Pursued by a Bear

Tapping the reserves

Lately, my journal writing been a lot of poor-me-I-don't-have-enough-time-to-do-everything-I-want-to-do and poor-me-I-am-far-too-overscheduled. Blergh. This morning, I was complaining about wanting a couple more hours to myself. You see, I had previously committed the later part of my morning to a roundtable discussion at ART/NY. It started at 10am, which meant I had to leave my home at 9am, which meant I had to start getting ready for my day at 8am. On mornings where I don't have anything scheduled prior to going to work at my jobby-job, I can putz around the house until 11am. I'll be honest: I've had a very demanding week so far. I could've used a "putzy" morning.

However, I (wo)manned up and honored my commitment. Wow, I am so glad I did. I was able to have some thought-provoking conversations with over half a dozen of my peers in the off-off-broadway community. I left the event feeling energized about my life as an artist. I feel excited about producing work with my theater company.

I had a 20 minute walk across town to get to my jobby-job, which afforded me some time to think about what just happened. My mind wandered over some interesting thoughts about energy and how I must learn to use it.

For example, I have asked several of my friends who have children:

"HOW do you DO it?"

I mean, not just in NYC...but AT ALL. Life is exhausting. Here's one of the best things about me that is also the worst: I want to be an expert at everything. It's so frustrating that I don't have enough hours in the day to pratice all the skills I would like to acquire at advanced profficiency. I can't even imagine what kind of fresh hell I'd be inviting into my life by starting a family and still trying to maintain my curiosity about So. Many. Things.

I'm not interested in making "child-rearing" my No. 1 creative project. I've tried to convince myself that I could do that, but I've searched my heart for years now and I don't think it's in me. I'm going to have to have theater projects. But that means, if I decide to have children, I am going to have to figure out how to juggle my double life very, veeeeeeery expertly.

Every "parental" friend that I've queried has immediately replied: "Oh, you just do it. You just find the strength. It's in you. You just find it."

I got a little peek at that concept this morning. As I was leaving the ART/NY event, I realized that I felt great! How did I go from feeling totally maxed out at 7:30am (a mere half hour after getting out of bed!) to feeling excited and full of hope a few hours later?

I tapped into my reserves.

I'm thinking it must unlock itself when you choose to engage in the things you are passionate about. What do you think of that? My "parental" friends are passionate about their kids; Ergo, they find these cavernous reserves of strength inside themselves to make things happen for their kids. Does this concept transfer over into how I feel about making great art? I think so!

When I get around like-minded people and start dreaming about building really terrific theater companies and creating wonderful productions full of world-changing potential, I feel unstoppable.

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Of course, now that I've identified it, I have a responsibility to it.

Ri-iiiight?

I have to show up for it. I must trust that I will be energized by making time for the things that matter to me. I must trust that my reserves will kick in no matter how tired or discouraged I feel.

(...the "having kids" thing is waaaay on the back burner, though.)

So now I wanna know....

...what makes YOU feel unstoppable?

What taps your reserves?

 

Be here now.

Beth reminded me of something last week. I'm paraphrasing, but it went like this:

"You know, as actors that sing, we learn how to eek out an arc right away. We think we're doing the right thing, in order to tell the story; but I had a very smart teacher in grad school that asked me to simply think about each word as I was singing it. Just one word at a time. When you do that, the story takes care of itself."

When she said that, it immediately reminded me of a very tedious (but extremely useful) exercise that I learned in Patsy's class. Basically, you intone each word in your monologue like a meditative "om" and you don't move on to the next word until you've coined a meaning or discovered several options within the word thru the lens of your character.

Trust me when I tell you: it is tedious. A half page monologue can take hours to work through.

Yet, what happens to me every time I do this exercise is that I discover how much I don't know. I think I know a word, but do I really know what that word means? I circle it and move on. Later, when I look up the circled words, I always find out that I have an incorrect definition in my mind or my definition is not specific enough.

I've been preparing to go into rehearsals for Pericles and all this has been on my mind for a few days now.

When actors first get their scripts, the usual homework is to go through the pages and figure out the "wants" of the assigned character and the basic arc of the story. If you are a particularly vain actor (heh), maybe the first first thing you do is count your lines and compare how many you have to those of your colleagues - but! - everyone writes out these little "roadmaps" for themselves during the first week of rehearsal. One might even create a back story or snoop around to see what other characters say about their character and let that inform the behavior they create. It's all well and good to do this work.

But there comes a point in the creative process where the actor has to let go of all of that written stuff. As we go about our day in "real life" do we constantly refer to reams of paper with penciled in scribbles of information? No. We don't.

In real life, when you see policeman walking up your driveway, or when the phone rings at 3am, or when your significant other sits across a diner table and glumly pulls "We need to talk" out of left field...do you quickly scan your history with this person, or the current "wants" or "goals" of the moment, or examine the arc of what's happening? Probably not.

Everyone has had those "I remember it like yesterday" moments and they come from being completely out of your head. 100% present.

So, while doing actor homework is a great exercise, everything really boils down to Being Here Now. One word at a time. I think if you want to be an actor (nay, a person!) known for your authenticity, you have to be willing to let go of all the work you've done.

To add another very human layer to that thought: you have to be willing to not be noticed or lauded for all the work you've done.

You just have to trust and be totally present.

Oh! This is something I have struggled with for over 20 years. I want to show everyone what a good girl I am at doing my homework. Ironically, this keeps me from doing really good work. I KNOW. It is something I am (painfully) aware of and (always...) working on.

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