return, or even two grandparents discussing the exploits of their grand children.

On one hand, the essence of such aconversation is comparison. The shared information helped each person get a better understanding of their individual reality. It helps them determine if they are doing or not doing the right thing in their given role. It is a potentially dangerous move away from Self. I've become aware of how my own comparing mind is not very useful when it comes to experiencing reality.

On the other hand, the information was irrelevant. Such a conversation is just a vehicle for relationship. When the two gentleman got to the subject of cold pool and their aversion to it, I tried to jump in and recommend that shocking the muscles really aided relaxaton. I spoke my words with an emphatic enthusiasm to ad validity to my opinion. I was included in the conversation briefly, before the men continued speaking among themselves. I don't think I was really wanted in the conversation. Perhaps I had intruded in upon their relationship. Perhaps my own comparison, embedded in my recommendaton, disrupted their reality.

And then I got to thinking again about the similarity of all conversations. It is so easy to get caught up in a particular reality. Work, hobby and family conversations create a perspective. Each perspective, forming a community with it's own borders. We easily become invested within those borders. Because I move through so many different communities, I'm questioning the reality of those borders and the seriousness of those perspectives. They all seem false and fragile. There's a much deeper reality below the surface talk. Chit-chat is chit-chat. What is it like to engage in conversation from the depths of one's Self with an Other? I suspect that it feels something like love. How's the saying go, "Love needs no words."

Unmasking Reality in Virtual Worlds

I was thinking this morning about the connecton between cyberspace and theatre again. It's amazing how much of my life is spent in relationship to these intangible realities. Both are virtual worlds, mirroring what actually exists before disappearing when the stage or monitor lights are turned off. Sometimes I chastize myself for getting lost in these illuminated reflections. Acting on the stage or designing interactions in cyberspace can be an escape from experiencing the joy and tribulations of the ordinary world And yet, without the virtual, I canot see. It is the power of reflection in virtuality that awakens my ability to see reality.

I want to peer into the depths of existence - to know the real world hidden underneath the ordinary world. I am particularly curious to understand how I buffer myself against directly experiencing that reality. I wear so many masks, that I am often only the shell of a person, engaged with another shell. But when I step onto the stage or drop into cyberspace, my delusions and ideals collide with each other. The false constructs that defend against anything real are actually undone by my flight into the virtual. The virtual doesn't support the fantasy, it breaks it. As the light of the real pierces through the cracks in my mask, it dissovles the surface and I contact the real world.

Strange, this interplay. The ordinary world is so clouded that I have to enter into the virtual worlds to find the real world. That is why I love them. They help me to see the real world so often obscured by the ordinary. Each awakening of the real changes me. It allows me to see the real in the ordinary more clearly. This constant interplay between the imagined and the real in the virtual mirrors our own condition as human beings. They arise and dissappear as quickly as the impermanence of our lives.

Stripping Away

Today I had a monologue coaching session with Andy Murray, an artistic associate at California Shakespeare Festival. We spent an hour and a half working on Banquo's "Thou hast it now..." solilioquy from Macbeth. The speech is only 12 lines long, very simple. I thought it would only take a half hour to work on and they we could look at another monologue. But I had developed a performance overlaid with emotional, vocal and gestural indications, that we spent the whole time stripping it down to just it's essence. It was a hard exercise, just to play the action of the thoughts. It worked my edge.

As a performer, I want to be seen. And I often feel I need to do something to be seen. But that's a barrier to being really seen. I need to trust that I am interesting enough if I just stand on stage and play the actions of my character. I don't need to "do" anything to make it interesting. There's a deep life lesson in this. I don't need to do anything to be a human being.

After the session, I was paralyzed. The stripping away of my false identifications as an actor brought up deep feelings of deficient emptiness. I had to sit with those feelings for a good hour. I didn't want to "do" anything but get away from the emptiness. I saw through how any action, in life or on stage, is often a defense agaist contacting that deficient emptiness, the core of all narcissism. As I sat with the emptiness, I relaxed back into myself. I was able to trust more deeply in my beingness.

My newly arisen desire to study acting more deeply is part of my spiritual practice as well. It is another way for me to strip away the layers of the false self and touch that which is uniquely me. Trusting in that is not something that I just want for my acting. It's how I want to live my life.