And suddenly – or not so suddenly, perhaps drudgingly – it’s 2012. I’ve read a lot of blog posts lately about planning for the new year, how to make resolutions stick, or how to avoid resolutionizing all together. Points of view on the good, bad and ugly of resolution making are all over the map. Personally, I find it difficult to refrain from thoughts that sound something like: “This year I’m going to finally lose that extra weight. This year I’m going to get my business in high gear. This is the year I’m gonna make it all happen!” Yet, in my heart I know these thoughts aren’t real. Wait. Okay, the thoughts are real. I AM thinking them so they’re ‘real’. But I also know these thoughts are fantasies. I would even go so far as to call them self-indulgent fabrications full of hooey. They are something I say to myself to make myself feel better about not being all that I said I wanted to be in
We’re talking about ‘beats’, timing, standing with your weight on both legs, supporting your voice from your diaphragm, characters and the multitude of nuances that come with making an entrance. That’s right! We’re in the scene-work phase (a.k.a. the coaching phase) of rehearsals for Columbia Entertainment Company’s production of Lanford Wilson’s Book of Days. In this phase of the rehearsal process we are repeatedly tearing every scene apart and gluing it back together. Short utterances of, “Okay? Better. Let’s do that again.” echo in the rehearsal space (read: gym). And I mean echo literally
Do you engage in a creative practice outside your main art form? If so, how does that practice inform your work? Or does it? Is there something else you’ve longed to try? What do you do to stretch your creative muscles? What can you do that will keep your vision fresh? For me it’s iPhone photography. These are pics shot and edited with my iPhone 3G for the iPhone photography class I’m taking. I’m having a blast with the class and learning tons. It’s very technical and my mind doesn’t grok technical easily. I’m a complete newbie to using any kind of camera. But I’ve always been fascinated with photos that aren’t your typical family vacation/reunion photos
It is about time I posted again. All the reasons I haven’t – that’s about time too. I’m 45 years old and I am still confronting the lesson that I can’t do everything I want to do and I can’t be all things to all people all any of the time. That’s the negative side of the lesson. The positive side of the lesson is that I can be true to myself, revise my boundaries, and constantly re-invent the wheel of my own life. I have that power. And you do too. We all do
If it weren’t for the doing of it, I wouldn’t know what I wanted to do. Aha moment this morning! I have a confession. I plunged into this blogging project and the acting classes without a lot of forethought. When I began, I had no idea what I wanted and truth be told – the dream is still unfolding. All I know right now is that I am building something of value. Something authentic and something new
Artists and writers are often required to sneak their creative work in around the edges of their lives and rely on their own will, desire and self-coaching to achieve their goals. And, because our creative work is often a labor of love as opposed to the kinds of labor we do for a paycheck, because there is no boss waiting expectantly for our results to add to his/her bottom line – we can let our creative time slip by. Then another week goes by and another month and another three years and that dream of writing a novel or seeing your art in a gallery is still sitting on a shelf gathering dust and waiting for you to show up
In this post I am going to encourage you to make a mess of things, make messy things and write bad poems. Here we go: I am in rehearsal for a show called Picasso at the Lapin Agile – written by Steve Martin. We open the show six days from today. We’ve reached that point in the rehearsal schedule where we do run-throughs every night. A run-through means you start at the beginning and go to the end. It’s basically a performance minus the audience. It’s repetition. Last night all the pieces finally came together and we took flight for the first time. That’s the beauty of repetition – it eventually sets you free
This is the basic numero uno prime and ultimate concept to master. Acting is doing. What does that mean? In the most obvious sense it means when your character is onstage searching for his blue sock, you the actor will be onstage searching for your blue sock. You aren’t pretending to search. You are searching. You aren’t demonstrating to the audience that your character is searching and you aren’t emoting about how much you love the blue sock. You are truthfully searching for the blue sock. Now, of course, you as the actor will know that the blue sock has been put under the center sofa cushion by the props master. (You know this because you always check your props before you go onstage, right?) So the question becomes how do I truthfully and purposefully search for the blue sock when I know that my character finds the blue sock under the sofa cushion in Act III because the last line of the play is, “How the hell did that get there?”
Many of my posts are spontaneous. I think of something I want to write about, I happen to have access to the tools I need and I write. I was planning on writing something else today about my disintegrated organization and priority system and the re-imagining of a new system, but that excitement will have to wait. I’ve written about my body image issues before. Links to those posts are here: Body Image, Eating and Creativity Perfection is Death This is another one of those, but different
Acting Concept: Acting is Doing This is the basic numero uno prime and ultimate concept to master. Acting is doing. What does that mean? In the most obvious sense it means when your character is onstage searching for his blue sock, you the actor will be onstage searching for your blue sock. You aren’t pretending to search. You are searching. You aren’t demonstrating to the audience that your character is searching and you aren’t emoting about how much you love the blue sock. You are truthfully searching for the blue sock
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