Habits Rear Their Ugly Heads

For the past 4 days, I took a really great workshop at Cal Shakes with Ron Campbell called The Actor, the Clown and the Mask. Ron is a good teacher and he shoved a buttload of ideas, exercises and teaching into the 4 sessions. In fact in the hour of prep before our public showing he literally threw additional components into our tool kit. I sat next to two of my fellow summer teaching artists and we looked at each other with utter confusion. Wait, what? There were new rules, new exercises and new vocabulary. We now all went into the showing with a huge sense of unknown. It was equally thrilling and confusing, filled with anxiety and excitement. I was not able to go to my usually heady place, I had to remain open to all of the possibilities. Really listen, really watch and jump in when there was an opportunity.

For most of the workshop I sat out and took notes. I realized that I returned to my passive self rather than the voracious student I was in the first year of grad school. When I started at UC Davis when we had a chance to show our work I always went first. I was not afraid of looking bad or failing. However, I have lost that edge. In one of the exercises we did a little inner/outer work. Two opposing energies. Fear on the inside and confidence on the outside. Evil on the inside and holy on the outside. You get the picture. But I really feel that my audition work fails to have extra oomph. I think the roles I have gotten were when I was so nervous that I was fighting that to play my objectives. Or I didn't care and was extremely relaxed. Both seem to work for me. However lately I am back to my trying hard self and it's just not interesting.

Similarly to when I took Scott Wells' workshop, I felt that others were not all that warm. It may have been all in my head but since I was one of the weaker performers there were only a few that went out of their way to say hello or try and work with me. However, when we got to the final day I decided to let it go and just play. Be open to failure. I did learn a lot and I took great notes and cannot wait to share some of the exercises with my students.

Too bad the 1st-4th graders are a little young for most of them. If I can just get my hands on some college kids...