Monday, August 6, 2007

Energy, but not a forced energy

The phrase that I'm using as the title of this post comes from what Michael says to us every day during warmup class when we're breathing. When we release our "hah"'s we should ideally be free of tension anywhere in the body, engaged with the outside world, and alive in our imaginations. We should not have the feeling of pushing or forcing anything physically or vocally. If you've been reading this blog regularly then you know that "Energy, but not a forced energy" really sums up a good deal of what this Adlerian program is about. To vastly oversimplify: Relaxation, imagination, response to stimuli, and a lack of self-absorption or overthinking.

A theme that kept coming up today was how do you work when you're not (for whatever reason) feeling like it? In Steve's class there was sort of a low-energy Monday morning feeling - the weather was overcast, although it never actually did more than drizzle. So Steve started us off on an exercise which we had performed back in the first week of classes. We "followed his impulse" around the room, which meant running,twisting, dancing, jumping, etc. as a group. He switched off having a few different people lead the class, so the style and speed of what we were doing varied. Eventually we went from this into slow-motion falls, an exercise that's extremely taxing despite it's slow pace. (Perform falling through the sky while keeping as little of the body in contact with the ground as possible.)

After we finished Steve told us to let the feeling of hard work - I literally created a puddle of my own sweat - live in our bodies and not to shrug it off or make a joke about it. As actors we may approach a performance or rehearsal with feelings of fear, nervousness, blahs, whatever; so how does one get around it to the work that's underneath? Everyone felt better after the workout, and Steve said (and I think I agree) that while some training is of course essential one of the best ways to overcome being caught up in worry or low feelings is to just work on different projects as much as possible. We were talking as a group at the end of class, and one of the ladies said that some of the group movement stuff we've done has provided some theatrical moments better than anything she'd experienced working on shows. Again, I agree. While I don't know if anyone will hire me to teach after this (and they shouldn't), I'm very excited to bring the spirit of this work into what I do in the future.

In Sam's class we worked The Proposal scene. We'd rehearsed over the weekend and felt we had the right spirit, and the scene worked but didn't quite click the way it did last week. In all honesty part of the problem was that Sam stopped us twice because he couldn't understand individual words, which meant that I had to sort of kick-start myself back up rather than just being moment-to-moment. To sum up, I asked one of my classmates what she thought and she described it as "broken," which is just about right. I actually regret not asking to do the scene again, but the post-mortem went on for quite awhile and we were beginning to infringe on other people's time a little.

A scene from Three Sisters was brought back from earlier in class, and this is where the bit about working when you don't feel like it emerged. In the discussion, it came out that at least one of the actresses didn't feel good about the scene - but to us watching the scene worked well. Sam's viewpoint was that acting is work, and that even hen we as actors may not feel the best about it that it's perfectly possible for the audience to love what they see.

Since this post is already so long, I'll make it longer. Before the workshop (and at least temporarily this blog) end, I want to express a desire for continued friendship with my classmates as we scatter around the world to our schools and homes. Also, a thanks to those who in ways large and small have made this NY experience possible:

  • Stanley, Janis, and Kirbie Crowe; Teri Parker, Leslie Anderson, John Fagan, Brianne Wilson, Sarah McIlvaine, Chris Evans, Catalina Keller, Daneen Schatzle, the faculty and students at Stella Adler, and (the namer of this blog) Katy Beth Cassell
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