What you’ve ALREADY got!

Last night I asked each person at the end of class: What do you get out of this? And the answers were very moving: freedom, connection, feeling alive, a chance to listen and hear, an opportunity not to think too much, and so on. I thought to myself, jeez, these people could probably teach a class by themselves! Then I asked them: do you think you could replace all the tools in your toolbox that you have acquired in relation to your Acting Class endeavours and objectives, with just the one thing you stated here? Like for example, could you erase your brain of all that you know so far, and walk in, totally fresh and green off the street, and just survive with “freedom, or “listening” or “feeling alive”? Would that one thing be enough to allow you to make it through this experience? And then there was silence in the room. My favourite kind of silence, where people are really pondering and giving themselves the right to think and work through things for and within themselves. And then slowly, and cautiously, I hear their voices, one by one say yes. Or I think so. Or maybe. And there is. Yes, or I think so, or maybe is an opening in the doorway that leads to every possibility in one’s greatest imagination.

My proposal here is that all the teaching and training and experience in the world will not replace the one true reason for your presence in this moment. And that reason is desire. Desire to be free, desire to connect, desire to feel alive. For it is precisely that desire that triggers the almost unconscious but fully instinctive choices that lead us down the artistic rabbit holes in each moment, where we fulfill our appetite for the one thing that brought us here. Do we wish to Act? Be judged? Serve the perceived expectations of others? Get our lines perfect? Make sure our hair or outfit is amazing? Try to fit the ever-changing box of corporate networks? (that last one is a bit extreme I know) But no! We want to feel, or connect, be moved, and believe. So instinctively, in any moment, we will welcome stimulation and information, and then innately decide what we already KNOW about this moment, (like we did so well as children at play) by welcoming our instinctive feelings, interpretations, and imagination. We evolve and grow, and learn, right here, right now. JUST LIKE our characters do.

You see, I had a near lifelong misconception about Acting and being seen. But it is clear to me now that this is not what Actors do. They are NOT Acting. They ARE seeing.

Acting is the opportunity of expression of the human soul. And our soul often speaks a more authentic language than the more “fearful” language our surface self may speak. It makes sense, because the world many of us live in often demands we protect ourselves, and many of us have been hurt, many times over, and so are understandably ever-cautious in society’s arena.

But this is Acting Class. And the very reason you chose to be here is to be free, feel alive and to connect and listen. THAT’S what you want; THAT’S why you’re here. So in fact; your desire for pleasure pre-exists your decision for defence, meaning it’s your genuine instinct to want to connect and feel and empathize grow and learn, and that you really don’t have any true need or desire to prove yourself or get anything “right”. No techniques or mechanisms required! Our souls do not need a filter, and do not require disclaimers.

So, in fact again, the students were right; they can survive on the one thing they get out of this class. In fact, they can thrive on it. And they CAN speak their natural language.

In fact, it was suggested to me that same night…it’s quite possible, their souls can’t survive on the other language.

I wholeheartedly concur. Acting Class: it’s already in you! Better to KNOW it than to SHOW it.

The Students are always right.

That is a lesson I never get tired of learning, and never stop being thankful for 😄

Now that I know what they get out of this class…I will endeavour to remind them of what they’ve “already got” in this class…and what they give US.