First Class

My first class was Wednesday night. I haven't been that nervous about anything in a very long time. I didn't know what stage of the repetition exercise we were going to start with and what if I moved too fast or too slow or what if everyone else was much better at it than I am and I'm walking into a room full of people who don't know me from Adam and with whom I have absolutely no previously established level of comfort or trust and what if that taints everything and makes me too scared to participate? But that fear should make me participate, yes? And I should let them all see it because then I will be living truthfully in the moment and that is what this whole exercise is about. That is what acting is all about - living truthfully in the moment (under imaginary circumstances). I think that in general, I am a pretty truthful person. When I feel like doing something, I do it. When I don't, I don't. I'm pretty decent at expressing myself in one way or another. Granted, I'm not perfect at it and there are a few disingenuous things that I do (like my day job), but in general, I think I am pretty aware of how I'm feeling and what I'm doing and what impact those things have on the people around me.

So we started by playing tag. There wasn't a lot of actual tagging going on, often times, I think, because people were so engaged on what was happening in front of them that they didn't want to interrupt it. We all wanted to see where this was going to go next. The teacher told me to observe for a bit, and I wanted to jump in a half a dozen times, but I didn't until the second half of the class. There was one woman who just seemed to want to pick fights. There was another woman who would get flustered and in her head and would miss things in her partner. There was a guy who was TOTALLY in his head to the point where he wasn't giving his partners anything to work with, so they would start either projecting things onto him or making observations about themselves. There was a guy who would get protective and defensive, letting the energy fall out of the moment exactly when the moment called for escalation. And there was me. I don't think either of my partners were very good at reading me, which makes me think there was something I was doing to make myself unreadable. I thought I was being expressive and open, but I guess I wasn't. There is the possibility that my partners were also either projecting something onto me or that they came in with a preconceived notion of what they were going to find, but I can't change what they do. I can only work on what I do. And if it means I need to be more open and expressive and direct so that people understand me, that's something for me to work on.

I think a lot of people went into the exercise with an agenda, instead of just letting the exercise happen. "I'm going to make him yell at me." "I'm going to ask her to comfort me." Which made for a few false moments, I felt. Did you really see anger, or did you want to see anger? And then the other really strange part about it was that some of these people who so clearly had an agenda would choose very safe words to use. "Smiling" instead of "happy" or "uncomfortable." Instead of trying to get at the root of why someone was suddenly laughing, they would just say "laughing." Laughter doesn't always indicate amusement. People can laugh out of discomfort or as a defense mechanism or out of surprise. And while it is a 100% truthful observation to point out that a laughing person is laughing, I think it then becomes difficult for the laughing person to react to that. If you tell me I'm wearing sneakers and I'm wearing sneakers, I can't really feel one way or the other about that. It is a statement of fact. A true statement, but a safe, unqualified statement. If you tell me I am wearing ugly sneakers or fucking awesome sneakers, that will elicit an emotional response. I know that it is safer and easier to point out the obvious sneakers. My thought is that this exercise is about stepping outside of safe. I could be wrong. Or that could be another thing for me to work on - to call my partners out on it when they choose safe words.

In both of my exercises, my partner ended up disliking me and saying so. This is a personal comment, but it's not a personal comment, if that makes any sense. When we leave the stage, we go back to the place where they really don't know anything about me yet, nor I them, and I think we will get along just fine as regular people. But in the moment, in the exercise, they didn't like me. Looking back on it, I think it is because I was making them uncomfortable. I think one woman was frustrated with me and the other was just uncomfortable. Looking back, I think this was a good thing. I elicited a visceral response in my partners. I hope, in a very strange way, that I scared them. I think my classmates might have thought I was safe or timid, since I didn't really socialize before class. But I'm not an extrovert - this has been established and documented. I think they thought that would manifest on stage. And I think I surprised them with my honesty. Yes, I could be more honest, and I need to work on following my impulses more, but I think they thought working with me was going to be safe and easy and then it wasn't and they didn't like that. I dunno. Just a thought. Maybe I should try to get everyone in the class to not like me. Wouldn't that be interesting?

I'm looking forward to continuing with this. I don't think there was anyone in the class who was any better or any worse at this than I am. I think there is a lot that I can learn from working with these people and this instructor. I love it that I left with so much to think about. I think I may have found the challenge I have been looking for for the last ten years or so, and what's more, I think I'm up for facing it.