Tweeps Rule
Tweeting has become awesome again.
For me.
I was getting bored with Twitter. I’ll admit it. I didn’t feel like I had anything to say; for myself or to others.
Then I came to the National Arts Marketing Project Conference and finally got to use the “conversation” function of Twitter. It feels great to put something out there and get a response, or to add your viewpoint to someone else’s pithy comment. It helps that everyone at the NAMP Conference is witty and verbose.
So thanks, NAMPC tweeps. This is fun, and it’s inspired me to make “epic tweets” (TM Scott Stratten) and to respond and engage with my communities.
(Not to mention getting my own pithy comment retweeted to 2000+ people.)
Vulnerable
I strive for vulnerability in performance, no matter what kind. I feel like Janelle Monae nails it in this video for “Cold War”. And she’s pretty.
Playing the Music
Yesterday in my acting class, I jotted down this thought:
“Re: the role of the director. I keep coming back to the idea of director [of a play] as conductor. In an orchestra, the musicians play the notes, the dynamics, the tempo changes, etc, and the conductor decides which notes, phrases, and dynamics to emphasize. Each musician is responsible for playing the music, not just the notes. As an actor, we’re responsible for playing the music and knowing the tone, style, and dynamics, and the director decides what to emphasize.”
One of the things my teacher is concerned with is getting us to be able to be mostly director-independent, and I struggle with that. How can I make decisions beyond the basics without stepping on the director’s vision? But I think this music analogy is apt. We’re supposed to know the music of the script: character intention, emotional state, rhythm, tone, etc, and the director sees how we “play the music” and then says, “I like that, and I want to play up this bit here…” We have to bring something to the table. The director can’t play all the instruments at once.
Experiment
I’ve decided to try a seven-day experiment: I will – by force, if necessary – enjoy every facet of my life. What does that mean? It means saying “yes,” mostly. “Yes” to requests at work, “yes” to requests from my parents, “yes” to my body when it says it needs something (very different from wanting something), “yes” to friends for social time, “yes” to vulnerability and what goes along with it: the possibility of getting hurt, “yes” to enjoying my life, “yes” to acknowledging my feelings, good and bad, “yes” to challenges that scare me.
learning by doing
I started rehearsal for a show. I’m excited about it. I asked for advice from a good friend who has work with this group before, because I was a little scared. I remembered hearing her rehearsal debriefs and how frustrated and confused she was during her first show with them. So, going into this rehearsal process, I fully expected not to know what the heck I was doing.
And I don’t.
I’m learning the music quickly, but that’s about it. The rehearsal process is very different from almost everything else I’ve ever worked on, with the exception of The Less We Talk. It’s confusing right now because we don’t know much about our characters and about the piece, and I can see that confusion and frustration on the faces of some of the chorus members. I want to put an arm around their shoulder and say, “It’s ok not to know. The knowing will come in the doing.”
We’re so used to having things explained to us before we start, here in the Western World. My mother was listening to a podcast on the Hebraic roots of Christianity, and I was listening in, too. One of the things I remember is that there is a word in Hebrew that means “learn by doing.” We don’t have a lot of practice in that. We want to know as much as we can before we even start, and, sometimes, that’s not the best way of working.
So many young actors are used to working with a particular formula: the director tells me where to go and what to do; the script tells me where to go and what to do; my impulse in this written scene tells me where to go and what to do. This world these young actors are working in now feels like Mars to them. I can see the fear of being “found out”: “Oh no. He’s going to see that I have NO IDEA what I’m doing. He’s going to fire me. I’ll never work in this town again. Oh no.”
Even if you do get fired, my friend, it’s not the end of the world. Relax yourself and be ok with not knowing just yet, or maybe ever. There’s beauty in the confusion, too.
