Relaxation

The best thing any director can say to me is "Relax, don't try to make anything happen. Listen to your partner. Let your words effect you as you speak." Luckily for me, Ken does a great job of giving me this reminder at rehearsals for "Humble Boy". I'm relaxing more and more as an actor.

My old pattern of "performing" is still a bad habit. The frustrating part is that it makes the rehearsal process longer, because once I relax, I find a better choice, which changes how I'm playing the scene. My hope is that I continue to relax so that my initial choices arise spontaneously. The goal, of course, is to find that same relaxation in auditions, which is the most stressful of all acting environments.

Last night at rehearsal, I allowed myself to fully relax. It made the acting a lot of fun and so many new things emerged. As we move into our second week of rehearsal, I'm hoping that I'll be able to shed all the unncessary tension. It used to take me half way through a run to really relax - but then I was stuck with my choices. This time, I'm hoping that I have the relaxation and foundation of choices that allow me a spontaneous freedom for opening night.

Play

This word keeps coming up in reaction to my acting work. The other day, my acting teacher said, after doing an improv, "You were really playing in a way I hadn't seen before in your work." Then after rehearsal the other night, my director said, "You are really starting to play now." This makes me happy. For I can see that my best work comes when I relaxation and openness allows that sense of play.

Reflecting back to my MFA thesis show, "The Jester's King", it had a lot to do with play. The death of the king was the death of an identification with a very Saturnian figure. And yet, I was also owning myself like and adult. I was serious about playing. In doing so, I experienced a new level of freedom to play.

It's weird, on one hand I feel that I have always been playing around. I often feel that I need to be more serious and adult about my life. But I also feel like I've always been too serious and need to play more. I think the same thing is occuring on a societal level. America is very creative and playful, but so much of it seems childish. And then it is also so damn purityrannical, lacking play. I often feel that the most serious work we can be doing is restoring a sense of play back into society.

What if I took my play completely seriously? What if I owned play as a fundamentally essential quality to my life. I think it would bring me closer to true beingness. It might radically change the way I am living my life.

The Egg is Hatching

Last weekend my girlfriend and I were at a restaurant/bar celebrating a belated Valentine's Day. The bar was in the shape of an oval and the ceiling looked the shell of an egg. It was a pale yellow faux marble painting. The marble streaks made it look like cracks. It felt like we were inside of an egg shell that was cracking.

Later that night, my girlfriend gave me a hand made card. It was a giant white bird embracing two hearts. The white bird felt like a spiritual love, embracing our two hearts. The white bird is also a spirit guide of mine, that resides in the heart.

That night I had a dream in which an egg cracked open, revealing two white birds, like the two white turtle doves that I used in a recent installation.

Something alchemical is happening inside me and between us.

30 Seconds

For the past three nights at rehearsal, I have had these brief moments where I totally dropped in. They feel like moments of grace. In these moments, I am completely connected to my self, I know what I'm saying, but I don't know what will happen next. And I am extremely relaxed. I get so excited and perhaps too aware that it is happening, that I fall out of it again. My hope and desire is that my work will invite these moments more frequently and for extended periods of time.

Questioning Gifts & Giving Questions

Just finished the first full week of rehearsals on Humble Boy. Ken, our director, has done a very good job of creating a relaxed and open atmosphere to stimulate creativity. At the same time, he's very specific about what he wants. An actor himself, he offers a lot of great ideas to try out. These gifts have been very useful in helping me ground some of my actions and moments of my character.

But these gifts also frustrate me as an actor. It makes me go, "I wish I had thought of that first." I know when my choices aren't working, but I don't always have an immediate idea for a better solution. So I easily accept Ken's gift and use it. Maybe after I play with that idea for awhile, it will feel like my own or it will lead to something else that is my own. Using his gifts certainly speeds up the rehearsal process and open up my creativity in a certain way. But I wonder if they also shut off a deeper connection to my creativity.

Gifts, in general, are funny things - they are as much about the giver as they are the receiver. Gifts are also used to form relationships through a mutual sense of obligation. It it very rare that gifts are given completely free. Receiving these acting gifts from a director operate similarly. There's an obligation to try it and to please the director.

I find myself in a similar position often when teaching. As the teacher, I tend to be more aware than my students and I use that awareness to support their growth. I often give them ideas to stimulate their creativity and explore more choices. The student then finds him or herself in the position of feeling obligated to please the teacher by using the idea.

It seems to me that gifts which are ideas or solutions reflect the giver's understanding, but don't really aid the reciever in making the discovery. The receiver may be able to use the idea, but confronted with a similar situation in their creative process again, won't know how to proceed.

As a teacher, I always encourage my students to find their questions to guide them. But I should also be applying this more deeply in my dialogue with them. Questions will aid them in discovering the path, to learn not just a solution, but a new creative path.

Answers are not free. They are limited by the giver's perspective. A free gift is a question - for it can unfold in any direction.

Nervous

When I tell people that I'm an actor, one of the common responses I get is, "Don't you get nervous?" to which I would reply, "No, I never get nervous." That is no longer true.

I just had another audition this past weekend. I was very relaxed and energized as I arrived, but then I suddenly got nervous and stayed that way throughout the audition. Now, I'm not so nervous that my hands shake, my voice cracks, or I start to sweat and make mistakes. It's not that kind of nervous. It's much more subtle.

I think it is arisen from my growing openness and vulnerability in my acting. There's more of "me" showing up. The reason I never got nervous was that I was always protected. I was playing it safe. Being nervous stems form the fear about being open, of showing myself. I suspect that over time, the fear will subside and I won't be as nervous. That I will really connect with the true power of such vulnerability. But right now, I'm going more on faith than a deep trust of it.

Another reason that I'm getting nervous is that I'm also discovering how important acting is to me. I really want to get these parts. I feel a tingling sensation in my heart. I love acting. It makes no sense, considering how many other career options are open to me and how successful I've been at them so far. But something is pulling at me. I am allowing myself to really own this dream, to feel it and it's scary. That is also part of the nervousness.

So being nervous is a good thing right now. It's the surface fear that arises when I contact the hopes and fears of my true heart's desire.

Love Makes the World New

I recently saw Malik's new film, The New World and was, still am, deeply moved. I've been thinking a lot about the difference between story and drama. Most Holywood films focus on creating a tightly plotted script. A good example of this is a film I recently saw on a plane, The Perfect Man. The story was so well plotted, the drama got squeezed out of it. But in The New World, the drama is given room to breathe. Malik uses long sequences of images and sound to create emotional spaces. He uses film as an expressive and poetic medium that opens up space in the soul of the audience. The film communicates, experientially, a sense of presence.

For me, The New World of the film's title is not America (or England for Pocahontas), but a metaphor for continually seeing the world a new. This desire is why we enjoy travel or new jobs or even having children. They break us out of our routines and restore a fresh perspective. This freshness also engenders a sense of freedom, of new opportunity - the spirit of the pioneer.

Often, when we lose touch with that experience, we rediscover it in love, as does Captain John Smith in the film. This also has it's pitfalls, for we then mistake our lovers as beings the source of that joy, instead of something deeper, we lose it, as does Pocohonatas. But we can never lose such deep love and joy - it is always there, we just fail to see it. The lover only helps us find it again.

The world is the same as it always has been - constantly changing. Our contact with the constant presence of love inside our deepest Self, is eternal freedom from being attached to the way things are or afraid of changing it. This experience of eternal presence allows us to find joy in the changes of the world and ourselves. Love makes the World New.