Good Night

I had a really good night in class last night. Really good.

My partner and I were up on our feet, working in our environment for the first time and we struggled for lines from time to time, but that happens. But there was honest connection and honest emotion and so much pain and rage and vulnerability. It was great. And, it wasn't perfect. The teacher called me out on my "thing" - I have a "thing!" I have wanted to know for some time if I had a "thing" and she saw it last night and called me out on it and it's so true. I was hiding my face in my hands a lot. And it will make me that much more open and raw if I can still have those feelings without hiding my face. I'm looking forward to trying that next week.

There were a couple of odd bits for me, though. One was that so much of the scene is SO emotional for me, but when the teacher would stop us to make a comment, I came right smack out of it. Maybe that is because she tended to stop us when the scene was going south anyway, but it felt weird. But I guess it is good. I know I have ragged on actors before for not being able to leave it on stage once they come off, but it felt odd to go from 100 to 3 in a half a second, you know? And I think I did a decent job of getting back up to about 85 or 90 to start the scene again when it was time to go. It would be nice to learn to jump back in at 100 - that will come with practice. I think I wonder if it made it appear false to my classmates, though, that I came out of it so quickly. I'm up there screaming and crying in pain, and then I'm looking the teacher in the eye taking notes and agreeing that I need to not hide my face and being very calm and technical. Does the fact that I did that make the intensity of the scene just five seconds beforehand seem false?

It didn't feel false.

Which brings me to my second oddity.

When I was learning lindy from my favorite lindy instructor who lives in Europe (I believe he's still there), I remember that he broke it down to such a fundamental level that to the observer, it might look like not a lot is going on. But for the dancers, it is this intense, connected, completely in-tune conversation of movement. He told me once that he couldn't feel my fingertips. So I fixed that and he could control either my head, my hips, or my feet just through my fingertips. For me, acting is very much the same. When you get to that level of connection, where you are taking in what your partner gives you and reacting honestly and truthfully to it, you can make your partner weep with the slightest tilt of your head.

But I think I got into a sort of dangerous place in both dance and acting because of this. The place where I was looking for connection so tiny that the end result looked tiny to anyone watching. Yes, I was feeling everything and yes, I was reacting to everything, but it was all small and perhaps internal. I would get mad, but not furious. I would be happy, but not sickeningly in love. That kind of thing. And that's not always called for in the theater. First of all, nobody writes a scene about someone who gets mad. They write about hideous burning rage. Nobody writes about couple who are content. They write about couples who are hopelessly in love, fueled by passion, desire, and lust. And as theatergoers, that's what we want to see on stage. Not to mention the fact that if you're playing a big house, nobody can see it in the back row if you wink. So I think I was in a place with my acting where I knew large reactions were called for, but they felt false. They felt exaggerated and sometimes forced. But last night, I think I realized that it is not about making the movements bigger. It is about raising the stakes. If you find out your husband is cheating on you, you will be hurt and angry. If you find out your husband, who you gave up the life you always wanted for yourself so you could be with him, who you have become completely emotionally dependent on, who is the father of your only child who is your great joy in life even though he's a little off, who you care for and depend on, who you honestly think you would shrivel up and die without, is cheating on you with a goat, your guts will spill out of your mouth, you'll double over and writhe on the floor in pain, screaming until you can't scream anymore. And it will be honest. And it will be truthful. Because it is that important to you.

It's funny. I have technically been studying theater for about fifteen years and all of the things the acting books have told me are just starting to sink in. Trust yourself. Raise the stakes. The only way to fail is to not try. They used to be just words to me, but in the past couple of weeks, they have started to creep in under my skin and become part of me as a performer. I love it. That moment when everything starts to click. And I can't wait to see where I go from here.