ONLY CONNECT

Acting and Spiritiuality- A Request for Help with Research

2009-11-01T06:00:00.000-08:00

If you're a regular visitor to my blog you know I am currently studying for an MA in Acting (Contemporary and Classical Text) at the RSAMD. I am required to investigate an area of research for one of my modules. Although I have yet to refine the question I intend to explore the mutuality/reciprocity between acting and spirituality. I am a Quaker but my focus won't be on religious dogma or moral ethics per se- Christian, Judaic, Buddhist, Islamic or Humanist etc- - but the notion of spirituality in a holistic sense- the search for a deeper sense of self, connection with the Soul, empathy, the realm of the invisible, the transcendent, etc within an artistic context. I wonder if I could ask folk to take a little time to send me some of their thoughts, ideas, feelings, anecdotes etc (however half-formed) related to the following: Is acting is a vocation, ‘a spiritual workshop’, or perhaps even a form of worship for you? Or is it just a job? Mere entertianment?What might theatre and religion have in common for you- apart from both being ritual forms? Does this ‘spiritualised’ notion of your art embarrass, irritate, inspire you?·In a post-modern and increasingly secularised culture is there more, or less, need for a ‘spiritual’ approach to theatre? To what extent might the ideal theatre be said to be a 'sacred' form? What aspects, if any, of your spiritual life do you feel pressured (or prefer) to keep separate from your acting? What aspects fit together well?Do you believe that our western theatre would benefit from a more conscious integration of the actor's spiritual intentions?What experiences of ‘ transcendent connection’ have you experienced while acting? Do you use spiritual disciplines such as yoga, meditation, religious creeds alongside the acting process, and if so, what are the benefits?Why do actors tend to avoid talking much about this stuff? … And is this a good or a bad thing? If you are an actor I am interested in your personal views about any or all of the above, and will of course preserve your anonymity (unless of course you prefer to be credited!). Contact me through the blog, or by emailing me
markcoleman@dsl.pipex.com
or
MSmoker@rsamd.ac.uk

Many thanks,Mark x

There's No I in Failure

2009-10-31T00:58:00.000-07:00

My intense relief that I managed to actually survive the training with Anna Helena Maclean over the past fortnight is wonderful, and nice to have finally performed as a class in front of an albeit smallish audience too. We also know something more about each other's strengths and vulnerabilities as artists, and plenty about each other's intimate parts thanks to all those gymnastic routines! I had real issues with the way the work was directed and structured. The narrative of the three Euripides tragedies- Iphigenia at Aulis, Elextra and Oresta- on which the presentation was meant to be based was so cut up that the audience would not have been able to follow most of it. I am not a dancer by any stretch of the imagination so moving and gesturing to 11/8 or 5/4 rhythms was- how do I put this politely- a challenge. And I found the Ancient Greek, the Romany and Polish polyphonic folk songs difficult to pick up. I am certainly not used to work that is quite so director-led. I know from what classmates have said to me that all our tolerance levels- physical, mental, emotional and professional- were at some stage of the process piqued. Tears were shed on more than one occasion, blood spilt, bruises sustained, shoulders dislocated and backs and knees put out of joint. At one point an ambulance had to be called and one of the cast had to be hospitalised. His arm’s still in a sling but he’ll be OK. However we pulled together terrifically well as an ensemble, and despite some injuries and bruised egos we're all still here. People were kind enough to say some encouraging and positive things afterwards- comments by fellow cast members and the audience (including my tutors Bill Wright, Mark Saunders as well as my Polish friend who is a great fan of this kind of work, Agnieszka Bresler who runs Gappad Theatre) about my own contribution as an old, grotesque, comic goat. Most of all they all remarked on what an impressive ensemble vibe was evident in the presentation; a vibe that had been less obvious in the 2nd year BA acting students' Gilgamesh project two weeks ago, also directed by Anna Helena. I'm still not convinced the class presentation worked entirely but hey, we pulled together and we did it and that feels good right now. What was it Kirk said in Coronation Street a few weeks back...? Ah yes-

"There’s no 'I' in 'Failure'."

This Is Where I'm Coming From

2009-10-04T05:53:00.000-07:00

The end of my first week on the RSAMD MA course.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy...

It has been even more full-on than I had even anticipated. And from what I can glean it will only get more intense over the following 12 months. I still feel an overwhelming mixture of feelings-confusion, fear, excitement and hope, but more than anything else I feel so enthused, inspirited and grateful for the opportunity to focus my heart, mind, body and spirit soley on what I care most about in all the world 24-7 unspeakably thrilling. I might as well have arrived at the gates of Heaven itself. I don't expect anyone who is not an artist to understand this, and I know it will come across as totally lovey (-Why am I so afraid of this?)... Yet it's utterly true, for me

This week one of our RSAMD tutors gave us all our very first homework exercise. This was to bring in a photographic self-portrait on Monday morning, taken in a location of our choice, of us holding a 10x8 card displaying the legend:

THIS IS WHERE

I’M COMING

FROM

I asked Jim, my 80-year-old Friend, now retired with Parkinson’s- but a former professional photographer- if he would be kind enough to take a picture for me yesterday in the Quaker Meeting House. Normally I loathe pictures of myself (although curiously enough I always really enjoy seeing photos of me wearing the masks of my characters) But this is beautifully done I think; so, if you're reading this, Jim, thank you.

I strongly uspect I will be forced to give a short and witty explanation about the image in tomorrow morning's 'Creative Beginnings' class. But I’ll do so with great trepidation. I'm very wary at such an early stage in the course of being labelled as some sort of religious nut, although those who of you who know me are well aware I am really no such creature! But there's no avoiding the fact that my being a Quaker artist does strike at the heart of who I am at a ‘soul’ level. It is indeed “where I’m coming” if I am to be completely honest. My faith informs my art. Yet to admit as much invites the risk of being pigeonholed by my peers and lecturers as downright weird from the word go. I would have preferred for this information to emerge later, but hey, I'm just gonna have to trust the process, hoping that it’ll just accelerate my learning if I get used to hiding nothing from my classmates from the off.

I don’t want to embarrass folk or make anyone in the class feel uncomfortable by talking about my passion for this peculiar brand of spiritual mysticism and it's relationship to my work as an artist. However I will do so if absolutely necessary, and speak as 'adventurously' (A & Q 27) and courageously as I possibly can.

Briefly then, I intend to describe to the class the meaning and purpose of silent worship, and meditation on the inner light- and how that relates to my artistic work. All I can hope for is that I am not mistaken for some sad, fundamentalist dogmatitist or narrow-minded fanatic. Religion has such a bad name after all. In self-mitigation I might tell them at the start that famous Quaker actors include Paul Eddington, Judi Dench, Sheila Hancock and Ben Kingsley. I will then go on to mention the so-called 'Quaker testimonies’ and how each relate to my work:

· Truth

· Equality

· Simplicity

and

· Peace

And I will finish by saying: “All of these have a bearing on every aspect of my life- but, as an artist, it is through my acting that I worship most expressively.”

At this morning's Quaker meeting it felt so 'gathered', and the time passed unusually quickly for me. Many of today's ministries really 'spoke to my condition' as they related to one of the Advices and queries which one of the elders read out at the beginning of the hour:

“7. Be aware of the spirit of God at work in the ordinary activities and experience of your daily life. Spiritual learning continues throughout life, and often in unexpected ways. There is inspiration to be found all around us, in the natural world, in the sciences and arts, in our work and friendships, in our sorrows as well as in our joys. Are you open to new light, from whatever source it may come? Do you approach new ideas with discernment?”

This goes to the heart of how I aim to approach this year of intensive study- reflectively, from a spiritual perspective, drawing together the inner and outer work, aiming towards a deeper sense of who I really am and what I do with that as an artist.

Our acting tutor, Ally de Souza, has urged us all to keep Reflective Practice Journals (or RPJs)- more of which in future blogs- but this is something I have already been doing for the past 27 years of course. But just knowing that our tutor will be taking an active and critical interest in what he called 'The Invisible Artist within us' through reading and reviewing these reflections is so inspiring to me- music to my ears in fact!

I have already had the most AMAZING week... and as far as I can tell it's only going to get better.

As always, I will keep you all posted. :-)

An Actor Prepares...

2009-09-20T08:12:00.000-07:00

The following is from a recent article I wrote for a Glasgow Quaker magazine, Elmbank Events. A week before I go to drama school it summarises the journey that has brought me to this watershed moment in my life.

“I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret—Are you listening to me?…There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know—listen to me, now—don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.” (J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey)

On Monday 28th September I will leave my job as a school teacher in Hamilton to become a student on the MA course at the RSAMD in Contemporary & Classical Text.

It’s 33 years since I nervously stepped on stage for the first time, aged 16, in Theatre Workshop for Youth’s production of Pinter’s The Birthday Party. And I’ve continued to act in theatre ever since- in literally hundreds of amateur and professional tours and productions. Yet only now, at the grand old age of 49, am I grasping the nettle, investing my life savings and fulfilling a lifelong dream by going to drama school.

And before you even think it- no, this isn't just some mad, mid-life crisis! Actually it's a decision that has been made after decades of prayer, soul-searching and meditation. I was very keen to ensure I wasn’t just doing this for egoic reasons but from a more profound need to serve others. Maybe that's why it’s taken me so long to get round to it. But over the last couple of years since attending my first Quaker meeting the Advice and Query about “living adventurously”, and” letting your life speak” (Quaker Faith & Practice; 1.02, 27) has really spoken to my condition. Having got so used to putting security far too high up on my list of priorities it was high time I started living more authentically, got my inner and outward life into alignment, and trusted that God would support that!

I feel like some terrible ‘luvvie’ confessing this, but increasingly over the years the art of acting has become for me a kind of spiritual quest. In fact it’s really an exceptionally potent form of praise and worship for me, founded on concentrated compassion and empathy- at least when it’s done well! (Quaker Benjamin Lloyd writes brilliantly about the actor as a conduit for spiritual energy in his epistolary novel, “The Actor’s Way”.) And so I am finally going to drama school to learn how to act better! And it’s a quantum leap. Acting utilizes the power of Imagination to effect transformation and transcendence- for the actor AND his audience. A very high calling indeed! Many of my friends (with a small f) outside the meeting- many of whom work in theatre- have expressed concern that I may be taking too big a gamble, that it's a bad time, I have to be prepared to fail, that it will be awfully difficult financially, that I may well be disappointed... and- think of the debt! etc. Well, yes, I know all this; but still I’m determined to remain hopeful and optimistic. I would like to thank Friends in the Glasgow meeting for their advice in this matter. You have all been incredibly positive, supportive and affirming when I have discussed my decision with you.

God makes us custodian of Light, wardens of our talents so they can be used for the benefit others. Of course it would be perfectly possible for me to continue serving Him and sharing my gifts through teaching and in many other ways, but I am now convinced that that would really be a craven compromise. I serve Him and others best when I am on the stage playing characters.

God doesn’t mind so much that we make mistakes (and God knows I’ve made a good few in my time!) but I think He must get very disappointed with our apathy, when we don’t try to do our very best with what we are given. So I take this leap in faith; only He knows what lies ahead. The challenge of living my life with greater authenticity and courage instead of remaining in a cocoon of stagnancy and safe employment feels huge and very, very scary right now, even trusting the promise that God will be with me throughout this time and beyond!

Still, my wife Karen, and I would greatly welcome your prayers at this time.

In Friendship,

Mark Coleman

The Green Man of Rouken Glen

2009-09-06T01:20:00.000-07:00

"Everything you can imagine is real."

Inside -Out
Rouken Glen, August 2009

From Angeles Arrien's "The Four Fold Way"

2009-09-04T08:25:00.000-07:00

To cultivate:

1. Show up and be present.
2. Pay attention to what has heart and meaning.
3. Tell the truth without judgment or blame.
4. Be open to outcome, but not attached to outcome.

To avoid:

Addiction to intensity.
Addiction to the myth of perfection.
Addiction to focusing on what’s not working.
Addiction to having to know."

-from Angeles Arrien’s “The Four-Fold Way”.

The Virtues of Faith, Empathy, Service + Love= Great Acting

2009-09-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

I have spent last few weeks trying to think about the practicalities and financial aspects of the course I am about to take. All this is daunting enough, but I have also thought a great deal about WHY I am making this choice to go to drama school. I made this decision with my heart, not with my head, but it seems important that I unravel what is really going on in me before I properly start, so I know what to aim for. I know that one of the things that prompted the decision in firast place was my becoming a Quaker and taking on board the advice given in "Faith and Practice" about"living adventurously" and seeking the Inner Light, but there's more to it than that...

I would dearly wish my drama school training, which starts in less than a month (eek!), to be predicated on what my Quaker Friend Benjamin Lloyd calls a ‘virtue-based pedagogy’. I would also love my tutors to be heart-sensitive and expert counsellors and guides, leading us all to gently lay aside our egos and replace them with our higher, artistic souls; to nurse our sense of spiritual vocation as artist in pursuit of beauty. But let's face it, that's hardly likely to happen. After all, that would be far too religious and woolly for an academic institution. Institutions that train professional actors are necessarily advocates of obedience to the director, hitting your marks, speaking up, getting paid... Certainly not much to do with nourishing and freeing souls from existential burdens and seeking the divine!

Whenever I speak or write about acting being a mysterious thing, an ineffably spiritual process, I always risk being laughed at and shot down in flames. I have even been told recently that if I want to bring about deep spiritual reconciliation, forgiveness and transcendence then I should join the church; that there is no place for such pie-in-the-sky thinking in the “reality of entertainment industry"(sic!). I frequently end up feeling a bit bonkers, or like some haughty ‘Nicholas Craig’ character when i do let loose with my ideas. So I tend to keep quiet rather than be accused of trying to mystify what many insist is really only a straightforward and uncomplicated process. I am accused of using ‘obscure spiritual ideology’, and mystical-sounding terminology to exclude 'lesser mortals'. But it IS a high calling, for fuck sake! I don’t say these things to make less talented actors feel excluded. I will confess though that I do want to discourage those who have no real vocation to serve others through the medium of theatre, or lack any sense of purpose founded on the desire to connect at the deepest level with an audience, to seek answers to the profoundest questions about what life is or at least might be. That's what serious artist DO, after all!

It IS a simple and undeniable truth that some people are better actors than others. That is usually because they desperately WANT to be better, and are willing to do anything to make that possible. Life’s unfair, yes! And some have an extraordinary talent for it. I would be tempted to call it a divine gift, but that’s just me- I believe in God! That belief doesn’t mean I receive any extra help! And it certainly doesn’t mean I think that certain aspects of this ‘alchemy’ can’t be learned or even taught. I wouldn’t have taught drama or coached other actors over the past 15 years if I thought nothing at all could be gained from it unless you were already ‘touched by God’.

Again at the risk of being a pretentious twat, I believe that over the course of the last 30 odd years my own acting career, at its best, has been an exploration of the virtues of FAITH through EMPATHY and SERVICE, marinated and communicated in LOVE. Those four virtues constitute the simplest and most accurate recipe I can articulate for what I am attempting to embody as an actor. Of course there are basic vocal and simple physical techniques and elementary principles- principles which are picked up in a matter of weeks, if not days, by the student actor- but no one in their right mind is going to call these basics a recipe for greatness. Sanford Meisner’s maxim comes to mind: "It takes 20 years to become a master actor". Focusing on the virtues of faith, empathy, service and love is what will eventually turn somebody into a great master actor. I’ve always believed that the qualities which constitute a great Soul are exactly the same ones that create great acting talent. If that opens me up to accusations of religiosity and wanky mysticism, well then so be it.

The prioblem is, how can you begin to measure these ‘virtues’- faith, empathy, service or love? (-And, come to that, where are the curricula for teaching them within the present drama school system?) Certainly not by trying to bend and shape the actor’s talent according to an intellectual design or formulation. Objectively measurable targets and standard modes of evaluating its efficacy will always fail because acting IS really a metaphysical and, dare I say it, SPIRITUAL discipline. (And yet, paradoxically, even a lazy actor can sometimes move an audience more than one who works his butt off.) But to pretend otherwise severely compromises theatre’s potential power, and only leads to bland journeywork, not great art. It’s a betrayal of the sacred foundations of theatre, a secularising reductionism of all that is central and vital to the drama form to pretend otherwise. It is my view that for drama schools to avoid going any further than simply passing on a range of one-size-fits-all exercises and techniques and then charging people the earth for it constitutes a scandalous calumny.

I am not for one moment saying that the student is obliged to align the work with spiritual dogma or creeds- of any kind. He or she doesn’t have to believe in God or Buddha or Allah or the Tooth Fairy. It’s just that having been a teacher of drama for 15 years it feels to me as though most of that time I have just been attempting to stuff round pegs into square holes- a totally quixotic enterprise- when I am obliged to reduce everything to a basic level of ‘playing actions’, spoon-feeding ‘received Stanislavskian wisdoms’ rather than talk about what the work really means, what it’s really FOR. My pupils don’t become more talented when they are made to follow the limited and facile curriculum I am obliged to promulgate. At best they merely learn to pass their exams. It certainly doesn’t make them into great actors... or even into better people if I'm honest. Because of this I feel so relieved to be getting out, but just hope it's not a case of me leaping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Somehow I want to cling onto these virtues I hold so dear, as well as my belief in the application of spiritual core values and processes when I go to study at the Academy. Hopefully it should be easier for me to do this on the MA course, where I am more responsible for my own learning than I might be expected to be on a BA course; and also with all my age and experience they won’t be trying to spoon-feed me.

It has taken me many years to come to realise what is really important to me about the work; why I do this strange thing called acting. I am trusting that this next year gives me the best grounding for refining this understanding, and ways of approaching the work in my own unique way with far greater confidence.

I am so excited I can't begin to tell you.

Favourite Inspirational Quotes

2009-08-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

"Find the place inside yourself where nothing is impossible... Miracles begin with you."- Deepak Chopra

"The outer work will never be puny if the inner work is great." -Meister Eckhart

“An inner process stands in need of outward criteria.”- Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep.”- Ludwiig Wittgenstein

“If you can’t say it, point to it.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The theatre begins with a disagreement between what you see and what you hear.”- Friedrich Durrenmatt

"When God calls me to account He’ll ask one question: “Why didn’t you become you?”- Anon

"People who deliberate fully before they take a step will spend their lives on one leg." -Anthony de Mello

“Most decisions, possibly all, have been made on some deeper level and my going through a reasoning process to arrive at them seems at least redundant. The question: ‘What do I want to do?’ may be a fearful reaction to the subconscious decision I have already made.” -Hugh Prather

“Some people walk in the rain. Others just get wet.” -Roger Miller

“I wish the stage were as narrow as a tightrope dancer’s wire, so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.” -Goethe

“When we have Francis of Assisi and Hitler in us somewhere, we will inevitably realize what the theatre can and will be some day.” -Michael Chekhov

“Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself, and dares to become involved in experimenting with his own life.” –Herbert Otto

"Oh crap, I've wasted my life." -Comic Book Store Guy from "The Simpsons" at the moment just before a neutron bomb strikes him.

“The Universe will pay you to be yourself and do what you really love.” –Shakti Gawain

“Do what you love… the money will follow.”- Marsha Sinetar

"Love like you'll never get hurt. You've got to dance, dance, dance like nobody's watching. It's got to come from the heart if you want it to work.”- Glenda Jackson

“A love of excellence makes the small thing a source of satisfaction. On the inner planes, thorough work creates archetypes that ensoul the object as long as it exists.”- Flower A. Newhouse

“If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.” – Raymond Inmon

“The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasure of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.”- Percy Byshe Shelley

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them!”- Henry David Thoreau

“When a little bubble of joy appears in your sea of consciousness take hold of it and keep expanding it. Meditate on it and it will grow larger. Keep puffing at the bubble until it breaks its confining walls and becomes a sea of joy.” -Paramahansa Yogananda

“Fear: the best way out is through.” Helen Keller

“Imagine you only have one year to live. What important things would you be doing? How would you be allotting your time to accomplish the most you could? This exercise is one method of going after your priorities.” –Denis Waitley

“What we vividly imagine, ardently desire, enthusiastically act upon, must inevitably come to pass.”- Colin P. Sisson

“A rockpile ceases to be a rockile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Fuck 'Que sera sear'... 'Que quiero sera’:- whatever I WILL, will be.” - Anon

“Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty of reality.” -Albert Einstein

“You never live so fully as when you gamble with your own life.” -Anthony de Mello

“You don’t have to suffer continual chaos in order to grow.”- John C. Lilly

“Go and learn from your teachers and your religions until you are bored. Then seek the answer that feels right within your soul.” –Ramtha

"Empathy, I would say is presence. Pure presence to what is alive in a person at this moment, bringing nothing in from the past. The more you know a person, the harder empathy is. The more you have studied psychology, the harder empathy really is. Because you can bring no thinking in from the past. If you surf, you'd be better at empathy because you will have built into your body what it is about. Being present and getting in with the energy that is coming through you in the present. It is not a mental understanding... In empathy, you don't speak at all. You speak with the eyes. You speak with the body. If you say any words at all, it's because you are not sure you are with the person. So you may say some words. But the words are not empathy. Empathy is when the other person feels the connection to with what's alive in you." -Marshall B. Rosenberg

And- (of course!) ...

"Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,And human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect…"– E.M. Forster

- AS IF: The Actor's Role in Closing the Empathy Deficit using 'Reverse Engineering'

2009-08-15T06:43:00.000-07:00

Let's start with a definition-

“To perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the “as if” condition. Thus, it means to sense the hurt or the pleasure of another as he senses it and to perceive the causes thereof as he perceives them, but without ever losing the recognition that it is as if I were hurt or pleased and so forth... It means temporarily living in the other’s life, moving about in it delicately without making judgments; it means sensing meanings of which he or she is scarcely aware, but not trying to uncover totally unconscious feelings, since this would he too threatening. It includes communicating your sensing of the person’s world as you look with fresh and unfrightened eyes....”

A perfect definition of what acting is. The concept of "As If" referred to here is one with which devotees of Stanislavski will be intimately familiar for sure. Stan also calls it "the Magic IF".

Except this definition doesn't actually come from Stanislavski, nor Michael Chekhov, nor from any other acting teacher or theorist. In fact it comes from the writings of the originator of Person-Centred Counselling, Dr Carl Rogers, and is the most commonly accepted definition in psychology nowadays for "Empathy".

Constantin Stanislavski (1863-1938)

Carl Rogers (1902-1987)

The word 'empathy' is, surprisingly enough, just a century old- first used in the

Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927)

English language by the psychologist E.B. Titchener in 1909, although later adopted and popularised by Rogers. Coincidentally, 1909 was the same year when 2 manuscripts were drafted by Stanislavski in his notebook as he was directing the historic landmark production of Turgenev's A Month in the Country in Moscow. During this period the great man was greatly inspired by watching his 6-year old niece playing "What if" games. It was these manuscripts which eventually became the core thesis for Stanislavski's masterwork trilogy beginning with An Actor Prepares, where he writes.:

"Bring yourself to the part..., as if it were your own life. Speak for your character in your own person. When you sense this real kinship to your part, your newly created being will become soul of your soul, flesh of your flesh."

The word empathy is a translation of the German word ‘Einfühlung’. Einfühlung was originally introduced by Theodore Lipps a few years previously into the vocabulary of aesthetics and psychology to describe the relationship between an art and the audience, who imaginatively project themselves into the contemplated object. Empathy and the concept of acting have a great deal in common. In fact the reason my blog is entitled Only Connect is because I strongly believe acting must involve a highly disciplined and specific form of emotional connection or empathy. Both empathy and acting are essentially imaginative processes that share a power to foster powerful emotional connections in the "I-thou" relationship. And they are connections that are highly infectious in the right conditions. If the actor fully empathises with his character the audience are more prone to being drawn into and identify with that character's journey too. Empathy is catching!

What got me thinking about all this empathy stuff was listening to a recent speech by US President Barack Obama:

"...There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit — the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us — the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room.
As you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier. There’s no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You’ll be free to live in neighborhoods with people who are exactly like yourself, and send your kids to the same schools, and narrow your concerns to what’s going on in your own little circle.
Not only that — we live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principal goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. A culture where those in power too often encourage these selfish impulses.
They will tell you that the Americans who sleep in the streets and beg for food got there because they’re all lazy or weak of spirit. That the inner-city children who are trapped in dilapidated schools can’t learn and won’t learn and so we should just give up on them entirely. That the innocent people being slaughtered and expelled from their homes half a world away are somebody else’s problem to take care of.
I hope you don’t listen to this. I hope you choose to broaden, and not contract, your ambit of concern. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, although you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all of those who helped you get to where you are, although you do have that debt.
It’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. And because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential — and become full-grown."

Beautiful political rhetoric, but for me this goes to the very very heart of all that is wrong in the world today. Obama's words inspired me more than anything I'd ever heard from a politician. He goes on to explain how he believes books/litercy/education have such a vital role in the fight to reduce this empathy deficit. But for me drama, and especially theatre, can be a vastly more potent means for achieving the same thing. It's always been a spiritual /philosophical/political tool for just the kind radical revolution of spirit Obama is talking about here- like no other in fact. But people seemed to have stopped listening, and it's high time we ask ourselves why that is.

I've been meditating on empathy and it's associations with theatre and the art of acting a great deal these past few weeks as I get my head together to start at drama school. Part of my inner work was to do with questioning just why acting is so necessary to me- to the world. I can't help but suspect there won't be many classes in empathy while I'm at the RSAMD. Let's face it, there won't be any at all,! which, to be blunt, is a serious omission in any actor's education! Empathy, the stepping into another's shoes, is the foundation after all for everything the actor does at the end of the day.

In the theatre we can feel the pain of a suffering protagonist—but in a safe space. A sacred space, where we practise and hone our empathy skills. This is why and how art can helps us grow and mature. It provides a context in which we are less prone to the distractions and distortions created by our own lower egos. We are able to refine our understanding of the other without the white noise coming from our own ‘personal baggage’. I am bound to invite criticism here, but I think this is why I have an aversion to Lee Strasberg’s 'Method' because I equate his approach with a more personal healing process- one which is fundamentally focused on and motivated by the smaller ego. The same for Meisner, but for opposite reasons- because the focus there is placed very much on the other. A balance that finds the fulcrum in the symbiotic I-thou dynamic relationship characterises true empathy. With Practical Aesthetics the emphasis is on the action or actions (apologies to my friend Mark Westbrook!) rather than feelings.

But it is hopefully understood by the reader that drama is NOT, or at least SHOULDN’T be the same as mere escapism or ‘getting lost in a character’s story’, or emotional self-indulgenmce! No, it is about finding our real Higher selves, our souls if you like. Shakespeare makes us feel the emotions of Lear, Cleopatra, or Hamlet more keenly than we are capable of feeling them in our own everyday lives. And that is because their experiences are distilled through the active process of empathy.
I believe that if theatre is to address any form of religious or political agenda (or not!) then it needs to begin with fostering Empathy in the artist and the spectator, rather than assume that it exists already. Empathy and the basic human need for it is why theatre exists.

We human beings are often afraid of feelings. We desensitise ourselves and pretend they don’t exist in others, as well as in ourselves. It is an understandable if dishonest and fearful desire to protect our egos from feeling under attack. We need to overcome this by being aware that we are cutting ourselves off from what we feel. We need to be honest with ourselves, and that takes a lot of courage. As so called grown-ups we are not meant to discuss how hurt we are. How innocent and naïve we are. How jealous, how weak, how vulnerable and scared we are. The people who do are called "childish", "weak" or "nuts".

....OR- "Actors"!

As mature adults we need to find a way to communicate and find a place where common ground can be located, the sense that I feel the same as others do, and get them to admit to themselves that they are the same as me. That place is the theatre.

I think drama schools have an obligation to teach the value empathy to their classes, and ways of increasing the actors’ capacity for connectivity and compassion for and with others.

However, much as I love poetry and language, all forms of verbal and written communication, words are treacherous aren't they?- And frequently-at least the way I employ them- grossly inaccurate misrepresentations of what is really meant.

So that's why I find Michael Chekhov's Psychological Gesture technique such a powerful means for me of accessing what is really going on at a more profound soul level, far more so than mere language permits. And the curious thing is that my own PG for my Feeling of the Whole, my holistic sense of what Acting itself means bears an uncanny resemblance to what my PG(s) for empathy/compassion and Love look like. They are identical in fact.

Both start with my arms out wide and then slowly placing my hands together- as if very gently compressing and concentrating air between my palms (this is something like a distilling of heart energy), and then yielding to opening up the arms again, this time extending upwards and outwards into the infinite space beyond me in a huge, expansive 'sharing' gesture, as my chin and chest lift. It makes me think of warmth, sunlight; a rapturous, fearless surrender to orgasmic martyrdom. :-) It's a profoundly satifying creative sequence of movements to complete, sustain and radiate. The precise same gesture encapsulates my deepest sense of what both acting and empathy really are. To me the felt sense of both words are essentially one and the same at a psycho-physical level.

Medical students are now taught in medical school to be more empathic. Why not drama school? Actors are in the business of healing too aren't they? Professors and consultants teach the students’ beside manner by getting them to practise asking patients the following questions:

"Can you tell me more about that?" "What has this been like for you?" "How has all of this made you feel?"
"Let me see if I've gotten this right ..." "Tell me more about ..." "I want to make sure I understand what you've said ..." "Sounds like you are ...""I imagine that must be ...""I can understand that must make you feel ..." etc.

Actors can be taught to ask the same questions to probe the characters they play using Michael Chekhov’s method of conversing with their imaginary character as if they were real (Many modern acting teachers, the Practical Aesthetics mob especially, refuse to accept that the "character" is real, and this is only ever going to shut down any real possibility of empathy.) This questioning can be done on one's own in a similar way to what mediums call channelling. It can also by done through hot-seating in the rehearsal room/classroom too, although I suspect less effectively, particularly in the early stages of rehearsal.
Why then aren’t drama schools teaching their actors to do this? It's fear I believe. Pure and simple... Fear. The excuses that doctors give for not using these techniques for empathy with their clients are very similar to the ones lazy actors use , and it is easy to see actors and acting teachers making the same excuses for avoiding engaging witht the challenges of true empathy.

It is primarily seen as impractical, a waste of time, etc:

"There is not enough time for that nonsense."
"It is not relevant, and I'm too busy focusing on the problem(s)."
"Giving empathy is emotionally exhausting for me."
"I don't want to open that Pandora's box."

-and

"I haven't had enough training"!!

Well we could do worse than start with what life coach and author of "Finding Your Own North Star", Martha Beck, calls Reverse Engineering:

Martha Beck

“Imitate, as closely as you can, the physical posture, facial expression, exact words, and vocal inflection they used during your encounter with another. Notice what emotions arise within you. What you feel will probably be very close to whatever the other person was going through. For example, when I "reverse engineer" the behavior of people I experience as critical or aloof, I usually find myself flooded with feelings of shyness, shame, or fear. It's a lesson that has saved me no end of worry and defensiveness.”

This bears a remarkable similarity to Michael Chekhov's Imaginary Body exercise, but perhaps it goes even further. The body shapes itself in response to emotion, and shaping one's own body to match someone else's body language, vocal tone, even breathing rate is a fast-track to empathy.

You can do the same with animals and objects ("Be a tree, luvvies!), atmospheres, colours, whatever , not just people.

Martha Beck again:

“The benefits are enormous: an awareness of union that banishes loneliness, a natural ability to connect and relate to others, protection from idiot compassion, a wider, deeper life. As your empathy grows, you'll find that it's infinite and that through it, you transcend your isolation and find yourself at home in the universe. I promise, it'll do your heart good.”

And this is really what acting does for me. It gives me an "empathy work-out"! And I make the audience do it with me! OK it has in the past led to bouts of compassion fatigue on occasion, but that is why I now choose to meditate, keep a daily journal and try to be kinder to myself and others these days- treating myself to walks or simply being by myself as all part of my artistic process.

But acting is really one of the most healings things because it is all about empathic connection.

And they really should be teaching it in 21st century drama schools.

BLAAAaaggghhh...!

2009-07-26T10:57:00.000-07:00

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. - Bertrand Russell

Bang on Bertie- as always!

I've realised that my Inner Critic warns me to avoid being 'charming' because, quite irrationally (as I base this assumption on people who hurt me when I was very much younger), he equates 'charm' with insincerity, hypocrisy and manipulation. As the reader might appreciate, this severely limits my options when it comes to relating to others! I deliberately cut off from being funny and too light because I don’t want to invite accusations of being unprofessional and not serious about the work. In fact I separate work and play when really there need be no such distinction, especially when it comes to doing something I love doing i.e. acting. A part of this is to do with guilt about it not being a proper job, the idea that it is 'easy', that 'anyone can do it'. These shibboleths have been adopted by the Inner Critic as sticks to beat myself with but I can afford to let go of them now. You ARE charming, you are funny, you are warm, you are sensitive, generous, loving and lovable, and you are a very VERY good actor. If others compliment you they are not necessarily patronising you like your mother used to with these comments, or trying to take ownership of you or control you! They may just mean it! You have so much more power than you think you do. Your Inner Critic convinces you you have no power but you really do.

What would happen if you did desert the inner critic?

You fear you would be ordinary, that you would blend into the background and never be noticed. Your talent would go. You would just be nobody. People would think you were just an amateur who didn’t care about the work. You would humiliate yourself. This Inner Critic wants you to fulfil your potential but the criticism has been so crippling that you are actually sabotaged by his constant interruption. The origins of this Inner Critic are in your early family life. As Philip Larkin put it, they fuck you up your mum and dad!

Identify the common themes here:

You aren’t allowed to think you’re special, but you will not get anywhere unless you do. You have to earn love by hiding your faults and obeying, maliciously if necessary until others worship you and you can say “I no longer need you.” Getting clearer about what the critic is really trying to do is going to make it easier for you to deal with him. The time to start doing this is now, before you go to college and risk wasting your time and possibly hurting others because of these reptilian daemons.

Actually your Inner Critic wants to make you a better person, and is willing to put up with you trying to hide your confusion, stupidity and egotism from others in order to gain that credibility from others which you are not allowed to give yourself (for that would be ‘big-headed’). He doesn’t want you to be bigheaded, but he wants to make you a genius. You cannot be proud of yourself and be a great actor or a great person, so he tells you that you have to go the opposite direction and at all costs hide from yourself. The trouble is he then he gives you a hard time for doing just that too, hiding your light under a bushel!

Clearly this is all to do with inaccurate and deeply confused and tangled-up self-esteem issues. He longs for you to have permission to think well of yourself, but puts you down in order to ‘help’ you achieve that. ???!!!*!?**!!

You need to tell him to, “Fuck right off, and let me be at peace with me. You think like a child. You patronise and bamboozle me like my mother did.” Your Inner critic is only a part of who you are. There is a deeper, more essential part of you that knows you are super-talented, highly experienced and capable of incredible work. Your Critic is a never/always, all-or-nothing, black-and-white ‘Child’ sub-personality. Remind yourself of your achievements in the past, your successes that; you are capable of being kind, considerate, loving, happy, joyful and supremely talented. You are allowed to be all those things. You really don’t have to be cold, nasty and withdrawn to be a respected actor. Those features of your personality have to be accepted and loved too if they are to lose their grip on you. But remember this: you have no reason to assume that people are lying to you when they like you or say you are good. You can afford to believe it sometimes, you know! Give yourself a break. And remember to see the funny side and that it is not a case of all or nothing. All or nothing is a silly choice. You can choose a happy medium and that does not make you bland and ordinary. It makes you a very good tightrope walker. In fact it very rarely is all or nothing. All or nothing cuts don your options. Mix and match for that is not really a compromise made by fools and normal folk. It is right to steer a course that is healthy and rich. You can have it all by not thinking you have to be perfect. You are OK.. It is not as if you are either better than everyone else, or you are the worst, and never anything in between. It is not a failure to be average. You are particularly prone to attack when you are in the throes of creating because you become a vulnerable and open door to criticism and judgement. You try to get in there before anyone else does. Identifying this voice and then telling it you are old enough now to make your own choices.

You may just have to face up to the fact and admit to yourself that you do have an extraordinary gift! And, yes, that idea may make you squirm, it may make others jealous and opens you up to accusations of arrogance and self-delusion. So what!? Laugh at yourself. You may even have to acknowledge that it is God working through you, which sounds even more arrogant to most people! And so you have been reduced to covering it up in shame, and berate and down-rate yourself -“Who the fuck do you think you are?” This inner critic wants you to keep improving and is frightened that if you rest on your laurels and get complacent and self-satisfied you will stop growing as an artist because you will no longer feel the need to prove yourself. He is trying to motivate you, to get you fired up. He is just a bit too much! It is therefore extra important when you are doing your creative work that you keep your inner critic in its place. His watching, carping, judging presence stops your flow of creativity. Let the judgment voice come afterwards, not during the rehearsing work. Just say, “OK not now. Later.” Go away. I’m busy.”

This inner critic has encouraged outer critics to lay into you more than they otherwise would. His presence almost encourages them! It might hurt you to lose the approval of others, but it won’t kill you. You are an adult now, you can stop allowing the inner critic to encourage you to think like a child.

You need the freedom to follow your own muse, but that does not mean you have to cut everyone else out, or cut yourself off from your feelings. You want to be part of what Carolyn Myss calls your “tribe”- i.e. in your particular case the club of ‘The Professional Actor Society’, “The Consummate Artist Consortium”. But if you can stop thinking like this for just a bit and allow yourself the freedom to be you, just you. It will remind you of why you are still doing this acting lark if it isn’t just to gain their tribal approval! This will give you the freedom and space to glimpse why you are really doing it, above and beyond being approved of.

You hate the idea of being called unprofessional, just an amateur, a self-indulgent and insincere luvvie. The threat of these accusations pushes all your buttons, so you go completely in the opposite direction.

Equally don’t allow directors and great teachers diminish your self-trust.
Give yourself the love and approval you want sometimes. You deserve that more than you deserve to be bullied. You wouldn’t allow anyone else to talk to you the way your Inner Critic does after all. Bullying is bullying is bullying. It has nothing to do with love, no matter what excuses are given.

Your Inner Critic warns you not to be charming because you equate that with insincerity, hypocrisy and manipulation. This cuts off your options when it comes to relating to people. You cut off being funny too because you don’t want to invite accusations of being unprofessional and not serious about being good. These have been adopted by the inner Critic as sticks to beat yourself with and can be let go of now. You are charming, you are funny, you are warm, you are sensitive, generous, loving and lovable. For when others say that to you they are not patronising you like your mother used to with these comments! They mean it. You have more power than you think. Your Inner Critic convinces you that you have no power- but you really do.

It’s time to let the real Mark out who is charming, kind, generous, loving, funny, easy to be around, full of light and so incredibly warm and sweet- all the things that I am usually not! And the only reason it is so well hidden is because you Inner Critic convinced you somehow that you had to be a monster if you wanted to go where you wanted to go. You confused the word “Professional” with “strictly self-disciplinarian who doesn’t allow emotions like humour and tenderness to get in the way of clawing his way to the top” You keep people at an emotional distance , frightened and confused by you, all the while allowing the Inner critic is convincing you that the loneliness and pain you are causing yourself is a fuel. And it is – a fuel which consumes and kills you!

I confessed to a friend recently that it is one of the most spectacularly peculiar ironies of my life that in my obsessive desire to protect myself from becoming the cartoon cliché of the insecure temperamental aging performer- childish, selfish, painfully self-pitying, self-dramatizing, egotistical, paranoid, riddled with irrational fears, neuroses and hideous insecurities, prone to diva-like sulks and tantrums who has so many sub-personalities he no longer has any idea at all of he really is and who causes everyone around him to dance around to try and please rather than risk upsetting him- that that is precisely the person I have become! I have now come to see that the root of these issues is not anything remotely resembling a “ troubled genius” but massively damaged self-esteem. My Inner Critic has wielded such power over me and has allowed me to abuse, berate, bully and ill-treat myself for so many years it has eroded my talent, my relationships, my inner beauty.

I think that me being uncommunicative and dour is coming from my father who was so single-focused that he couldn’t allow for laughter because he was so focused on what he thought were higher and more important things. It is this that has been adopted by me when I am working, and which is so alienating. It is because I never feel there is enough time, as my friend Peter put it, to “piss around”. It makes me pompous, legalistic, remote and unreasonable. I can afford to lighten up- in all senses of the word.

You do not need this agony, or this Inner Critic beating you up and telling you to hide what you are feeling all the time, and warning you that you are wasting time by being human.

It was your Mum who always told you what you were really like this underneath your hard mask of stone was kind, gentle, sensitive and loving, and you didn’t want to believe her. After all she was also the person that laughed at you, and fed you the message that you were daft, stupid, a baby, soft in the head. You couldn’t deal with these mixed messages. It wasn’t possible for you to accept that both of these might be true. Or neither! You thought she was tricking you into being a child again, or at least less than man. Your father was a model of the studious person who won through in the end; who was able to use his fury with himself and the world as fuel. His life was about vengeance on those who had underestimated him. In fact he was an extremely damaged individual, whose strength could have been put to infinitely better use if he hadn’t been so far up his own selfish, joyless and frustrated arse. And yet you chose to go down his route, stoking the fires of toxic rage in the hope that it was going to make you into a great man. Closed up in a crucible of self-loathing you thought would purify you. You decided you didn’t want to be liked, or loved but would settle for being respected, feared, envied and despised. A victim, a Mr Spock who buried his emotions; or like Riddler in Howard Barker’s A Hard Heart, a genius who sublimated all positive emotional energy. You didn’t believe you had any talent, any likeable qualities that were of any use to you; no real charm or talent, just weaknesses and vulnerable areas of your being that would never help you to achieve anything. So you thought it a better choice to be a pain in the arse who was at least able to be brilliant at what he did even if it meant cutting himself off from others so much that he had more time to focus on work, work, work. You decided to be lonely rather than have to deal with others who you thought were trying to deflect from your path, and pull you out of flow. You got paranoid, jealous, quiet, sulky, resentful and dark. You became Mr Angry, thinking that that somehow made you a more authentic and better artist. It didn’t make you a better artist, and people didn’t take you more seriously. They just thought you were an arse! And those that didn’t were actually doing you a gross disservice by not telling you. Let the work go, don’t make it the be all and end all and be light, light, light and you will find that your wonderful laugh will start to warm up all the people you might have alienated in the past, and begin to revive your career and reputation in ways that you cannot imagine. Stop gripping so grimly to the idea of the suffering, tortured artist, because that is really total bollocks. The work does not get easier; it gets harder, much harder when you cut yourself and your feelings and thoughts off.

You now realise that you have sabotaged yourself for 40 years and that now it is time for you to come out of that self-imposed confinement and be free of the need to obey your gaoler, your inner critic,. He is not your friend. He is your worst enemy when he is the only voice you can bring yourself to trust. Trust that you are loved, loveable and respected. You are a joy to work with when you want to be. If you sense yourself tightening up your heart and soul again, remember this: you are light, you are love, and like the L’Oreal adverts- you are worth it! Humour is really God working in you, and it is not irresponsible to have a laugh sometimes. Lighten up now, for God’s sake, Mark, for this will be your salvation, and ensure that when you leave college you could have a career as an actor.

You can expect to be liked, because you are a loveable guy.
You are extremely talented
You bring light, laughter and joy wherever you go.

A lot of this was taken from my Morning Pages and letter to myself and friends, and was written quickly, but it was honest when I wrote it and there will be stuff here that I'll need to come back to in the coming year. The key thing is for me to stop being so fucking self-obsessed and to 'Only Connect' with others now.

I have a huge struggle with impatience- mostly with my own failings actually, although it frequently spills over into my relationship with others in the context of rehearsals. I over-react to things way out of proportion, and come across as very intolerant with even little things I perceive to be going "wrong", or maybe time being wasted for instance. I don't easily forgive myself either, and it can corrupt the atmosphere of the rehearsal room very quickly...I guess that is why I have a struggle accepting experimentation, getting things 'wrong', or not knowing how to solve things quickly.

Believe it or not, long ago, anger /rage fuelled some of my best creative work as an actor, but it's a really dangerous kind of addiction- a sort of heroin in fact. After the initial rushes of creative power it bestows it will slowly and insidiously undermine you as you start needing bigger hits just to get the same effect. Without going into too much detail, it's curious how bonds/ relationship patterns formed in the rehearsal room by people mirror ones familial paradigm if you know what I mean. My relationships with my parents and siblings were, to say the least, 'dysfunctional' - as I'm sure you might've guessed!! That's the sort of stuff I am working to unravel and deal with before I go back to college.

I've realised I exhibit the classic low self-esteem pathology typical of the 'difficult' and 'insecure' actor cliché- and my inner critic admonishes that in me more than for anything else. When I try to sit on this critical voice it just emerges in other ways (passive-aggression, malicious obedience, frozen feelings, silences etc) and these tactics are especially confusing and scary to other people, I know that (But also to ME!) That's why I need to learn how to honour and allow that part of me a voice without allowing it to totally dominate proceedings. And that's also why I think it vital for me to not leave my sense of humour at the rehearsal room door from now on, and also to allow myself to state what I think/feel assertively (not aggressively or passively) before I go sit on my feelings and they get so totally squashed out of shape I don't even know what I am doing any more, or why! Laughter will defuse my impatience better than anything I think. That may sound to calculating, but that's what I reckon will work anyway. I've tried everything else!

It is not about self-transformation so much as self-affirmation. I am simply looking for opportunities now you share these qualities when with others, and to be lighter in the way I speak to myself, and to defuse the more dangerous and difficult aspects of how my Inner Critic is prone to bully me.

Be relaxed and at ease and quieten that shrill and irritating little voice of your Inner Critic and say thank you for your opinion but I am doing something else right now. If you must say what you have to say but I will consider it later. I don’t really need to hear that just now. Radiate love, joy and confidence. You have a right to be proud of who you are.

Open yourself,- as if you are a Cosmic Aperture spiraling outwards, - in the places you are closed.

Work on the craft and don't worry about the sharks. Even sharks like a good show.

Remember you can do it with wit, with charm, with eloquence and with confidence, expressing everything with such a deft skilfulness and a relaxed and easy quality that everyone will like you for it.

Dealing with Inner Daemons (Part III)

2009-07-26T09:55:00.001-07:00

As promised, although a little later than usual as I was awaiting a reponse from a friend who had agreed to answer my CBT questions:

1. What do I do well in the rehearsal room?

2. What do i not do so well?

In the end I managed to convince 3 out of the 4 close friends to respond. I share what they said with you below simply because once it's out in the public domain I can't continue to avoid dealing with the challenge of addressing the issues thrown up by what they said. It would be only to easy to forget or ignore what they shared with me if I just kept it in my private journal. I have decided to omit their names to protect the innocent; but the folk concerned know who they are and just how grateful I was to get such honest and helpful feedback.

Respondent #1

What you do well:

I said to you the other day that you have a wonderful laugh. It’s one of the most human sounds I know and it’s a glad and living laughter. You also show yourself to be acutely sensitive to people who are in emotional pain; I remember this with ______________ a few years ago. He was greatly upset and you took time with him and invited him back to stay at yours. I like that you love language and especially poetry and that I can talk about art with you without feeling the need to apologise for it (as I would with others)

I have seen you motivate people in such a way that inspires them to do better work than they might otherwise have done. You speak very well. In the rehearsal room you work hard. You are committed. You prepare. You are conscientious.

What you don’t do well

It is in the rehearsal room where I have found most difficulty with what you do. You can sometimes make your mind up as to how something should go and then become infuriated because another actor, or the director is doing something different from this. Whether you voice this anger or not people can feel it. All the light and humour goes out of you at these moments,. You often tend to seek final form in beginning rehearsals and become frustrated that other people are not doing it “right”. Although I often (not always) like your ideas in rehearsal you often are a bit dismissive of any ideas of experimentation or people just trying things. (But being directed badly is always a frustrating experience)

The problem for me is not that you sometimes get angry, we all do, but that this anger seems to come from a very deep place and is often disturbing for other people. Personally it reminds me of my dad’s stony and thunderous silences which made me afraid to speak to him. The anger often seems to me disproportionate to the situation.

It’s not a question of whether you voice an opinion or not. It’s all too clear to most people what you’re feeling even if you don’t speak and I think people in a rehearsal can sometimes find it a bit difficult to be around. Especially when they’ve seen the light and warmth that can inhabit you.

Respondent #2

What things do I do well in the rehearsal room?
Sheer artistry,
commitment,
bravery,
passion,
cracking sense of humour when you are feeling comfortable and in a good mood,
talent,
inventiveness,
ideas,
big huge spirit,
immense capacity for greatness and bigness,
fabulous in both big parts and well-crafted little cameos (indeed sometimes I think you are happier creating eccentric little parts, and maybe you can take this into your bigger roles
Very generous towards other actors especially when you like and feel comfortable with them

2. What do I not do well in the rehearsal room?

Exuding moods when you feel bad and making it difficult for everyone
Lack of confidence in yourself as a lovable being, which causes you to expect bad relationships and therefore creates them
Lack of sense of lightness in your approach to your work maybe? (Argue me back if you disagree?) Need for a willingness to fail while attempting something at times (Drama school will be great for this!)
Need to give yourself and others a break
Passive aggressive behaviour
Not expressing yourself directly, but throwing out oblique statements on facebook and to others which comes across as trying to get an emotional effect, but one which people cannot reply to?
Worrying too much and refusing not to worry but insisting others do.

Respondent #3

Things you don’t do well:

Distancing yourself from others
Refusal to articulate grievances
Self-abasing and pandering to others’ egos
Sulking or snapping.
Malicious obedience and taking things absolutely literally
Failure to see humour
Tendency to too much analysis and introspection
Pretentiousness and verbosity
Paranoia
Complaints about lack of direction, then disagreement with direction given
Choice of people to work with
Dumbing down and self-sabotage
Letting others take credit for your ideas
Tendency to indiscretion
Taking the blame when things go wrong
Ability to drain energy and create atmospheres
Inability to accept compliments

Things you do well:

Act!!
Give performances which build reputation as a “different level” actor
Know how to make things work when others, including directors, don’t
Generosity to other actors on stage
Willingness to help others improve
Incredible work ethic, both in rehearsal and outside
Ability to move people, even in rehearsal
See the “bigger picture” of the production overall
As a director, you know how to make people understand your vision
Excellent instincts
Total commitment
Ability to lift energy of scenes (see also reverse!)
Bring best aspects of professional attitude- good role model
Desire to learn, grow and improve
Intelligence
Willingness to be emotionally vulnerable (in character)
Extensive technical knowledge

Much of what these friends wrote about me took me by surprise- especially the stuff they said I do well. And then some of the other stuff I knew already (only too well!) but had no idea other people could see it!
And I guess with my dodgy self-esteem issues it’s no surprise that the things I didn’t know before or believe are actually mostly the positive ones, including:

I have a wonderful laugh, a cracking sense of humour.
I am acutely sensitive to people who are in emotional pain.
I am a very generous motivator, inspirer and helper others.
I exude light, warmth, love-ability.
I speak well.
I have a reputation as a ‘different level’ actor. I’m a role model.
I create the bad relationships.
My work ethic is incredible.
I’d be happier in my work playing cameo roles.
I have great passion, a huge/big spirit which helps me play big roles too.
My anger is out often way out of proportion to the situation.
I underestimate my power to terrify and confuse others when I get passive-aggressive.
I am pretentious.
I worry too much, and should give myself and others a break.
I take on too much responsibility and blame for problems caused by others.
I am intelligent.
I am brave.
I have a talent for making other people understand my vision.
It’s OK to be angry; it’s the way you communicate it/don’t communicate it directly that causes the problem.

And interestingly enough there were a lot of things I already knew but hadn’t much idea that other people saw, (and, yes, they are mostly the negatives!) including:

Others are very aware of my deep anger, frustration and irritation even when I am silent. Especially when I am silent!
The changes in atmosphere this creates are very disturbing and frightening to others. I underestimate how very risky and scary I make it for them to speak to me.
I express myself indirectly, verbosely, pretentiously, obliquely in order to generate an emotional effect.
I am impatient with experimentation, because you think things not being ‘right’ immediately spells Failure.
I expect to have bad relationships and make it difficult for others to communicate with me.
I sabotage my own facility for clear communication when I use passive-aggressive tactics.
I am conscientious.

I know how to make things work.
I allow others to take credit for my ideas.

This was such a valuable exercise for me, and you can read some of my conclusions and thoughts in my next blog- which is likely to be a fairly lengthy one I should think! The reason I need to look into all of this now is because I don't want my daemons fucking things up when I go to college in September. I guess that apart from honing my acting skills and techniques and making use of the opportunity of getting casting directors and agents to sign me up what I am really looking for at the end of the day from this MA course is a deepening of my commitment to incorporating spiritual values into my acting process; in other words- increasing my trust, confidence, love and patience, empathy, connectivity and creativity as a human being. I know that sounds wanky, but that is really what this is about. I have underestimated the vital importance of these concepts in the rehearsal room context in the past and this is my chance to put things right. In fact I plan for my dissertation to deal with the way we tend to eschew the spiritual dimension in training and development of actors in the West. (Although I have still to devise a coherent framework for examining this within an academic treatise, except maybe in the form of collating responses to questionnaires issued to my fellow students at various points throughout the course. I'll need to give that some thought in the next few weeks too!) I am looking to see how I can develop not just as an actor but mature and blossom as a soul over the next 12 months. This requires self-knowledge and self-forgiveness before it can be manifest as wisdom and tolerance of others in any practical sense in my work. Going to the Academy is essentially about improving my ability to shine a clearer and more intense light on the invisible realm of the spirit, and hopefully offer more efficient healing to others through my work.

Pretentious I know but that's what it really comes down to for me.

Dealing with Inner Dæmons (Part II)

2009-07-01T02:50:00.000-07:00

I was amused by one friend’s response to my last blog (let’s call her “P.”):

“You don't have so much of an Inner Critic as a case of multiple demonic possession.”

I think P. was half-joking, I hope she was, but this is the same friend who also recently asserted that “Art is exorcism”! But, you know what? I’m just not convinced the exorcism that art offers is what I require right now, since it is my own dysfunctional relationship with acting that fucked me up most of all- and actually using art as exorcism has ultimately made me a much lesser artist. And this is also why I am less and less inclined to give the ego room in the artistic process if I can possibly avoid it. I know that the Higher Self provides me, as an artist, with a much healthier, wiser and more holistic perspective on who I really am and hence the work itself starts to serve the divine. It is this Higher Self that is the real healer, not the ego; and it is the Higher Self I am using now as I write all this. He is far lighter, more lucid, wise and more light-filled than my everyday, ‘possessed’ ego could ever be, and certainly a whole world away from my Inner Critic.. Exorcising ones’ daemons should happen before the artist reveals his work to the world, if the work and its audience are not to become polluted, contaminated. I think this is why I gave this Inner Critic of mine a voice, a look and a distinct personality separate from me because it helps me realise that it isn’t the real me, just a product of a damaged ego, a diseased and deeply wounded lesser self.

My Inner critic tells me that this series of blogs will come across to others as scary and insane, (go away Inner Critic!) but it wouldn’t help me to hide this away any more, that’s why I am putting it out there on this blog rather than reserving it for my morning pages and journal. Sergeant Grouch would love me to hide myself away, in the hope that I will just put this ‘crap’ aside and forget all about it, so nothing ever really gets done and he can undermine me even further, convince me that the next time it rears its ugly head(s) I am even more powerless to drown him out and resist his psychological bullying.

A small part of this inner work I decided to take on in the run up to my going to drama college involved completing some assertiveness exercises from a course my wife Karen completed 7 or 8 years ago for an evening class at Glasgow University. I usually run a mile from pop psychology, self-help exercises like these- they bore me rigid, to be honest. (My Inner Critic objects in no uncertain terms if the book doesn’t have the full weight and substance of serious, pseudo-intellectual, scientific credibility and long words- the more befogging, technical, pretentious and incomprehensible the better!!!).

But one very simple questionnaire in this pack asked how I would react to/deal with a range of challenging situations in my day to day life- e.g. complaining about service in a shop, saying ‘no’, asking for help, etc). It shocked me to find out I was apparently “0% aggressive”, and “85% passive” (leaving just “15% assertive”)!! The conclusion stated I had serious issues with low self-esteem, and probably spent most of my time in “Victim” mode. Ouch! Well, my Inner Critic punched the air when I read that!! But, mercifully, it didn’t stop there. The prescription advice that followed was for me to draft a list of ‘I statements’ as positive affirmations to help reprogram my thoughts and feelings, and thereby boost self-esteem. Well, you know the kind of thing…

Predictably, my Inner critic immediately baulked at this. “What the fuck do you want to do this crap for?… You’re not a baby; grow up… It won’t work… This is too simplistic for a complicated fucker like you… You’ve done this sort of thing before and it didn’t help then,; it won’t now… This is totally pointless, stupid, self-indulgent… You’re WASTING your TIME” (this ‘wasting time’ thing is a pet mantra of old Sergeant Grouch) etc, etc, etc... But by this stage I had begun to glean that maybe my Inner Critic didn’t always exactly speak the truth (understatement of the century!); or indeed, want the best for me! So I decided I would ignore him just for the time being and just give the advice a go anyway. “What’s the worst that could happen?” I told him, and he just clammed up there and then. Sulking- probably. J

I couldn’t have come up with the following list all on my own. When faced with tasks challenges like this I usually lose the ability to focus my thoughts properly and concentrate. My mind starts freezing up, or feels unable to stay with one thing. It try to rationalise but in a really disordered way. I look for distractions, come up with excuses, smoke a fag or five, make tea, look for someone else to blame, etc, etc.

The inspiration for completing this final list of affirmations came from asking some trusted and honest friends who gave me feedback on the “What do I do well?” section of that CBT (or Cognitive Behaviour Therapy- yes, more pop psychology! What am I becoming??! Lol) exercise I referred to in Part I (q.v. Part III for the results of this). Also from thinking about what the polar opposites were of the negative shite my Inner Critic uses to batter and fry my confidence. I tend to habitually deflect compliments and praise, leaping straight to the “What do I do wrong?” stuff, but seeing my friends’ positive statements written down removed the option of completely blotting them out. I put the “What do I not do well?” responses- potential sticks for my Inner Critic beat me up with- aside, and began to focus on the things others thought I was good at for the time being.

The results were unbelievable. I felt an unfamiliar surge of joy, love and gratitude sweep over me as I read them- which the Sergeant attempted to crush of course. But the fact that my friends seemed to be saying roughly the same things led me to conclude that they might have a point, and that my Inner Critic’s motives were no longer to help me but to cripple and pound my self-esteem, to make me feel smaller, denser, heavier- as opposed to expansive, lighter, bigger. I decided I would listen to my pals for once, rather than to the bullying Sergeant. I tried to put that Scott Walker lyric out of my mind which goes “In a world filled with friends you lose your way” and sat down and opened myself up to what was good about me, what my soul craved to slake his thirst on. After all, what did I really have to lose by choosing to believe them over the Sergeant? Actually nothing, when I thought about it, and in fact perhaps a great deal to gain!

Here’s what I came up with:

MY AFFIRMATIONS

I am a PHENOMINALLY gifted actor.

I am likable... lovable!

People love to be around me.

I am a generous spirit.

I am extremely knowledgeable and experienced.

I have plenty of time to make contact with myself and others.

I have fun.

I have the answers within me.

I am balanced.

I am patient.

I am so funny!

I have a wonderful, life-giving laugh.

I am confident…

… because I can afford to be!

I can laugh at myself.

I have plenty of time.

I have a sense of proportion.

I am living my life healthily and fully.

I am an extraordinary person.

I radiate light wherever I go.

I have the right to have fun.

I have the right to be wrong sometimes

I don’t need to always follow my rules!

I speak up when something bothers me.

I am intelligent.

I learn much from others.

I teach people how to live and love by who I am.

I am allowed to be child-like.

When I laughing and enjoying myself it is a sign of my good health.
You have abundant joy.

I have the right to be heard.

I bring light, laughter and joy wherever I go.

People lighten up when they are around me because they feel safe.

People admire me.

I am always enough!

Once I’d finished drawing these up I was crying my eyes out, but feeling incredibly good about myself, for the first time in several years in fact. But then very soon all of them started to lose their shine of course, to become untrue, especially when my Inner Critic got his paws on them. He had a way of refuting every single one of them.He laughed and pointe at me and calling me stupid and delusional for even eneteraining such ridiculous ideas about myself . But I know to my cost that listening to him has got me nowhere in the past. These affirmations on the other hand seemed to have a way of making me feel so much better about myself, amnd i am convinced they are going to have a positive effect on my art. They are not arrogant, and they are not delusional. They can be true- they ARE- true! It wasn’t really as if I was deluding myself, as I am aware that many of them come from that part of me I get into contact with sometimes after a gathered Quaker meeting or in deep meditation.

For the time being the Inner Critic is outside of me and he is looking somehow tiny and actually quite ridiculous.

Ah! Progress!!

:-D

Dealing with Inner Dæmons (Part I)

2009-06-28T09:44:00.000-07:00

The main body of this posting consists of a long list I have been thinking about over the past few days and then compiled during my long walk home from this morning’s Quaker meeting. It’s actually a list of twisted taunts my horrible Inner Critic goads me with. As you will probably start to understand it’s no wonder I mess up so often! My work may have benefited from this 'inner nag' early on in my acting career perhaps (although this is at the very least arguable. After all, does artistic talent really have to have a shadow side??), but it has had to get more harsh and more vicious with me for it to retain power and control over me, and at what a devastating cost to so many of my friendships and working relationships, my career, not to mention my own mental and emotional health! It strangles and chokes my talent.

It was in fact Michael Jackson’s sudden death 3 days ago which caused me to reflect even more deeply on the shadow side of artistic talent, the perfectionist tendencies and drives of the performer. His life stands as parable of self-destruction and genius as poisoned chalice. Like everyone else I have a shadow side to my nature as the list of inner rules below reveals so painfully; and, although I’m not arrogant enough to believe I have a fraction of the talent Jacko had, I am obliged to own up to having to deal with my own vicious inner dæmons when it comes to my own art. I am at least relieved I didn’t end up a serial child abuser, addicted to plastic surgery and Vicadin and Demerol! With me it's only the fags, although it occurs to me that that particulr addiction is a symptom of a deeper cause perhaps intimately related to my Inner Critic. More of which in a future post...

The ‘rules’ included in this list had their parthenogenesis during my adolescence They goaded me to aspire to genius, whilst constantly reminding me how far short I would fall of ever achieving it! It is this Inner Critic archetype who muscles in on my acting every time I enter the doors of a rehearsal room. So often it is drones on like a white noise in my head (like those things they blow during football matches in South Africa that sound like angry bees) and goes unchallenged, unacknowledged, even flatly denied by me if I am actually confronted by anyone else about my behaviour. Having meditated on this I’ve listed some of the many variations on these dæmon taunts. They are not exaggerated, I promise you, which is actually what makes seeing them down here in black and white even more alarming. I know that the next stage of this inner work will be to replace these taunts and re-programme myself to have a healthier, more positive attitude to the work before I go to drama school. That will come in part II of this blog in a fortnight or so hopefully.

The following taunts have always been used by me as a top-secret ‘extreme rocket fuel’ to try and get the best from myself, but actually they have for a very long time become less helpful and more and more self-sabotaging, until I have come to feel more or less totally blocked and creatively paralysed. Certainly my capacity for taking any real joy from my work has all but disappeared in recent years. This originally potent fuel has a side effect of creating dangerously toxic emissions that will only fuck me up more and more unless they are brought into full light of day and revealed as the preposterous and patently ridiculous rules that they really are. This ‘fuel’ can and frequently does poison the atmosphere in the rehearsal room quicker than anything. In this post I will just list some of the things this dæmon inner critic of mine says to me: in Part II I will draft some affirmations to counter its noxious effects on me and my work.

Before I do that, here is a wee snapshot of what his dæmon looks like. He/she is a cross between a thin, stern ballet mistress and a barking sergeant major sketched by Gerald Scarfe. This dæmon appears in my mind’s eye as a frightfully pale, carping, bullying, perfectionist fire-breathing dictator in a dusty costume armed with rules that don’t make rational sense, and are frequently contradictory. He/she has a bamboo cane in one hand which is swished through the air and is used to whack me across my back when I am lazy, self-satisfied or low. In the other hand he/she clutches in his long bony fingers a small red, leather-bound notebook with a tattered string and small pencil attached in which he scribbles his ‘Rules’. He/she is surrounded by a cloudy red mist that gives off sparks.

This is maybe something I really should just keep for my private journal, but these issues are so bound up with my work as an actor and director, and it will do me good to have this mad stuff out in the public domain because I can’t then shirk, suppress or avoid doing the important inner work of owning and correcting all this ingrained, habitual dysfunctional thinking that has dogged me for so long. I’ve been silent and privately ashamed of this hidden side of me for far too long, and I know I need to get this sorted before I go to the Academy or I am going to let it to sabotage my growth as an artist and my relationships there too. So here it is.

This self-blame is like an addiction to a powerful narcotic that made me feel so strong when I started ‘using’, and then slowly and surely it whittled away my willpower, my health, my capacity to think straight and see things clearly until I ended up believing I’m incapable of doing anything without it. This is not an exercise in self-pity, actually very far from it. This is about owning up to some difficult truths about what a pain I am capable of causing myself and others. For the first time in a long time I feel I am actually getting somewhere.

Here’s that list.

THE DAEMON's RULEBOOK
(or The Inner Critic's Catechism)

“Break any of these rules and you will pay for it.”

“Be consistent, or you’ll look foolish.”

“(raps) Success is your only mother-fucking option. Failure’s not.”

“If you’re planning to fail, forgive yourself.”

“Isolate yourself to avoid the possibility of infection by the culture of failure and malfunction that spoils all life.”

“Resist being tarred with the same brush as anyone else. Free yourself of all other attachments except your attachment to me, your only true friend.”

“Go silent and remote if you want to become better than all your ‘competitors’ and avoid being dragged down to ‘their’ level.”

“Love blinds you.”

“Love wounds.”

“Love hurts.”

“…Avoid it.”

“You have a right to be moody”

“You are obliged to be moody.”

“You moody, difficult fucker!”

"Impatience is a virtue. It gets things done."

“What do you mean? OF COURSE you can’t be loved! Anyone who says you can is either a fucking liar or a fool. Get used to being alone and misunderstood.”

“Love crucifies.”

“Love is best reserved for the desperate and the lost.”

“If you didn’t have me you would have to give up.”

“It’ll never be perfect. Chain yourself up in your gloomy cave and try, try and try again.”

“Cruelty and suffering are such a wonderful teachers. I am cruel because I care.”

“God punishes you when He wants you to grow. I am his servant”

“Accelerate your learning- help me, your teacher, by hurting yourself, and then suffer in silence and isolation and feel yourself soar higher.”

“Anger is good for your creativity and motivation. Squashed rage is even better.”

“You do not have time to mess around. Get a move on, you retard.”

“You must always stay hungry. Deny your self the sustenance of reward.”

“All the best artists are messed up.”

“It is your job to shoulder all the blame for every mistake. You allowed them to happen.”

“Say nothing. Don’t complain. Be a man.”

“Always obey the director, like a professional.”

“You said nothing. Why not? You’re to blame; you were the one who saw it all going to hell in a handcart in slow motion and still you ignored your inner voice. It’s all your fault.”

“The audience don’t give a damn about your suffering. It goes with the territory. Do your job and shut the fuck up, you child.”

“Keep the personal out of it.”

“Avoid giving yourself the credit. Your successes are down to me. You couldn’t survive without me”

“Other people have their own problems. They aren’t interested in knowing about yours. Don’t waste time and involve anyone else. Solve your own problems and allow them to get on with much more important things- their own.”

“Demand to know from anyone who dares admire you what you did wrong.”

“Never listen to what you did right- you’ll never learn from that.”

“Give it all away… Especially your happiness.”

“You have no right to be fulfilled. That is not why you should be doing it.”

“All or nothing. There be no road between.”

“Don’t let anything get in the way of you being excellent.”

"Don't be offensive. Be passive-aggressive."

“You always fail… That is because you're shit.”

“Humourlessness is proof of your integrity and commitment.”

“Laughter is forbidden. You are not a child; stop behaving like one.”

“Like or (God forbid) love your own self at your own peril.”

"Tolerate incompetence in others until your ears bleed or explode."

“You are entitled to no reward, no matter how hard you work. Except a fag or five in the breaks.”

“Nothing and nobody should matter more than acting.”

“Fuck your own acting! Nothing matters more than the show, you self-involved bastard.”

“If you are not prepared to give up everything then you are an amateur of the worst kind, a fucking fraud.”

“Others are human: their errors are forgivable. But I told you you were failing; you have no excuse.”

“Amateur equals shit.”

“Your inevitable failure is unpardonable.”

“Working till you collapse builds your stamina.”

“Pain and suffering is character building.”

“Refuse to be obsessed and you’re bound to fall flat on your arse.”

“’Concentrate’ means blot everything else out.”

“Flexibility is your fatal flaw.”

“Rest is for wimps.”

“Always hate the results and you’ll keep on growing.”

“Clamp the emotional shutters down or the lesser artists will sabotage and distract you out of jealousy.”

“Never reveal your sickness or weaknesses. They will want to steal it for themselves if they knew its rewards.”

“Blame yourself for everything that fails. Allow yourself no credit for the successes.”

“Never admit weakness.”

“Stockpile and hide all your love away. Don’t waste it.”

“You’ll always need to prove yourself or others will overtake you.”

“Always believe it when you think you might be shit. I, your inner critic, is never ever wrong. Trust me.”

“You are an untrained actor: you are therefore a shit amateur.”

“You NEED me.”

“Helping a fellow other actor is like giving him direction. It is not your job. Everyone will hate you for it eventually.”

“(sings) You’re no good, you’re no good, you’re no good… Baby, you’re no good. Say it again.”

“Live in fear of humiliation and ridicule. Fear it worse than death.”

“All satisfaction breeds laziness, smugness and deadening de-motivation.”

“The audience despise you for failing them.”

“Friends are misguided. Make no friends and you won’t be lied to.”

“You are shit because you can’t repeat your successes.”

“It was good? You got lucky.”

“It was bad? No wonder. You didn’t kill yourself trying.”

“Exaggerate your pain if you want a purchase on transformation.”

“Praise is rarely valid, and never ever useful.”

“Genius is a curse.”

“Your experience counts for nothing. After 30 odd years you are still none the wiser than the first timer.”

“Feeling disconnected, then pull yourself apart and find out why. Quick!”

“Smash the first signs of self-satisfaction into a pulp. It is the enemy of the true artist.”

“And who the fuck are you? What do you know?”

“You are deluding yourself.”

“You will never know enough, that is why I have the right to call you stupid.”

“I would be failing in my obligations if I didn’t keep bullying you.”

“You are thick, slow, clumsy, inept, and wrong most of the time. A self-pitying, nasty, fat, ugly, disgusting, sick, whining, smelly, scruffy, selfish, self-obsessed, shitty little HUMAN.”

“You can’t stop until you are perfect. Which is never.”

“Since pride in who you are and what you achieve and self-love are not valid options without the attendant shame and the inevitable self-delusion, hate yourself with a passion instead.”

“If you cannot be loved by others then intimidate them. Make them scared of you.”

“Make them jealous, secretly resentful of and alarmed by your talent. Make them hate themselves for admiring your work so much even though you are such a shit to work with.”

“In the end it doesn’t matter if you’re a shitty person. It’s utterly justified in the long run if you are creating great art as 'a shitty person'.”

“Hurt yourself. Hurt others if necessary. It’ll be worth it.”

“You are fucking stupid and untalented… But you must do your utmost to hide that from people or you will look weaker.”

“You are an amateur and you will always be an amateur if you look like you are having any fun.”

“You are not allowed to congratulate yourself. Only big-headed, deluded arseholes do that.”

“You are not loveable. You are not even likeable. To think you could be liked is a sign either you have fallen for lies or they have. Deflect and dismiss it if you value your integrity at all.”

“But if you cannot ever allow yourself to be liked or loved you can at least be respected. And if not respected then feared. And if not feared then utterly despised. Anything but fall for empty theatrical blandishments.”

“If you give up these rules then you will kill your will and your right to work at the highest level. And you will disappear. Folk will not remember you and will never want to work with you again.”

“Be remembered, even if it is for being a difficult bastard.”

"You always have to be the most grown up.”

"Martyr yourself."

"Be Mr Spock when you drop your character."

“The work is punishing. Get used to it. If you can’t take it then kill yourself because you’ll never be good at anything else.”

Scary, huh? But I feel much lighter and freer for having done this though!

A few days ago I asked 3 or 4 close and trusted confidants (I do still have a small loving and hyper-tolerant band of close friends left, thank God!!) who have agreed to help me complete a CBT (Cognitive behaviour Therapy) exercise that asks the following questions:

What do I do well in the rehearsal room?

and

What do I not do so well in the rehearsal room?

My thanks to those kind souls (You know who you are!) who are helping me with this. You are truly precious friends. When the feedback comes I will compile and compare the results and draft some conclusions and, yes, change!!!!

Hopefully I’ll be able to include them in a Part III. This is to be my homework during the summer hols.

Phew.

:-)

Titus

2009-06-07T10:52:00.000-07:00

As a production Titus Andronicus, which finished its 8-night run at the Ramshorn Theatre last night, was a massive hit with audiences. I regret to say it was a far from easy experience for me personally as an actor. I couldn't help but feel disappointed in the lack of detail and nuancing in my own performance. Having a very heavy cold certainly didn’t help matters either, but it really compromised my energy levels and my vocal delivery. I longed to inject more subtlety and colour into the verse, but being below par health-wise I felt constrained by my limited pitching, and the ‘rasping’ timbre and course texture of my voice which made me sound far more forced and aggressive than I wanted. A bit like trying to play Mozart on an out-of-tune, broken fiddle.

At the start of rehearsals I had high hopes of giving an interpretation that vindicated my character far more, but ultimately I fear Titus came across as a bit intransigent, cold and rigid. He seemed outside of all the groups and factions in the play- separate from the Goths, the tribunes, the Romans, even his own family. I can’t quite put my finger on it but I felt vaguely estranged and at odds with everyone else in the cast and crew, outside of the production even. (It may just have been an oversight on someone's part but why wasn't I even asked to contribute money to the purchase thank you gifts for the director, stage management, Frankie etc! Who can tell me who should I give my money to?!)

The actors playing Tamora, Marcus, Lucius, Aaron, Chiron, Demetrius and Saturninus were encouraged by our director to be much more integrated, strong and likeable, and so were able to stake their claim on the heart of the story. From my own perspective- (Forgive me, while put my ‘director’s hat’ on!-) this unbalanced the key relationships which underpin Shakespeare’s moral schemata. It seemed to be Peter’s vision to fully humanise the baddies, and by the same token de-humanise Titus by undermining his centrality in the story. Audiences always love baddies more, but Titus was left floundering, looking too morally ambiguous for an audience to form an opinion about one way or the other. I felt invisible. Peter never really admitted as much but I feel sure that was why he had me dressed in a Nazi Schütze's uniform (not a high status General’s uniform), and he also completely cut the only scene where we see a fully empathetic Titus, as he eats dinner with in the family home (3:2). In these and in countless other little ways it slowly became clearer to me that Peter’s approach to the text was designed to encourage the audience to sympathise more with the drama's antagonists. He seemed to spend a far more time directing the actors playing those characters than he did me as the titular hero. I was mostly left to my own devices while he urged them to play the passions and the motives behind their vengeful actions with much more intensity and conviction, and play their scenes with grace and beauty of movement. He clearly sided more with the violent ‘baddies’ than my victimised protagonist. The notable exception to this was Lavinia, played by the excellent Natalie Clark, but even this really didn’t help my own character to be seen in a positive light, especially when Titus just kept weeping and bemoaning how hard done by and wronged he was after she is raped and mutilated! As a result Titus came across as weepy, carping and far, far too self-pitying- surely the ugliest and most alienating of all emotions in the theatre!

So my Titus was never properly sympathetic and I failed to discover a way of making him sound anything more than a bellicose, over-the-hill, politically naïf, an emotionally self-indulgent, egotistical and intransigent victim! It continually felt like I was having to fight extra hard to coax any sympathy at all from the audience for the man’s suffering. Other characters got emotive music played under their big moments. I was left to fend for myself- at least that’s how it felt!

Whilst not a complete failure, my acting in this didn’t come up to the standards I usually set for myself, and unfortunately it winded up being a rather frustrating experience creatively.

But as a whole the production seemed to go down extremely well with the audiences. They heaped praise on the other actors and Peter’s sound and lighting effects. I couldn’t help but feel jealous of all the attention they were getting- not that it really should be about that of course, but it was a bit uncomfortable being more or less completely ignored! My friend Max- a man in his 60s- found the intemperate nature of the stage violence so distressing he had to leave at the first interval. Another, a very seasoned theatregoer, was still traumatised to tears by the rape scene, even when I spoke to her about it many hours later. She was another who had to leave the auditorium. Several others thought the graphic nature of the ultraviolence was a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and suggested it might have been portrayed more successfully depicted by leaving much more to the imagination.

The plastic, bewigged, decapitated, goggle-eyed heads of my two ‘sons’- christened “Francie and Josie” by one backstage wit) - got laughs when they were brought on by the Messenger in Act 3 Scene 1. Every night this threatened to completely undermine everything I had been trying to create in the scene up to this moment. This could have been an infinitely more heartbreaking and poignant moment if only they had been placed in bloodied muslin bags; but for reasons Peter never revealed he was adamant that these heads remained fully visible.

The show had a very long running time and there were some evenings when performances lasted three and a ½ hrs, and what with temperatures in the 80s it became an endurance test for everyone concerned. But for those who stayed to watch it all they seemed to have been greatly entertained by the production. So what do I know? The punters are always right!

In the final analysis it was Tamora her two sons, Lavinia and Saturninus who stole the show; and Ithe rest of us were their supporting players. At least that’s how it felt.

Now this is the very last show I am likely to act in before I start at the RSAMD in September, and I wish I could have left on more of a high after my 15 years association with the Ramshorn, but looked at as whole, all I have done there- both as an actor and a director- adds up to a body of work I can afford to take some pride in. I have learned a great deal in my time there, and they've allowed me to work on such an interesting and varied diet of plays. The kind of rep training that simply doesn't exist any more. Looking back now, my high points as a director were The Crucible, A Hard Heart and Tally’s Blood: and as an actor, my achievements as King Lear, Spooner in No Man’s Land, George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and the Player in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead will remain with me; but there are many others I will recall with just as much pride, affection and gratitude.

I guess this is the closing of a chapter, and that makes me just a little melancholy…

But, hey, upwards and onwards!!

“For it now is done.”

Titus Andronicus

2009-05-17T07:05:00.001-07:00

I am in mid-rehearsal,playing the leading role in Shakespeare's earliest tragedy, Titus Andronicus, to be staged at the Ramshorn Theatre in Glasgow from Fri 29 May- Sat 6 June, and I would love anyone who's interested to come along and check it out. With less than two weeks to go it's perhaps still too early to say how good it'll be. As it is I'm really only just off book and we finished our first full run-through just a couple of days ago, but it's seems to be shaping up well apart from the odd bit of over-acting (mostly from me, it has to be said- although the piece does seem to merit it!).

TITUS: "Art thou Revenge?.. Welcome, dread Fury, to my woeful house." (V ii)

(with Frankie MacEachen as my nemesis, Tamora)

TITUS: "And in the emperor's court there is a queen attended by a Moor." (V i)

(Daniel Sweetman as Aaron and Frankie MacEachen as his lover, Tamora)

TITUS: "I am the sea; hark how her sighs do blow..." (III i)

(with Natalie Clark as my daughter Lavinia)

The storyline is extremely straightforward and even for those dyed-in-the-wool Bardophobes among you it's a highly entertaining romp about vigillante violence, serial rape, vengeance and homicide, ritual dismemberment, assisted suicide and slaughter. It is by turns disturbing, hilarious, heart-breaking and thrilling. Imagine, if you will, Quentin Tarantino in blank verse. Do come!

Fun, fun, fun for all the family!
:-)

Love @ the Bothy, and Titus Andronicus

2009-05-10T07:48:00.000-07:00

I have been attending the Actors’ Bothy at the CCA every week for almost two years now. It helped me through difficult times, especially when I first joined and it helped restore my confidence after the company I had helped to found had fallen to bits. Going along for the first time, feeling very vulnerable, forlorn and lonely took a lot of guts, but I am very grateful for how welcome they made me feel. I have since remained a loyal member and during the time I have been attending I definitely feel I have matured as an artist, as a soul, and I feel they have played at least some part in re-stimulating some of my belief in myself as an artist. I’ve grown quite fond of many of the other actors. I look forward to meeting up with the friends I've made there, indulging in social gossip/networking when sharing a beer or two in the bar afterwards, as much as the classes themselves. The staple work we do there under the auspices of the Bothy’s founder, Jimmy Watson, consists of Sanford Meisner repetition exercises. Now I must confess I have only a fitful regard for this particular approach, and find its of limited use, but I continue to attend each week, trusting that the exercises are doing me some good anyway at some level or other. Besides, every now and again we get to do other stuff, e.g. Michael Chekhov (including archetypes and centres and psychological gesture and ensemble-building exercises in the weeks I get to lead), or maybe Rudolf Laban, objectives and super-objectives, play-reading or unitting texts, Practical Aesthetics, improvisation skills, physical theatre or Complicité games. Yesterday, in Jimmy’s absence, Anne Lothian was leading half a dozen of us in a fascinating workshop, the theme of which was actors’ ways and means of accessing and/or generating feelings. Usually I prefer to think of stage emotion as something bred as a natural by-product of executing actions. I have become less and less able to access or employ personal/so-called ‘emotional' memories to fuel feeling states for my characters the older I get. I rely on physical action and sensation, qualities of movement and centres in the imaginary body to coax feelings from the heart that are much more universal and complete somehow. This is a far more dependable and much safer way for me than attempting to remember how it felt splitting up with an ex-girlfriend, or getting my dog put down when I was 14! But we all have our different ways, and there was some discussion about this “Method and madness”, Diderot blah blah blah thing amongst the participants at the start of the evening. But then after a vigorous group warm-up and an exercise in commenting on each others’ posture, body language and physical habits, with each actor taking it in turns to stand in front of our peers to be observed for 5 minutes, we devoted the rest of our time to a fantastic but very simple paired exercise.

As Anne herself said afterwards, its great that we have the luxury of time to explore ideas and techniques. You just don't get that opportunity in rehearsals. So sitting opposite our partner we were asked to repeat a given a ‘feeling statement’, to be directed with increasing levels of intensity, using the simple objective of making ourselves believable/believed by our partner, e.g. “I miss you”, “I detest you” or “You embarrass me”. Since there were so few of us in attendance we had an opportunity to observe the other pairs, rather all do it at the same time, before Lindsey McNab and I finally got up to do the exercise.

She was given the statement “I’m scared”. Starting from a level one intensity she had to build, step by step, up to level ten. As Lindsey partner I was permitted to comment, encourage, and feedback during the exercise according to whether I believed her or not. If I did then she could ascend to the next level. If not she had to go further and deeper with her intention to communicate authentic fear before going to the next level. After 4 or 5 minutes she looked pretty goddamn terrified and had got up to something like level 7 or 8 at which point Anne stopped us! After a bit of group discussion it was my turn.

I had first done a similar exercise over 20 years ago while working on The Deal at the Arts Centre with American Connexion (e.g.“-I want justice!”. “-Well, you can’t have it!” etc, repeated again and again as way of galvanising us into playing our objectives at full pelt for every unit in the text). Yesterday I found myself secretly praying I might be given a statement such as “I want to hurt you” or “I want to maim and/or kill you”, anticpating this might be practical preparation for getting a soaked up in Titus’ toxic rage, the role I am currently in the midst of rehearsing with Strathclyde Theatre Group, but in the end that was deemed too similar to “I detest you” which we’d already seen my friend Kenny do with Robert.

I was given the sentence: “I love you”.

Now I’ve known Lindsey over 10 years. I first worked with her when playing her husband in J.B. Priestly’s Time and the Conways at the Arches in 1999. She was also in an Alison Peebles film with Karen 3 or 4 years ago, so I suppose I know her quite well. I like her; she’s a kind and caring person, quite beautiful, but I wouldn’t say we were what you would call particularly close.

By the time I’d reached up to level 6 tears were appearing in her eyes. By 7 she had flung her arms round me as I repeated “I love you” with greater ardour, longing and intensity. I had started by focusing on her sparkly green eye make-up and then moved onto her face, then her tender vulnerability, then her heart and her inner light, her soul... Going ever deeper. My entreaties became directed, in my imagination, to an amalgamation of all the women I have ever loved, my profound gratitude to them for what they had meant to me, a desire to bless and affirm them for the gifts they had brought of themselves and the love I had shared with them, but then it began to morph into a deeper, even more universal love for God as expressed in my connection with Lindsey as another human soul. Images of me being a fountain of love radiating light from my heart and flooding her spirit. All the while I was telling her “I love you” it felt like the most honest and candid I had ever been in my life. We ended up kissing passionately. When Anne brought the exercise to a close Lindsey slowly pulled away from me, laughing as she wiped away her snot and tears. “My God,” she said, “Why haven't I got a fucking boyfriend who can say that to me!?”

There was some applause from the group before Anne said, “Wow, Mark… You look like you’ve done that before!” And of course I have, but to be honest never with that degree of intensity. In life we hold back from expressing things with that much crazy passion and ardour, and unless we’re bonkers we don’t spend 5 minutes saying the same thing over and over again even to those we love! This exercise permitted one's guard to be dropped and the backlog of a lifetime's emotion burst out of me and it didn't let up.

The extension exercise involved both of us being physically held back by the rest of the class as we struggled to get across the room to the other. I had Robert, Kenny and Ralf- all much bigger, younger and stronger than I trying to restrain me as we repeated our “I love yous” and “I’m scareds” and Lindsey was restrained by Anna and Elaine at the other end of the room. In the end nothing was going to hold either of us back from embracing again, and that is exactly what we eventually did once we'd managed to wrestle free.

All very luvvie and self-indulgent to an outsider I’m sure but what a tremendous exercise!

The reason I mention all of this is that it is this ‘level 11’ intensity that is required for my Titus. His emotions are experienced at increasingly potent levels as the action of the play progresses. Just as you think he has reached the depths of existential anguish and hellish torment there is still another level to go. It would be very easy to peak too early leaving me nowhere else to go; or the opposite- never really connecting with the authentic emotion at all. Yesterday’s exercise wasn’t just self-indulgence because there was an action associated with it which was 'to be believed by the other'. Titus’ journey strains credibility at times, and the challenge for me is to carry the audience along on that roller coaster of increasingly heightened grief and woe. It took yesterday’s exercise to make me realise that there is no point in me trying as a pacifist Quaker to play murderous hatred because what really lies behind Titus' martial persona is actually a wounded soul clinging onto a fierce and violent love for his emperor and state, for his nearest and dearest and his unshakeable devotion to the ideals of Honour and Justice. There is a deeply poignant and profound loving heart which is actually exquisitely tender and beautiful despite all outward appearances to the contrary. Titus may be old, pig-headed, hideously violent, battle-scarred and ugly on the outside, but he is ablaze with an intense fidelity to Love. He is simply limited in his means of expression in the Yang-dominated culture of the Roman army, slaying Goths for 40 years.

But what I communicated with such fervour and conviction yesterday evening to Lindsey- a feeling in my body, in my emotions and in my soul- is actually the same as what lies at the heart of Titus. He personifies a hugely amplified, unstoppable force of nature, a deluge of Divine Love that floods the Empire. Everybody feels its compelling power. It is a fearless love that hopefully increases an audience sense of aliveness because all it is about is giving, giving and still more GIVING, with no thought for the consequences; transmitted through each and every cell- through my eyes, my words, my feelings, my touch, an unadulterated and distilled presence- an incandescent furnace of energy and power capable of burning up and transmuting everything. This for me is the key to Titus' soul. It is absolutely counterintuitive to the traditional idea of him being the hate-filled, blood-lusting Avenger archetype. It is Nuclear Love. I’m pretty sure Peter Lamb, the director, will disagree with me- but just in case you happen to be reading this Peter I want for the next wee while to look into this in greater depth, and hopefully bring you round!

Having said that it’s still early days of course. Peter is still blocking the play and we’re all still struggling to get off-book. The interaction and the nuances of character relationships- particularly between myself, Lavinia, Marcus, Lucius, Tamora and Saturninus- are far from clear 19 days before opening night. It is still very much a work in progress, and I know I haven’t even begun to skim the surface. Others are much further on than I by all accounts. But by the end of this week we’ll have had the chance to run the whole thing and see what needs most attention. It would be foolish to hope for much at this stage; after all it’s been almost 3 weeks since I last rehearsed Act 1, and I can barely remember anything about it! No, my main focus in the next week or so has got to be remembering lines, cues and moves, although I would like to think I will be able to attend to what others are doing around me too, and maybe capture some of the flavour of Titus’ depth of feeling and passion. I long for this to be a very intense emotional experience for every member of the audience in performance. This will demand superhuman levels of emotional and physical stamina fromme, and an intense focus from the audience if that goal is to be attained, but nothing gets my juices going more as an actor than the carrot of impossible objectives! :-)

Natural High

2009-04-18T05:48:00.000-07:00

So much has been happening over the past few weeks, both inwardly and outwardly, and I suppose I have been living very intensely. I wish to reflect on things a bit here and maybe tie it all together, if I can, before I return to teaching on Monday. Forgive me if any of this comes across as self-indulgent, ignorant or naïve- or all three!

I have spent the last 2 days taking part in a voice workshop led by the inspirational expert Nadine George. It’s her work that provides the foundation methodology for all voice teaching done with students at the RSAMD over the past decade by among others my friends Bill Wright, Susan Worsfold and of course Ros Steen (who was also in attendance, along with five other voice teachers from drama schools all over England), and now internationally- in the national theatres of Scandinavia, France and Brazil. Nadine’s ideas challenge many of the dogmas about the use of the dramatic voice, such as “ adequate support” and “misuse” propounded by the likes of Linklater, Rodenberg et al. By the end of the first day the majority of my fellow workshop participants looked very worried, as if Nadine were some kind of antichrist spouting vile heresies. But by the end of the two days I know we all felt immensely grateful for the way she had managed to liberate us from many of our received notions and prejudices, and had re-inspired us. I am left feeling immeasurably courageous and hopeful, aware of the possibility an infinite number of choices which I thought had been closed off to me as an artist long ago. My God, if that was just a wee taster of what I can expect to get from the Masters in acting at the RSAMD I am going to be in paradise next year!

She made me confront the notion of what an incredibly good actor I am. I have become increasingly hardened in recent years to any kind of adulation, blandishments or flattery about my work. Instead I always seek to know how I can do better, and have always felt I can do this only when I am criticised. My dear Karen often berates me for always being much more interested in getting feedback from all and sundry about my flaws and in the process making myself completely deaf and blind to any admiration from others.

But Nadine George was so inexorably positive and affirming. She somehow correctly intuited my ingrained resistance to her “Amazing!… Extraordinary… Absolutely tremendous… Bloody marvellous!” comments. My intrinsic scepticism is a peculiar manifestation of my very English, and yes egoic fearfulness of any kind of praise. My somewhat unreliable bullshit-detector was sounding its alarm bells. I have had some very ugly experiences in the past at the hands of people who have flattered my ego and then used it as a tool for manipulating me, and eventually turning against me. I have come to suffer from a deep suspicion of any kind of congratulation or commendation about what I do. I immediately suspect the motives and even the taste of people who say I am good- as some people have in the past ended up using that as an insidious form of control over me, and my feelings. So you can perhaps imagine my reaction when, after performing my Aegisthus speech from Ted Hughes’ translation of The Oreistia, Nadine showered all this praise on my ‘embodiment of the text’. It made me feel extremely uncomfortable, though I adopted what I thought was a convincing mask of gratitude. She had similarly eulogized everybody else’s progress so when she said I looked like I didn’t believe her I apologised and blurted out that I had some doubts about the reliability of her feedback.

I said, “It’s really fantastic how you provide such a supportive and lovely atmosphere in this class, Nadine. It's great, but I’m not used to it! Surely if everyone is wonderful and special then in the end nobody really is. Never mind the raptures, what I want to know is what isn’t wonderful... and what must I work on to improve it.”

She became very serious and responded very slowly, “Improve?? Mark… Mark. You want me to tell you it was shit? It wasn’t shit, Mark! It wasn’t shit. That’s the fucking understatement of the year! Christopher-bloody-Columbus!! Do you not know that? You need to have a clearer understanding of what you are, Mark, what you are capable of, my darling… I love you! I adore you!! You were wonderful. Wonder-ful. You need to know that about yourself, Mark. You are an extraordinary actor. A wonderful actor! I mean it. Do you see? Do you get me? Christopher-bloody-Columbus!!” etc…

Eventually at the end of this rant she held my gaze and leaned forward, adding quietly, “Listen to me; if you work from a level of love then miracles happen. Do you get me?”

The scales fell from my eyes.

BINGO!!!!!

Suddenly I felt like all the various strands of me came together- like the fireworks of some ecstatic religious/ or exquisite drug epiphany!

Hearing just those words chimed with so many, many things that have been percolating and bubbling below full consciousness for me about the art of acting, the art of being, for a very long time but hadn’t really pierced me as deeply until that instant. I felt my heart and mind explode and expand at the speed of light- un-chained, utterly liberated. The feeling hasn’t gone away.

Deep changes will inevitably ensue; Nadine predicted this for us all in our own unique ways. She’s no guru, she says that herself. She's just a wee woman. She’s not interested in abusing her power or manipulating anyone.

But as she said I was present at that workshop for a reason. And, my God, was she right.

The experience was quite literally unforgettable.

Nadine’s work draws on primeval, animalistic forces, the archetypal male and female energies in the voice, body and spirit. It’s not bollocks. Of course this workshop made me hyper-aware of the profound importance of all of this to Titus, and occured at precisely the right time for me as I launch myself back into acting after a year away from the stage. A divinely meant encounter, I’m sure of that.

The character of old Titus has such a disproportionate Yang imbalance, and he has to undergo the emotional and physical torment of hell, similar to old King Lear, before he can move into the Yin dimension. The voice work I did wth nadine will feed into that. But much much more than that, I know the implications of this Easter-time experience will not just embrace Titus but extend into the rest of my life work from this time on. And as completely naff as it’s likely to sound… fuck it, this was a genuinely heart, mind and soul-altering experience for me. I can’t be the same ever again. So thank you, Nadine… And thank you, God.

Regular readers of this blog will know I am, and have always been, attracted to the spiritual aspects of acting, but more and more so as I age. And having become a Quaker in the last 18 months I am convinced in my heart- in ways I can’t really begin to justify in words- that the theatre really has far more in common with religion- specifically mysticism and the sacred- than it does with ‘art’ or ‘entertainment’. Both are about the ritualistic dissolution and transfiguration of the Ego, and the reconnection with the Divine. It is not about the pursuit of joy or tranquillity- if it ever was- for that goal too has to be transcended eventually. For me it is clarity, and above all Truth that is the Holy Grail. And paradoxically I seek the path beyond the ecstasy of transformation into a state of oneness and universality where notions of human identity and uniqueness become worthless and immensely precious at the same time. That is what religion does too. (I know, I know, this sounds like wank. I can see my pal Mark Westbrook banging his poor fists off the computer screen as I write this!! Sorry, Mark!)

Actually I wonder if this is why so many actors and artists get sucked into using drugs and alcohol, because they long to experience that sense of otherness- a sense of joining together- on a regular basis, even if it is only a chemically-induced illusion, and lasts just a few hours. But somehow to me that particular way of living has always struck me as terribly selfish, a form of cheating and- not to put too fine a point on it- bloody dangerous. And the results- because they don’t actually serve anyone else but the substance-user himself- can’t ever be sustained. It’s like that analogy my old history teacher Chris Wilshire used when talking on this subject: like getting the fuel to soar in a helicopter to mountaintop rather having the determination, guts and the spiritual strength to climb it step by step under your own power. Any lasting sense of achievement, ownership or meaning is absent from the person who gets there by assisted means. Sorry but I can see nothing real about that dummy-sucking, ‘PLUR’ world, no matter what anyone says. It’s a kind of sordid and treacherous fantasy life of happiness without any true fulfilment or purpose. I’d be the last person to deny anyone their bit of fun, but when it starts to become a philosophy you think is worth defending, well then your life is spirally slowly into the pit. Thir work becomes shit. I’m old, and it’s a tragedy I’ve seen repeated more times than I care to remember to some of my most gifted and talented friends and colleagues.

But then again many have said exactly the same thing to me about what I do as an actor. "Just escapism from feelings of insecurity! For children!" So there you go! Fie diddly dee!

Other stuff to look forward to in the near future includes my production of The House of Bernarda Alba at the Eastwood Theatre, opening next week; returning to school on Monday for my last full term of teaching (ever!), developing Mamet’s Duck Variations with comedian-actor Ian Watt and director Mark Westbrook of Spartan Productions; a forthcoming audition for a major TV series set in the legal world of 1780s Glasgow; playing Titus in the mammoth Titus Andronicus opening at the Ramshorn in 6 weeks time; organising and speaking about worship at the sereis of weekly Glasgow Quaker Quest evenings, starting May 6th… Oh and of course, last but by no means least, drama school starting in September. :-)

But right now…? Right now, I am living in the blessed Nowness of the Now.

And loving it.

Only Once

2009-04-01T13:57:00.000-07:00

Death either destroys us or unmasks us.

Seneca

It is nothing to die; it is frightful not to live.

Victor Hugo

These quotes may strike the reader as somewhat morbid. They’re not really.

Three or four weeks ago, a couple of days before my audition for drama school in fact, my younger brother Paul suffered a severe asthma attack. He was rushed at high speed to Kettering hospital and died of respiratory failure in the back of the ambulance. The paramedics were able to resuscitate him, thank God, and he spent the best part of a week in ICU. Naturally, Marion, his wife, along with James and Katherine his 2 kids were all most concerned- as were my other brothers and sisters- and I of course, especially being so many hundreds of miles away. But he's pulled through, and has returned to running his business, albeit working from home now.

The knowledge that my brother was seriously ill in hospital galvanised my acting in the RSAMD audition. It’s a terrible cliché but such incidents are a salutary reminder of just how precious human life is. As alarming as it was, Paul’s brush with the grim reaper jolted me out of spiritual/ creative torpor. The fact is we are, each one of us, so fragile; knowing how it can all be snatched away from us in the blink, forces one to appreciate just how dear consciousness and being is. We awaken and become intensely grateful even for the mundane and tiresome bits of existence. I since find myself thinking several times each day- What if this was my last moment; would I want to be taken now? Is there something else I should be doing, saying, thinking and feeling at this instant? If so, why then aren’t I doing that?
This urgent questioning, a sense of grappling with existential issues, already shows signs of waning, but I have made a solemn undertaking not to drift back into complacency again. To be honest, remembering I’m not immortal is actually a really inspiring thing, and I don’t want to lose that awareness.

What a fabulously liberating and useful corrective Death is~ at least the contemplation of it~ to procrastination, hate, pettiness, worry, anger, to empty abstraction, distraction and silly self-righteousness! Death has the power to make us fabulously creative too, as it urges us to be more fully present. Viewed rightly, death is surely the most precious human blessing. A beautiful gift in fact because, as Seneca says, it unmasks us. It shines a searching light on all our purposes. It makes us true. Paradoxically, it makes us more alive!

Actually Seneca is an unmistakeable influence on Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.

Titus is a play that has a total of 14 deaths in it, most pretty gruesome -so gruesome in fact the action starts to become quite comic after a while. Many of the characters are caught up in a spiralling maelstrom of serial and macabre vengeance- including rape, decapitation, self-butchery, cannibalisation, assisted suicide, various mutilations including beheadings, people's hands and tongues cut off, etc, etc. The energy of the play moves through being celebratory, then mournful, frightening, thrilling, gleeful and even sexual, despairing, silly, sickening and ultimately quite numbing. The poetry is clear and the plot is very easy to follow. It’s a fountain of blood, and quite literally merciless. It's about the human longing for the escape from violence even while as humans we escalate it. It's about how we yearn for the Divine to inflict horrible punishment on those who hurt the ones we love.

I think it’s a great play, though modern critics and the academics don’t agree. For audiences right up to the mid-19th century it was by far Shakespeare’s most popular drama. Nowadays it is one of the least regarded. I think that's because we prefer as a culture not to be reminded of death. Its images are taboo. They would remind us that we are guilty of not really living fully. Such knowledge is scary, but when looked at unflinchingly potentially extremely empowering.

After a year away from the stage, I feel a bit like a Lazarus, if that doesn’t sound tawdry. I intend to make the very most of this wonderful opportunity.

And I feel the exactly same about the chance to go to drama school in 6 months time.

Of course I am beseiged by worries that I don’t remember how to act, but I’ll be fine.

No, more than fine~ great!

I intend to relish every single bloody moment- even when- as they surely will~ things get fraught and thorny. Anthony Hopkins wanted to give up acting and suffered depression when working on the Titus movie. Psychologically speaking it’s a hugely challenging and dark journey the character takes. I know I didn’t have a happy time when I last played him 9 years ago.

But now playing it for a second time I have to keep remembering...

You only live once!!

Glad Tidings

2009-03-26T11:27:00.001-07:00

I received two wonderful bits of news yesterday.

Firstly, formal notification by letter of an unconditional offer of a place on the MA Contemporary and Classical Text (Acting) course at the RSAMD, starting in September!!

It's not really hit home yet. Karen opened the envelope while I was scoffing my egg and cress sandwiches on yesterday's lunch break, and read me the contents of the letter over the phone. It's strange, but I wasn't anywhere near as jubilant as I thought I'd be. Of course it was a relief that I will not have to endure months of waiting to find out, but when I received the news I did so completely impassively. I'm still at a loss to understand why. Maybe because it all had a whiff of destiny about it- as pompous and arrogant as that might sound. I somehow knew in my heart I would get in. Or maybe it's the thought of the £9450 we will have to find in order to finance my studies, as well as feeding and housing ourselves on thin air for a year. On Tuesady this week we had been informed by Scottish Gas we'd need to fork out £600 on repairing our central heating system. It couldn't have come at a worse time.

We just have to continue to trust that things will work out for us. And I have to stay sensible. And so I am being uncharacteristically dispassionate and somewhat decorous about the whole thing. I've been beseiged by good wishes from friends, family and colleagues- who are all so much more excited about this news than I- an avalanche of congratualtions and well dones! Maybe that's because they're not the ones who'll end up paying for it! I opened a bottle of Becks when I got home from the voice workshop at 11pm, but couldn't even finish it before I fell asleep.

I guess I'm not what you might call a party animal.

Today I drafted and then submitted my request to the head teacher and South Lanarkshire Council for a one-year career break from teaching starting the end of September. The authority and Calderside Academy have promised to keep my job for me, but I secretly hope that by the end of my time at RSAMD I can safely leave it all behind and survive as a fully professional actor again. Please God...

And the second exciting bit of news...?

Before going along to Hilary Jones' excellent voice workshop at Giffnock last night (which offered me a tantalising taster of the Nadine George techniques I will be taught next year) I went along to audition for the Ramshorn Theatre's production of Titus Andronicus. Because the director, Peter, knew my work- having directed me in King Lear and also as Spooner in No Man's Land - as well as acting alongside me over the years in such productions as Glengarry Glen Ross, The Homecoming and 12 Angry Men- he didn't ask to hear my audition piece (I'd actually gone to the trouble of learning a speech from The Orestia), or even get me to read from the play in the end. I thought he was then just going to say sorry, but that because my availability was in question, directing The House of Bernarda Alba until the end of April, that he couldn't really take the risk of casting me. You can imagine how stunned and delighted I was when he asked straight out if I'd accept the lead role!

"Well let me think. Yes."

I feel enormously grateful for the opportunity to revisit the challenges of a role I first played nearly a decade ago in the Botanic Gardens. My acting then was necessarily forced and hammy given the outdoor setting, the promenade staging and the ill-judged direction, and I think that the opportunity to try it again- in the intimacy of a small, atmospheric studio space, and with just a little more experience under my belt (especially having since played Lear- a very similar character in some respects)- will help me to play Titus with a bit more economy, truthfulness and integrity this time.

But what a joy! After a year's hiatus I am acting in the theatre again! And you know what...? Right now it's this which gladdens my heart more than anything, including the news I have been accepted into drama school.

But you have much to be grateful for and plenty to look forward to in the coming months, Mark.

So I thank you, Lord! Just keep looking out for Karen and me, Big Man, eh?

Not Dead Time: LIVING Time!!!

2009-03-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

with Karen Coleman & Charlie Donnelly in The Browning Version (Arches, 1998)

Mr Crocker Harris is 'retired' from teaching

“Patience is not passive; on the contrary, it is active; it is concentrated strength.”

Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Waiting has always been difficult for me. But rather than chewing the furniture and tying myself in knots, I need to see the next 6 months as a chance to learn to become excited by whatever lies ahead. The audition went well I think but now that it is done, whether I get into the RSAMD or not is in a sense irrelevant, as the time has come for me to make profound changes in how I live my life anyway, and how I approach my art. I cannot continue to hibernate or tread water. I cannot continue teaching in secondary school kids simply to pay off the mortgage. It’s a waste of my gifts, of my life. Putting financial security at the top of the agenda is no longer tenable. Increasingly over the past couple of years it is spiritual congruence and living authentically, -adventurously- which has taken on greater and greater value and importance for me. Sacrifices have to be made. Whatever should occur, whatever the Academy may decide, I am resolved: I cannot afford to forget to keep evolving, emerging.

One thing's for sure... This is not dead time; it’s living time!

Decisions about who I want to become can and indeed should be made NOW- quite independently of whether I end up going to drama school or not. I will become an actor again whatever happens, I know this. But what kind of actor?… Who for? And why? Answering those questions is what this life phase is really for.

In fact this spring can actually be one of the best times for self-awareness and real growth to take place. To get myself focused on planning how I want to spend the second half of my life; deciding what is most important to me and how those realisations are going to affect my connection and relationship with the world. The journey, this waiting, may have a more significant impact than the end result. Impatience may keep me from gaining from this present experience. Whereas calm patience can be the ideal catalyst for soul growth to occur.

There’s a real art in being patient, which involves surrendering and simply trusting that God knows what He’s up to. I am not used to this. I have to learn how to wait on Him and trust that He is making me bide my time for good reason. My own lower ego must not try to force things to flower before they are mature enough to be uprooted. He has the best in mind for me, and I am going to have to accept that whatever occurs will be for the best. And so I surrender because He knows what He is doing for my highest good.

That said I woke up from a nightmare last night. My car ran away down University Avenue after I left the handbrake off. I chased it, panicking and screaming for people to get out of the way as it rolled down the hill. It ran over a woman who quick-wittedly lay down in the middle of the road and let the vehicle pass over the top of her and her terrier dog (was it Jill Ridderford? Morna Burdon?) By the time I had got to Byres Rd there was no sign of any accident but the car had disappeared.

As soon as I awoke I knew his was about going to drama school, and my fear of making the wrong decision about my life. Things being out of my control and the fear that I am required to relinquish my car and the security of other possessions and trust that God will permit nothing disastrous to happen. It feels very scary but in the end there is precious little I can do about the consequences. I have to trust that others will just get out of my way and notice when my car comes hurtling towards them!

Meanwhile I have decided to audition for Peter Lamb’s production of Titus Andronicus. Again, if I don’t get it, that’s fine-; after all I can at least say I have played the part before in the botanic gardens ten years ago. The thing is I haven’t acted for 10 months- since Tango in fact- and I am scared I have gotten out of shape. If you don't use it you lose it, isn't that what they say...? I hope though that long enough has elapsed though for me to come back to it afresh, and with a rejuvenated sense of purpose. I am setting myself the target of being more authentic and fully connected this time. To resist cheating. And to be more loving.

I have also agreed to direct another show for Giffnock next January- and the fee should go towards my college fund if it should go ahead. I have some other ideas for making a bit more money using my acting skills- more of which in future posts.

Exciting times.

Nae Pressure Then...?

2009-03-11T14:07:00.000-07:00

As Larry (with Susan Worsfold as Alice) in Patrick Marber's Closer (2002)

Those of you who are also followers of my Facebook page will already know that tomorrow is- not to put too fine a point on it- one of the most important days of my life. At the grand old age of 48 I'm auditioning for drama school. After 30 odd years of treading the boards I guess I am probably just about as prepared as I can possibly be, and all that remains is for me to get a good night's sleep, stay cool, calm and collected, taking everything in my stride and simply enjoy the experience. There's no point caring about the outcome as I won't know for another 4 months if I'm successful. I simply plan to be myself and to answer their questions as honestly and as calmly as I can. At least I'm likely to know one, perhaps even two of the people sitting on the audition panel- Maggie Kinloch whom I've auditioned for once before (I seem to remember she offered me the job even though I ended up being too busy to do it) when she was Artistic Director at the Byre in St Andrews; or Hugh Hodgart who enjoyed my production of A Hard Heart two or three years ago and with whom I spoke at Howard Barker's lecture last year; and perhaps one of my good pals Bill Wright or Jill Ridderford.

Taking my new acting coach friend Mark Westbrook's advice I intend to do my audition pieces with Michael Chekhov's feeling of ease. Last night I performed my speeches for some of the cast of The House of Bernarda Alba who mostly know me only as a director of course, but they were falling about when I did my Teddy, and were in raptures afterwards over my Prospero speech. :-) That really boosted my self-confidence. I've been receiving many good luck messages this past week from friends, family and colleagues. Many have said I shouldn't be a student at the Academy but teaching there, but it's a moot point.

I know I have the chops.

I know I have the talent.

I know I have the experience.

I even bought a lovely new pink shirt...

What more could the bastards possibly require of me?

We'll just have to wait and see...

Q

2009-03-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

Chaliapin from The Adventures of Don Quixote (1933)

I often think of the work to which I devote my life as quintessentially Quixotic.

Mine is an absurd tragicomic quest. Tilting at windmills, challenging imaginary giants to duels.

I am exploring the interstitial richness contained in the silences between what is false, what is true and what is real...

Acting, like life, consists of a series of questions with no real answers. Of course, put like that I set myself up as a posturing and pretentiousness prat. People will queue up to prick and pop bombastic balloons.

We actors must ask ourselves the question, “Is that why we will always have an audience?!”

Probably.

After all, such pompous–sounding philosophising is so easily lampooned and ridiculed by persiflage. And the masses have always adored sacrifices and public executions. Actors are variously labelled as luvvies, fakes, wankers, etc.

“Show us the results!” they cry?

“What exactly are you FOR??”

-when all secretly KNOW exactly what we are for.

We take on their sins and are crucified for them.

As mountebanks we often end up retreating behind the invisible shield of arcane mysticism (and sometimes its opposite- a feigned Christ-like “meekness” and humble “servitude”)- both postures reserved for the initiated- as if I, (-the Act-orrr!) were draped in the invisible garb that conferred membership of an ancient and elite cabal. Ah, the emperor’s clothes!! :-)

It is difficult, if not downright impossible, to produce irrefutable evidence of salvation when pursuing the ineffable and the unknown.

People go away feeling better sometimes.
That’s it.
It can’t be proved.

But I fail.

So often the audience do not get what they needed from me.

My response is to keep up the pretence of self-assurance, adopting a secret smile of knowingness- a defensive strategy.

A clique of one!

It is impossible to speak of the work except in terms of metaphor anyway- and so it becomes shrouded in romanticised poeticism that obscures a botched life with impressive pretension. (I think of Spooner’s bombast in No Man’s Land.) Part of me wants to resist allying myself with the cult of Artist as it’s so often associated with the affected, the preposterously pompous- But what else do I have to shield myself from their slings and arrows? The only alternative is ripping away the mask and declaring it’s all just storytelling, ladies and gentlemen! Mere chicanery and imitation! Silly masks and funny voices…! Only a story. All bollocks.

So how do I preserve my dignity…?

The simple answer:-

I don’t.

The arcane investigation of the soul, and the pursuit of the puissant creative potential of the Higher I, is actually made even more heroic because on the stage the Hero treads the same path as the Fool. Both are pelted with rotten fruit as they stride off to transcendent self-martyrdom. Pilloried and denounced for daring to live and think authentically without the protection of their own ego.

We will always be seen to be tilting at windmills, because the work is about making the imagined life real.

And hey, how stupid is that!

(Actually that isn't a rhetorical question.

How stupid IS that???)

And I find myself asking another question: Who is the child here? Is the child the one who thinks it’s cool to knock others off their pedestals ‘cos he’s jealous he can’t play the game properly. Or the child who tries to play the game? It’s a game whichever way you play it.

A cruel and complicated game.

Somebody has to suffer.

What kind of world is it that will only applaud success, and never heroic failure?

It remains my contention that this ‘foolishness’, the world of the “Imagined”, is not the same thing as “untrue”. ‘Fictional’ does NOT equal ‘fallacious’. Fairy tales are NOT false. In the post-modern world such an idea is seen to be- at best- child-like; at worst, utterly crazy. Art is dismissed as “a lie”; a bauble, a distraction from what is actual. Inessential. The world of science and logical empiricism vilifies such vain shadow-chasing. “Give us the facts,” it demands.

The 21st century paradigm dismisses the delusions of the dramatic artist for not being more grounded, practical, and down-to-earth. “Get real!” - by which they mean of course, “Buy OUR lie instead!”)

But the artist chooses to believe that myths are NEVER mere falsehoods.

Far from it! Myths are infinitely truer and more substantial than everyday life according to the rules of the actor’s universe. The actor understands that the notion of character and the actor’s process of role-play and characterisation are a very powerful means for gaining purchase in our understanding of ourselves, our lives- of clarifying who and where we are, why we’re here, how we fulfil our destinies. He reminds us that we are not who we think we are.

Art is NOT founded on self-deception or artifice; the “fiction” is only a camouflage for the real alchemy-, which has the power to distil the clarity of Beauty and Truth (capital B, capital T) from the muddled morass of existence. Drama is a very potent remedial corrective to uncomplicated Gradgrindism and empiricism. Drama reminds us that the world of spirit is infinitely more real and substantial than the so-called ‘facts’ of everyday life.

It gives us a route out of despair.

It gets us out of our heads.

As Rex Ambler says: "I think therefore I'm a long way from where I am"!!!!

And, as dear Oscar says, "The truth is rarely pure and never simple."

The actor is a practical philosopher.

Never let anybody else decide for you.

Go to drama school.

12th March 2009, 13.55

2009-03-05T09:27:00.000-08:00

The date and time of my audition for RSAMD.

I was never any good at keeping secrets about myself, even though in this case it might be more politic to keep shtum and so avoid the embarrassment afterwards of having to tell everyone I didn't get in. But that's me.

It'll be a very important day; not just because a part of me still craves endorsement and validation (I fervently pray I was more secure and confident about what I do), but because I have for all my adult life harboured ambitions of receiving formal practical training. My untutored talents, such as they are, deserve critical attention and proper training. Looking to the Academy for these things- especially at my age and CV- is a bit pathetic, a measure of my neediness perhaps, but that's what crave. I can't deny it. My confidence has always been low (It's been VERY low of late.) I feel neglected-stuck and left behind somehow. I want to prove to myself and the rest of the world that I and my gfts are worthy of attention.

I really need to get my head sorted, and stop beating myself up for all my failings- both real and imagined.

Sorry, but I've a Bee in My Bonnet

2009-02-23T14:11:00.000-08:00

I'm going to be reckless here and admit I am so fucking tired of acting theory. And the mood I am in at the moment I don't care how 'practical' the theories are purported to be. My apologies to my new pal Mark Westbrook who led such an interesting workshop at the Bothy at the weekend, and who has agreed to coach me on my audition speeches tomorrow afternoon, for the rant that follows. Judging by the stuff he wrote in his blog today about not having a particular axe to grind about Mamet, Practical Aesthetics and Sanford Meisner I hopefully won’t risk upsetting him too much, even though he uses a lot of the theory in his work as an acting coach. But I need to get this off my chest. And the last thing I would want to do is upset my pal Jimmy Watson and all my other friends and colleagues at the Bothy either with whom I meet and work on the Meisner repetition exercises each Saturday. I put the following out there on the old interweb just to provoke some debate and this off my chest. I’m trying to work things through in my own mind that’s all… These theories have stuff to offer, and God knows I have borrowed enough from them all to various degrees in the past, but I am cranky today. :-)

When I questioned him about Practical Aesthetics Mark did admit to me that when he first read the True and False book he too was incensed by it, and then slowly grew to accept the truth of what the great man said. But I am still at the stage of being incensed by much of what Mamet proposes, 9 years after the book came out. I would love to think the tide is turning and there is going to be a backlash against the rigid modalities of these oh so fashionable ‘practicable paradigms’ such as Meisner, Bogart’s Viewpoints and the Practical Aesthetics mob, and all the others. But somehow I doubt it. Character acting has had its day I fear, probably for the next 40 years- if style cycles are anything to go by. The theorists I mention are all very interesting and have a contribution to make but none of them can offer an all-embracing MO. Each become, ultimately, dreary scientific and reductionist formulae- that in my view inexorably lead to deep spiritual stasis and a creative cul-de-sac. It is simply NEVER enough to go on as oneself, with a strong action/intention, and say the lines so they can hear you at the back. It just isn’t. These ‘down-to-earth’ guys who try to eliminate the alchemy and enchantment from the process, (-and I can hear the Mamet guys snickering as I type this, but they are the poorer. Lennon’s phrase: “laughing in the face of love” comes to mind as I write this) and replace the magic with a primitive (Please note, I never said simple), common-sense overview- essentially a series of intellectual, semantic conjuring tricks- are killing our theatre. They are all false panaceas. This whole jaded creed is founded on a fashionable and sophisticated kind of disillusionment with what it terms “Bullshit” or “Vagueness”, i.e. anything that might engage the imagination and threaten to bring the actor out of his/her own egoic state/stasis. The problem is it leads to flat, boring theatre. The exercises aim to place the emphasis on the Other, by which they mean the scene partner, the other actor, as opposed to the actor’s own relationship with the character (a la Stanislavski). This is also their attempt at correcting the problem of self-involvement that characterises the Method (Strasberg). What all of these philosophies consistently fail to take into account is the poor fucking audience who end up paying money to see their theatre-wank. There is the assumption that if the actors are deeply connected and engaged in each others’ performances then so will the audience be, as long as they speak up. A nice idea, except it doesn’t necessarily follow that this “amaaaaaazing connection, (maaan)” which the actors have orgasms over in the dressing room afterwards communicates itself, or indeed means anything at all to the audience. Oh Mamet pays lip service to honouring the audience in his True and False manifesto, but that is all. It still offers no guarantee that anyone goes away enriched by the experience- except the actors- and even that is up for question. In fact, because of the flatness of the acting style which his simplistic, “heretical” methodology leads to, the audience are just as likely either to notice no difference, or- more likely- to feel utterly excluded from the actor-character dynamic. I agree whenhe seems to assert that the audience create the Great Acting with the actors. That is true. But he atkes the piss out of the notion of great acting. That is old-fashioned. I would like to think that this “True and False” manifesto is not championed by genuine artists, at least not by the great ones- nor by audiences. It is a philosophy adopted and promoted by writers, directors and academics who are too lazy and/or afraid to explore the challenges of going beyond the natural and the mundane. Those who lack the moral courage and the confidence to penetrate the realms of the extraordinary, and cannot trust that something divine can be in control, lap it up though. I would assert that there is an intense and profound mystery that informs the work of the great actor- and that it is created in tandem with the audience and the other actors. The individual actor cannot claim ownership of it.

If acting were all as simple and reducible as these modern academicians propound, if it were truly so easy to act, then everybody would be able to do it. Fact is, they can’t. That is why the public queue up and pay to see great actors in the flesh. If these theorist wankers had the key to the secret mystery then they would not be writing philosophical books about how to do it. They would not be claiming every other acting theory to be the emperor’s new clothes. They would not be arrogantly asserting to their readers and students that there are no secrets: they would be on the stage or screen themselves changing the hearts, minds and spirits of a human race that continues to butcher, rape, maim and murder each other. They would teach a Love and Compassion through acting instead.

I am getting so tired of university academics and formalist fucking dramaturgs muscling in on something they can only theorise about but are incapable of participating in. Practical Aesthetics appears on the surface to sweep away a lot of the “bullshit” and intellectualising about the actor’s process, and maybe that is something that is needed. But Mamet is in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I do see it’s potential appeal to those who have little tolerance for the complex or the ambiguous- for the serious, esoteric work with the mystical and the ineffable. Practical Aesthetics has got a funky name- and sounds like something one can do a module in and become an expert in if you have half a brain . Unfortunately it all adds up to little more than sly, witty, clever-clever reductionism ( “There’s no such thing as character…” “There are only the lines on the page…” “All the rest is bullshit…”) It is as if the Newtonian-Cartesian model was being used to crush one of the last bastions of intuition and creative flow- namely the theatre- and reducing it to a predictable, rational, small-minded, mean-spirited and empirical science. “Turn up, say the lines, say them loud enough and be present. This will result in the truth.” The implication being that this “ truth” will immediately merit the status of Art and Beauty. Except it doesn’t. It results in naturalism- realism if you’re lucky- but ultimately it will be merely “truth with a small t”, especially in the hands of artisans who’ll never understand or possess that ineffable and unquantifiable something called Talent. Practical Aesthetics would have us believe that it’s the easiest thing in the world to be talented. Talent is 10 a penny. But this rather begs the question why are there so many bland, mediocre and shit actors in the profession? Surely not because they are all labouring under a basic misapprehension that would be remedied by taking a short course Practical Aesthetics? The whole ethos behind the technique eschews the poetic sensibility (not nearly macho enough); anything that might (God forbid!) have the potential to transport the audience into the realms of the abstract, the majesty of the spiritual. The very things that attract human beings to art in the first place, the very things that can offer us redemption are squeezed out to make way for a mundane, lacklustre quotidian. This new dogma would have all aver that the mere act of pretending is plain wrong. Imagination is seen to be inferior to reality. But this idea is merely fashion. It is not universal. It is not eternal. I know that if I fork out £25.00 for a ticket only to witness everyday truth recreated on stage when I could quite easily see it for nothing by standing outside watching people in the street, I will feel cheated. The experience won’t teach me how to live my life more authentically- as good art should: it will teach me to be lazy, to accept that this is all there is, that it would be vain and stupid for me to seek any more from existence than the here and now. There is no transformative power in this very modern idea that leads to a style of performance that appears to repudiate all concept of ‘theme’, or ‘character’ or even ‘subtext’ until there are only words on the page. I don’t want to work in such a medium where character acting is mocked as mere “funny voices”.

Timon of Athens (John Gilmore)- ranting (2005) STG

I had a meeting last night, after my HOBA rehearsal with a lovely Canadian actor/director, Rebecca Pearson, who is new to the city and whom I taught in a workshop in at Bothy last month on “Wants”. She had asked to meet me through a mutual friend because she had been intrigued by what I had said at the very end of that workshop about Love and the Actor. We chatted for a couple of hours, and I offered her advice and suggested names of theatre directors/producers to contact in Scotland. She’s pregnant right now, which I guess will limit her options for the foreseeable future, although she plans to stay for another 3 or 4 years while her husband, a geographer completes his PhD at Glasgow Uni, and is keen to do something maybe next year. This is the third person who has been intrigued by my ethos related to the spirituality of acting in the last couple of weeks. I received a succession of emails from another actor whom I worked with at the Citz several years back and who had stumbled across my website and he shared a great deal of personal stuff about the crisis he was having in his life and work, detailing his spiritual/existential struggles as an actor. He said he’d found this blog of mine “explanatory and inspiring” (sic). He mentioned directors we had both worked with at different times in the past who had “praised (my) acting shenanigans to the skies”! The web is proving to be such a useful place to make connections. I hope to meet up with him very soon. At least there are still some people out there who are unafraid to accept that acting at its best is a esoteric and mystical art, not a Newtonian science.

Sorry, But I’ve a bee in my bonnet.

So why Drama School...?

2009-02-22T16:17:00.000-08:00

Bernada continues to go well. We finished blocking Act I this afternoon, and we have already made some deep inroads into investigation of character, relationships, themes and motivation, etc. It’s fun and exciting. The cast feel galvanised and challenged, and so do I. :-)

I attended the Bothy yesterday which was being led by guest Mark Westbrook an Glasgow-based acting coach. I had an interesting and stimulating chat with him in the bar afterward about Practical Aesthetics, the acting technique developed by David Mamet and William H. Macy. I liked him and have signed up for an hour’s audition coaching with him on Tuesday afternoon. He seemed to have heard all about my work from a number of sources, although I was too afraid to ask who from and what they'd said! While speaking to him Mark brought up a question I've already been asked a number of times by friends, actors and directors. I sense it would please #Mark to know he provioked me to formulate a full respi#onse to the question.
What follows is an attempt to articulate an answer to that dreaded question, one that is more than likely to come up at the RSAMD interview itself:
i.e.
“Why drama school?” – the subtext probably being “Why bother, when you already have so much experience?”

Well here goes...

I have four headings.

Spiritual
Career
Education

and

Substantiation

1. Spiritual. This is my main reason for doing the course. I am steeling myself to admit as much in the audition interview because it goes to the heart of who I am and who I want to be. Over the last few years I have grown increasingly drawn to the spiritual dynamic inherent in the actor’s process, and the remarkable parallels that appear to exist between mysticism and the actor’s process. For instance Michael Chekhov’s revolutionary inspiring concept of the Higher Ego, borrowed wholesale from Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophist ideas, but applied to the question of what best facilitates the actor’s transformation during the characterisation process has been a real ‘eye-opener’ for me*. By studying the MA at the Academy I gain the breathing space and freedom to experiment and explore further the ways and means in which I can communicate and embody the ineffable through practical and practicable techniques. And I can explore the processes involved in of making the invisible forces of love into manifest and tangible manifestations without the imperative of entertaining others, or earning a living through my acting. I am not interested in religious agit-prop, or message-driven theatre. At the risk of sounding self-involved this is about the process, and it is about me. And it is about serving my understanding of what God’s purpose is for me. Then turning that into empowering myself as an artist. My new-found Quakerism incites me to live my life ‘adventurously’. I am auditioning for this course because it is a risky thing to do, and I know that if I am accepted it is going to stretch me. I want to know and discover more and I no longer believe I can continue to do this as well as might in the context of rehearsing productions. I have been doing that for thirty years and now I have reached an impasse because I am not being taught what I need to know through doing. I need space to think, to research and experiment- putting that at the top of my agenda, rather than striving for results that I don’t believe in or have little understanding of. And I am going to have fun devoting myself entirely to growing as an actor. It may be counter-intuitive, even foolhardy (the financial implications alone tell me this). But where common sense says “No”, my heart and my soul say “Yes”. It’s been an ambition of mine since I was teenager to go to drama school, and I would regret it deeply if I didn’t manage to achieve that before I’m 50. I risk much talking about God and spirituality in the interview, but not to do so would be inauthentic and fall far short of my main reason for doing this course. This is a commitment to achieving a complete coherence with what I believe and say, and what I do in my life. This is about becoming accountable.

Ultimately I have an obligation to honour the talent God blessed me with, This necessarily involves developing my gifts to their optimum potential. I deserve to study the craft at a centre of excellence.

Career. The opportunity to gain a recognised and accredited qualification from the Academy and be seen by agents, directors, casting people and producers is an obvious draw for me. I hope to return to professional acting, but having devoted myself to teaching, directing and performing in amateur theatre and profit-share for most of the last decade I feel that the course would give me the platform to re-launch myself back onto the market, and be taken seriously. I am tired of the barely concealed sneers that greet my confession that I am untrained. There are plenty of trained actors out there who feel my lack of training gives them license to patronise me and sneer, when in fact I have more talent in my little finger than they ever will.

Education. To become the best artist and practitioner I can be. Some may question whether the Academy is the best place to learn this, and if I am honest I would prefer to get Chekhov training in America. But the chance to experience first-hand some of the techniques of acting that I have little or no knowledge of, except in an academic context, i.e. from books is a huge attraction for me. The art of acting has fascinated me for well over 30 years. I have worked with many really shit directors, but very few shit-hot ones. Most of them are insipid and unimaginative. But even when they do claim to have a vision, not one of them has the least obligation to teach me anything, nor to facilitate my process or nourish my technique. They are focused on achieving results and show little interest in how those results are achieved. I am repeatedly cast on the basis that I already know what I am doing, and then I am usually left to find my own way. All my knowledge and skills have been drawn from my voracious reading of acting books and maybe the odd workshop. I now want hands on specific help identifying and then removing my habits and weaknesses as an actor.

Substantiation that I am not deluding myself like some crazy X Factor contestant. I want to know I am a talented actor. Passing the audition would verify that. But more than this I long to prove to myself, the industry and the world that I am not just another dilettante- a part-timer, another ego-driven ‘am-dram’ dabbler, but a committed artist who is more than willing to sacrifice a year of his life to hone his craft. I am already a very good actor. I want to be a substantially better one.

It might well be said I could obtain these things without forking out £9000 on course fees, or by delaying my career re-launch by a year. I could just spend the money on new 10 by 8s, a decent DVD show reel and some good clothes. But I need to be ready inside before I start adding the finishing, outer touches to what I hope to become. As Meister Eckhart said, “The outer work will never be puny if the inward work is great.” It will be puny if I shirk that work. Yes it’s expensive, but I can’t see me getting what this course is offering me anywhere else at a cheaper price. What I will get out of it is the priceless gift of time usefully dedicated to the refinement of my body, mind, soul and spirit in preparation for service to my art. (Wanky as that sounds)
I need to find a way of saying all this succinctly in less than 90secs, and hopefully avoid leaving the panel with the impression I am just a sad, confused, old nutter.

Clearly I still have some more thinking to do. But there is time. I still haven't been given an audition date.

* Pun intended!

Flurry

2009-02-20T15:05:00.000-08:00

A flash flood of activity this week with rehearsals commencing for The House of Bernarda Alba and starring in a short film as the eponymous Businessman/ Backpacker. Tomorrow I’m participating in a workshop with acting coach Mark Westbrook at the Bothy. I have also continued rehearsing my audition pieces for drama school (see the previous posts), as well as researching funding/loan options should I eventually be accepted for the MA. I have arranged a meeting on Sunday with a theatre director who hopefully wants to work with me in the near future, and I am turning over ideas in my head for penning a 2-hander to feature in the Fiendish Plot’s 2009 season at the CCA. There’s my full time drama-teaching job as well as the work I’m doing with the Quaker Quest committee and I am left feeling quite bushed tonight. But I wouldn’t have it any other way, of course- It’s certainly better than the creative torpor of the last few months.

My preliminary work with the cast of Bernarda has been lovely, although I am chary of committing myself too early to staging/ character/interpretation decisions without first seeing what the actors themselves are bringing into the mix. While KM, my assistant director, is doing a fabulous job, making every effort to pin me down on what I intend to do, and I have several options in mind with regard to costume, sound, the general mise en scene etc, I would rather resist making firm decisions until I have a better grasp of what the actors are doing. I sense the company traditionally favour a safer, more unequivocal and linear approach to the production process from their visiting directors. I need to be strong. Last week I met with Martha, my scenic designer, and spoke of my wish to keep things extremely economic and emblematic. The drawings she’d done were beautiful- an incredibly detailed and realistic Andalusian villa, complete with intricate set dressing. She’s a really fabulous artist. But the drawings were not what I was after at all. To commit to this kind of detail before we’ve really even begun rehearsals might easily ruin any chance of achieving a vital, organic flow to the action. So I am stubbornly resisting the production teams’ ideas being imposed prematurely- at least until the actors have been blocked. Meanwhile I will continue working on the time-honoured principle of ‘Less always = More’.

What does thrill me is the cast’s realisation of just how funny the play is. Yesterday, one actor- Glynis(Poncia)- confessed that she’d been labouring under the assumption it was ‘a slit-your-wrists drama’, and was beginning to realise it really isn’t.
It may end tragically, and the action depicts the most frightful physical, emotional and psychological abuse, but the play is also riotous good fun, especially the opening act…Or is it just me and my sick sense of humour?! Bernada’s brutality, Poncia’s blasphemies and the mourners’ salacious asides feel like delicious black comedy to me! It’s a fine line we’ll be treading but I’m not afraid of audience laughter, as long as we can bring them back from there – which I’m confident we can. (I loved what Pinter said in the interview he gave to Charile Ross just before his death when he said he had two intentions as writer: the first was to to make the audience laugh... and the second was to stop them laughing.) I want to give the audience a more complete experience than the usual po-faced, arty-farty student productions of Bernarda that clog up the Edinburgh Festival each year. I just have to convince the cast that I they can enjoy it a lot more. Right now their shoulders are hunched up in guilty, restrained laughter- like naughty school girls being dared to shout “Bugger” in Lorca’s sacred, poetic sepulchre!

“Am I allowed to do that?!”

Yes! You are! Do it more!

The filming I did on Tuesday in the Tron bar and King St was with 6 students from the RSAMD. An expenses-only job but I liked the themes and the writing- and having not much experience of working on film I felt more comfortable with a crew who were learning the ropes too. Being on half-term from school I was available for once. I adopted the advice I’ve often read in acting-for-camera books about establishing a close rapport with the cameraman. Kerr kept commenting on the nuances I was adding to the close ups, which helped add to my confidence as the day went on. AS a stage actor it’s never been a medium I felt entirely comfortable in , but I am keen to get more experience working with the camera. I’m quite good at it I think. The production team are each going to edit together 4 individual cuts of the footage- and I hope that by the end of March I’ll have some good material to put onto a DVD show reel.

I’ve eased off a little on tinkering with my drama school audition pieces these last few days. I don’t want to over-prepare. It’s interesting, not having acted in such a long while, but my approach is different for having had the long rest. Connecting the flow of thoughts for both characters has become the main focus, rather than the emotions or the atmospheres per se. I am really enjoying acting too. After the first few days it began to feel easier, and consequently I’m giving myself less of a hard time than I would in the past. I’m more relaxed. Doing them for video has certainly helped me, in the absence of a director, to make the necessary adjustments to the speeches. I’m pleased with the choice of speeches: they suit me well.

Lord Foppington Fopp from John Vanbrugh's The Relapse

College production 1980

The Wonders of Modern Technology

2009-02-15T11:32:00.000-08:00

"Teddy" (Faith Healer by Brian Friel)

I bought a cheap webcam from ASDA this afternoon, and finally taught myself how to compress video files. I think this is a fab speech.

But God, don't I look rough!?

Here another take of the same speech-slightly longer- which Carole filmed at school- and with blocking this time.

"Teddy" from Faith Healer (2)

Again- all feedback gratefully received!!

Audition Speech 2

2009-02-14T08:08:00.000-08:00

Stomil in Tango with Paul Gruber and Linda Mimnagh (2008)

Ernest in Time and the Conways with Graham Vernall and ?? (Arches,1999)

Unfortunately I am unable to upload the 'Teddy' video onto my blog as the file is too large, :-)

which is disappointing. So here are some more pictures from the old ham's scrapbook.

However, once I can up the pace of my delivery a bit, and trim the speech down to the length it should be- i.e. under 2 and a half minutes- then I will try filming it again!

Today's Actors' Bothy didn't happen as we got caught up in a meet 'n' greet thing with the Write Camera Action/ Screen Academy people in the CCA bar- which at least allowed me the opportunity to network with some up and coming producers and directors. Hopefully it may lead to some things, who knows. At least I got to see some old friends- John and Karl and Francois-whom I see little of these days. It also meant I managed to get away earlier than usual to spend some quality time with my beloved wifelet on Valentine's Day.

I have been contacted by a young director who has asked if I am available to do a short film on Tuesday, playing a businessman/ mountaineer/ dreamer in a coffee shop. I said yes (School's on half-term right now!), but haven't heard back from him yet . If I do it then it'll be straight from the Merchant City where it is to be filmed during the day, onto Giffnock where I am due to begin rehearsals for The House of Bernarda Alba in the evening. I also heard this week I have been accepted to do a workshop at the RSAMD with celebrated voice teacher Nadine George in April on Ancient Greek Text. All this, and a drama school audition pending too...

Life is starting to pick up again...

:-)

Audition Speech 1

2009-02-13T12:38:00.000-08:00

'Prospero'

Part of me feels quite vulnerable posting this when, as you'll see, my pieces are far from ready, but I hope to get some constructive feedback. The footage here shows me rehearsing in the drama studio at school during a free period earlier in the week. Watching it now, it comes as quite a shock to discover just how much work I still have to do. I suppose it's knocked my confidence a bit. I haven't been on stage for a while; and, although it pains me to admit it, it shows. My emotional/thought transitions are horribly sluggish. It's as if I don't know what to do with my hands- I'm gesturing too much. Apart from being much brisker in my delivery, I could probably afford to be far more subtle and understated.

I'll try and post the second piece on a separate page, or the load up time is going to be huge.

The second piece, from Brian Friel's Faith Healer, is ropey too (-You'll probably notice me dry). It's clear to me that I mustn't try to squeeze laughs from the audition panel if it's to flow right. Teddy doesn't know what makes him funny.

Thanks to my drama colleague Carole for videoing this.

What will the Academy be looking for exactly...? I'm beginning to get nervous already, even though I haven't even been notified of my audition date yet! I do know the school have already held a week of auditions in Chicago and New York for the MA course I want to do. I'll really need to be at the top of my game to stand a chance of getting a place.

Right now, any comments- positive or negative- will be a great help!

Being a C**t

2009-02-01T00:27:00.000-08:00

Clotaldo in Life is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca

(with Euan Galbraith & Darren Lightbody) 2004

"Everything that happens is because you are a cunt. That's because I'm a complete wanker, that's because I'm an arsehole, yes. You, you, you kind of almost have a Tourette's view of yourself."

Stephen Fry in BBC2's The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive

Stephen Fry eloquently describing his battle with the crushing lows associated with depression in that brilliant series he did a couple of years ago about bipolar disorder. But he might easily be describing my own view of myself over the past wee while. In fact it's why I haven’t written anything here for a bit. I so miss having the license that acting gives me to step into the soul of another. I miss it terribly in fact. I haven’t acted in 9 months and, like Masha in The Seagull, I find myself in mourning for my life! I do feel ashamed admitting my dependence on it, but as melodramatic as it might sound, it’s true. My world- everything inside and outside of me in fact- seems to get grey, heavy, foetid, decayed when I’m not acting. Not that working on a character can guarantee I won’t sometimes drift into self-loathing- but at least if I am engaged in the exploration of a role I can convince myself that these feelings of negativity may be channelled back into the work. Mercifully they often can, and thereby transformed into something positive…

But without acting my life starts to become shrouded in a thick, sticky, grey dust. Teaching doesn't help, nor does directing. Existence turns into a dreary relentless grind. The only cure is the offer of a part that will allow me to channel all this misdirected energy of negativity, navel-gazing- tying myself up into convoluted knots- back into something worthwhile, something useful. If the offer doesn’t come I'm in serious danger of drifting into a darker, scarier place- perhaps even suicidal thinking- and not be able to claw my way back to the light. And even though it’s never been quite that bad (Thank God!), I know that it so easily could be.

So why can’t I just be satisfied with 'real life' like most other people? Because real life lacks clarity. And if I really can’t be content with that then what’s to stop me devising my own acting project to get me out of this emotional shithole? Well, nothing, apart from the fact that it wouldn't work, at least not for me. I think because I believe it would be not only decadent but grossly self-indulgent and eccentric/verging on the bonkers to attempt the bizarre process of characterisation under my own steam as a cure for this self-disgust without at least some other kind of legitimate stimulus- i.e. a decent and interesting part given to me to work on by others, for the benefit of others. A well-crafted character offers me a portal, or a map that I can trust to renew my faith in the potential for soul expansion. Acting is the most powerful tool I know for achieving empathy and profound spiritual connectivity. Over the past 30 odd years I have grown very used to having the license of a rehearsing/ researching/playing roles I am cast in by directors in order to take me out of patterns of circular thinking and existential despair. It does not help me if I have to invent the character myself. And that’s perhaps why I couldn’t bear improvising. Improv fosters delusional thinking in me- it’s vain escapism. The results of the work are lame and more than likely just primitive products of my own limited intelligence and ego. It doesn’t give me any purchase on the inner blocks in order to create the space for growth. If it is me making it up the rabbit-hole doesn’t lead to Wonderland, it’s leads down a cul-de-sac, and I start disappearing up my own fundament as I try to burrow myself out again. No, I crave a fully-imagined soul to enter into, rather than making one up myself. To feel what he (the character) feels: to see the world as he sees it, to suffer his pain, participate in his sins and triumphs, loves, fears and hopes unleashes my imagination like nothing I could do using my own limited powers of invention. It is delicious to me. It restores my hope and faith in the process of living. I cannot be satisfied with acting exercises, and workshops; and I hate to develop characters from mere observation and imitating folk from everyday life. The results invariably lack the beauty, economy, grace and distillation of a fully-fledged dramatic character that has a potent, inspiring super-objective, a compelling reason for being. Paradoxical as it might seem, I have come to understand that so called 'real life' just isn’t as truthful as Art! In fact, so-called ‘Real Life’ is riddled with obfuscation and lies! I am too afraid of people’s pettiness, their dysfunctions, and their blind spots to trust them enough to want to become them. And I certainly don’t want to have the responsibility of forging this labyrinthine journey into the rock face of another’s psyche without someone else- a genius hopefully! - having gone there before me. I always have Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth in mind whenever I think about the actor’s challenge of interpreting a character. The hero-explorers of the novel at various points encounter the initials “A.S.” carved into the rock crater tunnel walls by Icelandic alchemist Arne Saknussemm centuries earlier. I don’t want to create characters: I simply want to follow their trail, and find them, nothing more- tracking clues like Lidenbrock and Axel did. For me, improvising feels inadequate, silly. Like pretending you are a detective looking for the body, when you committed the crime yourself. I prefer solving the challenging puzzles a master like Pinter, or W.S. (!), has already fashioned for me. In the process I learn how to transform myself into a more streamlined, more articulate, more intelligent, more worthy soul. I feel it makes me a better person. At least a person I want to live with.

-i.e. not a cunt.

I need to act. When I don’t I get diffused, then confused; bored, then restless; irritable, then unbearably frustrated; depressed and angry, then just very, very low- until I can see little point in doing anything at all. Including acting, eventually.

Have I conjured up a picture of myself as the stereotypical, sad, old bastard who wastes his entire life in theatrical self-delusion? Who has misspent his allotted span hiding away from knowing who he really is and never properly growing up? Dressing up and just playing at being? Without a true face, only a mask or series of masks? Quite possibly...

But if acting is just a silly escape- a mere diversion from the concrete realities of existence as others define them, a therapy for children- well so be it. It nourishes me. It fulfils me. And I need it. To stop me being a cunt.

Besides, I know audiences get something from my work when I do it right. What other justification do I have to give if it helps me, and it helps others?

I miss acting so very much.

George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 2003

1975

2009-01-25T11:50:00.000-08:00

‘These creepy-crawlies will companion you,
As you dig, excavating the dank gloom.’
(Your pale guide challenges you to proceed,
In your thankless, esoteric research.)
‘Say farewell to gold pavements, those great towers.
Soon to dig this well won’t be for mere gain.’
Ere long another being knits a face
From desultory photons. Behind its smile…?
A ploy! Take care! Dismiss not your birthright,
Of which the flaxen-haired boy once carolled.
(You may recall how you might be taken up
At any moment?) Yea-! Whoosh…! Into daylight,
Crashing through the refectory window
Spiralling skyward, flailing, careering,

Kaleidoscopic, exultant, redeemed…!
Sure, you could continue mining the hole;
But look how the wee flame gutters and spits.
You’ll be caught in its familiarity
With all your fusty pals chewing your scalp
Scouring the seams for now and evermore-
Grateful for scraping blindly for fossils,
Staking special immunity from rain …
But, like your comrades, set in igneous rock,
Just craving for more obdurate contact…
Meantime, on the remote surface, whirls
The carousel of evaporation…
Chit-chat, drugs, bullies' taunts, and the usual
Rejoinders to subterranean fact.

24.01.09

"What have you done? What have you done? You tit."

2009-01-11T08:26:00.000-08:00

Max in The Homecoming (with Ronnie McCann) 2005

"What have you done? What have you done, you tit."

Having to do battle with computer gremlins yesterday, which had me crawling around the back of my computer, cursing the dust and the faulty connections and spaghetti of wires- I was getting more and more fractious and enraged. So much so I was not really considering the obvious solution of a System Restore, and instead getting more and more stubbornly committed to the idea of trying to repair stupid mistakes compounded by my own emotional response to the unrelenting logic of an inorganic, insentient machine.

Jerome in Henceforward (with Mairi Gillespie as an android housekeeper!) 1994

I suppose this irritation wasn't helped by the mounting frustration that I am having to wait in so many areas of my life. I have always hated waiting. In the past 6months I have become increasingly aware what a deeply impatient man I am. If anything this irascibility and intolerance appears to be getting even worse, not better, since I became more conscious of it! The Bible says love is kind, love is patient. I feel so unkind and impatient. I get sarcastic, truculent, even vicious whenever my patience is tested. I am even like this when it comes to looking for ways in which I might express love in action as an extension of my spiritual life! I want to arrive now! This absurd, paradoxical dilemma when seen from the perspective of my Overself, my Higher Ego is more than faintly risible. It is vital; for me to learn how to forgive myself and be more ready to laugh at the ridiculousness of this. But I am so bloody impatient in virtually every aspect of my life I frequently lose my sense of humour. A pupil in my S3 class was behaving like a eejit last week and I was incensed because he was acting up because he was bored, or didn’t understand how he was letting himself and his group down. He was laughing in my face and I ended up having to turn around and walk away in order to stop myself completely losing it. I heard him say, “You need to develop a sense of humour, man”. I thought I was going to explode!

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings!

Austin in True West (with Robert Patterson and Sheena Penson) 1993

I am exasperated by so many things in life- by wilful ignorance, sluggishness, queues, coughing, irresponsible behaviour, being ignored, being noticed, violence, sloth, repetition, rudeness, not being listened to, being taken for granted, arrogance, immaturity, pretentiousness, competitiveness, the banal, the clichéd and the trite, the sentimental and the unnecessarily complicated, youthful vanity, stubborn age, selfishness, noise, quiet, selfishness, blind spots, the slow pace of growth, the Sisyphean nature of self-discovery… Oh so many, many things. But with the past couple of years’ meditation and self-analysis I have been afforded some long overdue insights into aspects of my nature of which I might be mortally ashamed, if it were not for God’s endless patience. In the past I could easily have blown this impatience thing out of all proportion and fully identify with these failings if I wasn’t equally aware of His forgiveness. What I'm saying is, I know now that my impatience is not the whole Me. It may pollute the shallows of my soul ocean, but the depths are mercifully uncontaminated. The Source and my Higher Self offer me with a wise perspective on my ego, its fears and failures, and also give me hope that in shining a light on these reptiles they will begin to shrivel and die. I still have to take that assurance that they will though, that they are shrivelling and dying, I mean, because at the moment, if anything, I appear more impatient, even more tetchy-with myself and others. It is due to my impatience and frustration (bred from fear of Death ultimately, the idea that time is limited, and that I am not doing enough- as if immortality might be earned by doing more stuff, better- the fear that I haven’t tried hard enough) that I will often miss out on what is really happening in life. I constantly give myself a hard time for not doing things quicker, more efficiently- possessed by the idea that everything could always be better. Spoken of like this, this is clearly a ridiculous way to approach existence, I do see that; but at the same time it has been such an unconscious habit of mine for so long that I scarcely know how to behave or think differently. And when you think about it, is it really such a bad thing? Things get done, and quickly, don’t they? Well yes, things do get done- but wouldn't they anyway? Yes, there have been some benefits- if there had not then I would have seen the foolishness of being like this long before. I have worked my ass off passing exams, perfecting my characterisations (Lear, Max, Titus, Benska, Kevin, Sammy, Sam and so many, many others have been founded on impatience and rage), working tirelessly as a director, and a teacher with unrelenting self- discipline and determination. But at what cost to my inner tranquillity and peace of mind?

Mr Crocker-Harris in The Browning Version 1997

I now find myself this rainy Sunday afternoon in January- all grey clouds and howling winds- zealous to start work on my next projects as an actor and director. But I am forced to wait. I have to wait for news of when my audition for drama school will be. I am champing at the bit to get started on work I care about, but instead I am being completely snowed under with schoolwork- reports, NABS, homework and prelims to mark, lesson plans, after-school meetings blah, blah, blah…. The school have asked me to direct a summer show (Godspell) too, but there is also my production of The House of Bernarda Alba for Giffnock Theatre Players starting in 3 weeks time- and, I hope, a role in Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! at the Ramshorn if director Maggie Lovell feels I can cram it all in with all my other commitments. I am so caught up in the frustration waiting engenders in me that I am in danger of missing out on the opportunity to properly prepare myself for the likely avalanche of work and stress all this is likely to entail. Instead I am rattling round this house this weekend, tearing my hair out, desperate to ‘be creative’ again. But today in the Quaker meeting it dawned on me that this apparently fallow period is really a heaven-sent opportunity for reconnection with my spirit, a time of inner reconstitution, for taking stock. These weeks of waiting are a spiritual test, containing a profound lesson in biding my time, rationing my energies, and calming down. But it occurred to me also that I have always tried to avoid being in the present, forever impatient to get started, to get somewhere else. Impatience is always about looking toward the future. Like a restless child on a long car journey it is constantly asking, “Are we nearly there yet? I’m bored… How much longer?” rather than simply enjoying the scenery. The boredom that child feels with what is passing him by is the best image I can think of what I have always done as a (so-called) adult; I am not really assimilating and being grateful for the fact that the journey is actually the fascinating thing, and infinitely more important and more precious than arriving at the destination. If I build up arriving in my mind so much, I will almost inevitably be let down when I do reach the final destination. And then of course there will always be something else to get impatient about. “What are we doing tomorrow, daddy? When are we going home?” I can see that if you, the reader, have a predisposition to indolence there is ostensibly much to envy in a fella like me who keeps himself so busy. But the truth is it is an addiction. You can never do enough to slake it. It’s an unappeasable, rapacious demon. And like all addictions it removes one from the richness of the present moment, reducing everything to one objective, namely getting the next fix. There is nothing romantic about this, nothing admirable. Sorry, nothing to envy here, folks. Yes, lots of stuff gets done, usually at a prodigious rate- but at the same time I am never really appreciating things as they happen. I am not stopping to smell the flowers or admire the clouds. Ever active, yes; but not fully alive. Always moving on and not allowing myself the time to reward myself by appreciating the here and now, or indeed how far I have come, or more importantly just breathing and saying “I am happy, right here and right now because I am alive.” I am rarely in the present moment. Except, that is, when I meditate. I am usually looking towards achieving something in the future. This focus means I am not fully alive. Meditation has taught me the value of being here now. I have started to appreciate how most of my life I have managed to avoid being truly connected. I live stressed out of my mind (literally); distracted, never appreciating what is really going on if I don’t take the opportunity to bring myself out of the trauma of the moment (which is really anxiety and worry about the future!) and see myself from the higher perspective of where my life really is, and what my present activity really is about within the context of my soul, the lives of others, my larger destiny, the significance of what I am doing now, its relevance to the divine will. Tearing your nerves apart is not creative.

Titus in Titus Andronicus (2000)

When God doesn’t give us stuff instantly, part of us wants to yell just hurry up and just give me it now. What we fail to appreciate is that while we wait God is actually teaching us important lessons in how to love. Because Love is patient. Sitting in the Friends’ meeting this morning, waiting for clarity, waiting for resolution, waiting for a word- it became at some point crystal clear to me- as if someone had suddenly switched a light on- that God was keeping me waiting because the waiting was itself the lesson. To wait. To be patient. To not want to hurry things through. I am dying to act again, and part of me was angry at Him for making me wait so bloody long- but from a Higher perspective it is now vital for me to acknowledge how necessary it is for me to learn patience, to appreciate the gift of acting, to enjoy just being alive, instead of simply working, working, working to avoid connecting with being alive. “Why are we waiting, why are we waiting?” …Because we are learning about the wisdom and necessity of the Discipline of Waiting, and not trying to proscribe and force the pace at which God works. In His wisdom he needs me to go deeper right now before I will be ready to take on challenges of the year ahead.

Spooner in No Man's Land (2005)

I have written a lot about love in recent posts- (Sorry to keep banging on about it!) but what the lesson is for me in this fallow period of my creative life is that the amplitude of the Love vibration needs to expand. It is not just love of character, love of the profession, love of the acting process, but love of ones’ fellow actors, ones fellow human beings, love of life, love of God in every moment- not just when you are on stage. If I can learn and appreciate this then I am going to be permitted to start work on this next phase much sooner. I have been given scraps of comfort from a number of sources in recent weeks- encouragement that I am not forgotten even though I have not done anything for a few weeks. Three people recently told me that my Lear from over 2 years ago was the best performance they’d ever seen in the theatre; Ann Marie diMambro’s kind message endorsing how moved she was by our production of her play; the review I recently stumbled across of my last performance as Stomil in Tango 7 months after the run finished. These are reminders to me that I have a place in people’s memories because of my work, and that I can afford to take some pride in the effect it has had on others- and however small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things it may be, it had at least have some value to them. I see these positive and encouraging comments as tiny karmic telegrams, saying, “Yes, you have done well; do remember that. But just hold on a bit longer; there will be more to come when you are ready to be more complete, more present, more loving, more connected, more at peace. Take this time to get some perspective on what you are doing right now, and why. What does it all mean? And what should you focus on if you are to grow in the way God wants you to grow?

Herbert in The Talented Mr Ripley (2005)

And His answer right now seems to be… Wait. That’s all: just wait...

Actor Agape

2009-01-06T11:43:00.000-08:00

1979

...At the tender age of 18, lounging in our back garden and learning lines for a college production of Turgenev's A Month in the Country. It occurs to me just how much (-not just my physical appearance but) my methods for creating characters have changed since those embryonic days. I find the work so much easier, and it's so much more enjoyable now than it was then.

And even more so since I stumbled across Michael Chekhov. And I like to think I am better at acting too! Oh, how I used to torture myself- to the point of making myself thoroughly ill with overwork and ridiculous levels perfectionism! The afternoon my mum took this photograph I was covering my comprehensively 'Unitted & Actioned' script with a plethora of 'Given Circumstances' marginalia in different coloured felt tips! God!

Yes, the work was all about the Stanislavski system then. Now 30 years on, having come through so many different phases as an artist, my preferred method is a mishmash of so many different influences and I suppose it has eventually evolved into a combination of my own creative imagination, the psychophysical ideas of Michael Chekhov with a healthy dose of the purely instinctive. Still a lot of studying and armchair work of course but nowhere near as intellectual.

And hopefully nowhere near as ego-driven either!

Acting has always been an incredibly potent, and intimate tool for my personal and spiritual growth from the very moment I first discovered I actually had some talent for it at 16. In fact I have often said that for me acting is a form of prayer. It is certainly about faith- a very practical faith, to do with the manifestating and embodiment of the ineffable. There have been long periods where acting has been more important to me than literally anything else; but as I got older, slightly wiser and hopefully better as an artist, my work slowly took on a healthier objectivity. Still impassioned, yes- but much less obsessive. I definitely feel my life now has a larger purpose than acting. Acting is a means, a very imporatnt means but no longer the be all and end all. Directing and writing have both helped me to achieve this perspective of course, but more importantly Life itself, and the lessons of relationships.

But perhaps more than any other single thing it was rediscovering the spiritual ideas from theosophy that were woven into the creative philosophy and exercises in Michael Chekhov's To the Actor 8 years ago that was the major turning point for me. I remember first reading Rudolf Steiner's Knowledge of Higher Worlds in Sutton library in 1976 or 77 and somehow sensing even then that if I had the brains to fully assimilate and comprehend the ideas contained in the book then they might well be adapted for use by the actor. What put me off at the time was all the Eurythmy, Hindu and Buddhist 'guff'. Everything I read was about acting then, including Nietzsche, Fromm, Dickens etc, and all the Romantic poetry I devoured. But I simply wasn't ready to fully grasp Steiner's occultist notions of the Higher I at the age of 17. They scared me a bit at the time, if I'm honest. So you might imagine just what an amazing synchronicity it was to realise many, many years later that the same book had been such a huge influence on Misha's life and work- especially the concept of the Higher I as the actor's inner creative treasure. I get what Steiner was going on about now, and am overwhelmed with gratitude for Chekhov making it relevant to my own artistic process and spiritual work.

I hope I am a better person than I was when this photo was taken. My obsession with acting for many years caused so many problems and much unnecessary confusion in my relationships with directors and fellow profesionals. I suppose I became what's known politely as "a difficult actor". A bloody good one, but difficult. I am sure my manner put people off working with me. Somehow I had programmed myself to believe that if I really cared about the work I wouldn't let anything stand in its way. I had to focus soley on that. I couldn't allow myself to get close others, especially to my fellow artists. It was more important to me to keep my distance from others and keep my head down. To stay lonely. I couldn't allow myself to be put into situations where I was somehow inauthentic, sentimental or weak. It took me until I was nearly 40 to finally grasp that perhaps the main reason I had never really had the recognition I felt I deserved as an actor- while many who were often far less talented but ultimately much nicer, kinder and more approachable colleagues had ended up doing so much better than I-was because (not to put too fine a point on it) I was a withdrawn, impatient, egoistic passive-aggressive, taciturn arsehole. Chekhov's book revealed to me that the reasons for my deep inner restlessness about my work, my sense of creative isolation which I had hitherto thought was an unfortunate byproduct of my 'genius' (ha!), were because I had forgotten the most important thing- namely Love. I had always stupidly dismissed it as an irrelevance,- impractical. I had taught myself to be cynical and closed off.

with Ann McTaggart, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (2004)

I have since become a bit of an evangelist for this "Love thing", and quite unabashed in my conviction that it must be Love that lies at the very heart of the artist's process, at least if he is going to work at the very highest level.

It is vital for the artist to be honest and authentic in life, but that does not mean being selfish or cruel. It is also vital to be committed and focused, but not competitive or offhand- working with such a focus that it is at the expense of one's relationships with one's fellow artists.

Kindness and compassion must come first.

You have given all of your adult life to the theatre. Pathetic, but it was always becuase of love. The love of the process of acting. But the larger reason for this devotion to acting is finally nothing to do with gaining recognition or power. It is about exploring and communicating the practicality of a belief in the power of inner and outer transformation of the actor and the spectator in the Eternal Present where Love lives.

As I embark on this new year of 2009 these are some of the thoughts that are buzzing round my head. Many others are unborn right now, and difficult to articulate. But I do sense very strongly that my soul is undergoing realignment to experience amazing encounters and deeper, more spiritually challenging work in this new era of my life.

And all I want to say is... BRING IT ON!

:-))

A loving , peaceful new year to all.

with Eric Robertson in Tango (2008)

"What do you believe that you can act like this?"

2008-12-27T04:40:00.001-08:00

Message on plaque at the main gate of Dartington Hall

"Artists are specialists in the spiritual sense, otherwise they are puppets and nothing else.” Michael Chekhov

George Shdanoff: Misha, what are we doing here in Hollywood? We did not become involved to make better actors for Louis B. Meyer.

Michael Chekhov: We are not making better actors for Louis B. Meyer. We are helping people to grow spiritually, George, to become better human beings.

“Spiritual values are more concrete than concrete things”. Michael Chekhov

I love that apocryphal story about Michael Chekhov who, having just finished the first night performance of Hamlet, was pursued by crowds of Russian people as he rode in his carriage through the streets of Moscow, yelling after him:

“What do you believe that you can act like this?”

I long for my audiences to ask the very same question. That said, I am not in the least interested, nor have I ever been, in religious propaganda, a la Riding Lights etc. The artist is not a catechist, as Thomas Merton would have it. But I want the practicality of Love to make such an impact on my process the spectator is awe-struck. I long, through my work, to inspire in him a deep hunger for more knowledge about how to expand and express his own divine potential. I aim to heal, to in-spire and en-courage with my acting; and then to entertain and enlighten. Now I can continue to try to do this through my teaching, but I know I do it much more effectively through my acting.

Of course I do still retain a lower ego as an actor that fights for attention with its silly aspirations and vanities, its desire to be noticed and feted; and it continues to insist on getting in the way of my higher purposes despite my best intentions. But my aims have notwithstanding deepened since i began meditating- and they have begun to embrace a larger, more universal intention since I saw that plaque outside Dartington Hall (above) back in 2005. And as part of this deeper awareness and 'spiritualising' of my acting process these aims have become more refined and clarified. And of course part of this process in reconnecting with my divine purpose as an artist is my decision to apply for drama school- ideally (idealistically!?) to go much deeper into applying the lessons in a concrete way which I have been learning through my reading, meditating and writing in the abstract these last few years. I have always somehow known that an actor must train to develop the ability to grow spiritually. The two things have always been inseparable for me in fact, even though I have for one reason or another (usually inspired by fear) gone through lengthy periods trying to deny it. It's actually this symbiotic union that attracted me to acting in the first place-. It was always the most powerful means for exploring my spiritual potential, for tapping into higher levels of wisdom, being and compassion. Was it Artaud who said that the actor is an apprentice god? This is territory the lecturers, tutors and directors at the RSAMD will never go anywhere near of course! It will be up to you to take care of this core aspect of your development as an artist, as indeed it always has been your own private responsibility. Yeah, they'll teach you techniques and methodologies, but that is the end of the story as far as they are concerned. They cannot give you more talent, or make your soul grow. That must remain your own private business. Thankfully your own Inward Light can continue to be your own private tutor, your personal acting coach and guide, on call 24/7. It is this inner light which is the primary source and access point for your creative power as an artist. It offers the gift transformation, the promise of transcendence. No-one else can give you this beauty, nor indeed can they take it away. At least at MA level, where you are much more responsible for your own learning, you can continue to nurture this Inward Light by meditation and psychophysical means as part of your own daily discipline, and your Quaker faith, without interference from them- embodying the infinite potentialities and inspirations offered you by your Higher Self whilst the college lecturers suggest ways to apply it. Your inner guide will be a reliable way of sifting and organising the help they can give you, and selecting those teachings that may be used to help you become a better performer, and discarding those that will not. The RSAMD is an educational institution: they assess and grade students by empirical, objective means. This is of course total nonsense, but they have not found a way of measuring artistic success, or managing to give it a credible, quantitative evaluation. Because acting is primarily a qualitative, intuitive, non-intellectual activity when it is done well, they will never be able to teach you anything profoundly helpful. They cannot give you this. Their job is to offer students certain techniques and methodologies. It is then up to me to take these means (or not) and use them as function of the Holy Spirit.

If acting were that simple to quantify, then they could bottle the magic that great acting generates and put it in the college water supply. But acting is not a science. Because educational institutions attempt to appraise and calculate it in this absurd manner it is easy to dismiss the merits and value of such establishments, but as an artist who is hopefully on the threshold of entering its portals I need to accept and understand the limitations of their tools for assessment, and chooses to work within them. I must remember that all human measurements of artistic talent or 'worth' are flawed and inadequate. As Michael Chekhov said: "Acting is meditation". It cannot be measured. Knowing this makes me feel even less nervous about going higher now, because it is not my lower ego making me do this. God is. I am ascending because the intention is to take the work into the wider world. (I did not say my work- I said the work.) I am merely an ambassador, a humble channel for this stuff- a servant, a messenger. This is no false humility. The drive to act emanates from the divine, not from little 'Mark Coleman'.

King Lear (2006)

These past 4 or 5 years have been about gradually breaking free of this small-minded bondage, the impure intentions of feathering my own egoic nest that had corrupted my work for so long. In place of the mediocre aims of getting rave reviews for my work, or simply nurturing my own inner growth as an artist in order to become more impressive- what might be called politely art for art's sake, but is really art for my own sake!- it has become more and more about His sake- the desire to share something authentic and enriching through acting, to create better, more compassionate characterisations and so inspire other human beings in the audience- to herald the arrival of a kingdom of heaven, if you like, where people understand the true power of faith, imagination and belief to alter their reality. To, in the end, say something that will survive me. I have begun to grasp that the function of art- my function- is so much wider- not just in a token , intellectual sense- but so much more on a macro level, making a contribution to society and the wider world, to the soul development of Mankind. This is why I want folk to be moved to ask the same question that the crowds asked after seeing Michael Chekhov perform Hamlet.

And what do I believe?

It can summarised in three words:

All is Love.

with Cathal Quinn in Keats in Limbo (1994)

A simple message of course, especially when expressed in such bald terms- no doubt a fatuous one when written down or spoken aloud, but it is a message that keeps engulfing me (!) and all other voices in my daily meditations, one I can't ignore. And it is a call from a non-space of non-action to act authentically in space and time. I instinctively know that from this one perfect gift of divine wisdom is spawned everything else needed for the abundant life of creation.

Love as compassion. I am yearning for my audience to hear this silent call to embrace their fellow man with infinite, unconditional compassion. Meister Eckhart said "God's best name is compassion."

The actor's art is the Art of Compassion. I can think of no better definition. The actor enlarges his talent by seeking processes that enable him to embody compassion more and more... and more fully.

To make the ‘Inner’ content outwardly manifest- faithfully and authentically, to embody through the actor's psychophysical means Love into the world- through giving, giving, giving.

This must be your mantra as you prepare to study at drama school:

To give...

to give...

TO GIVE.

Don Juan in Don Juan Comes Back from the War

(Odon Von Horvath) (1993)

Memories... (Part One)

2008-12-21T10:14:00.000-08:00

My old computer printer finally went kaput Friday evening, so yesterday I went shopping in PC World and forked out £50 on a combined printer, photocopier and scanner. Ouch. :-(

But what a fabulous toy!

And so I spent most of this afternoon scanning old photographs from old theatre scrapbooks into my Facebook page, and wending my way down memory lane. Theatre is so ephemeral. I regret to say I have little to help me recall much of the first 10 years of my stage career (1976-86) in my sporadic collection of memorabilia. From Goldberg in Theatre Worshop for Youth's (TWY) production of The Birthday Party- my very first part at the age of 16- right the way through all the plays I did at college, up to and including my first TIE tours, and playing the Drum Major and the Fool on a Woyzeck tour with that Aberystwyth company (Theatre West??) which Tony Hopkins and Simon Callow saw me in and they waited around afterwards to tell me how much they'd admired my performance!- oh, and Ariel in The Tempest at the Sherman in Cardiff in 1986 are a blur. This was a period when I played so many characters- everything from a one-man Dr Faustus to the nasty Mr Breaker in Penny the Paddlesteamer- that I've actually now (perhaps mercifully) forgotten what most of them were. I was never one for wallowing in nostalgia, a second-rate emotion at the best of times I always feel. Besides, I know only too well that as an actor you are really only as good as the part you've just done, or the the one you happen to be working on at the moment.

But maybe it's because the last role I played was over 7 months ago- and I am missing the smell of the grease paint- that I felt I needed to cheer myself up with a bit of restropective musing over 'past glories'. It was only when I came to Glasgow in 1987 to do the one-man show, Hess, (playing the 90 year old Rudolf Hess in Spandau) and met Karen and she gently suggested it would be a good idea to keep a record of the plays I performed that I began to collect all this bumph- reviews, articles and photographs , etc.

Rudolf Hess in Hess (1987)

Even then I didn't keep everything. It's because of this I can't remember much at all about the work I did with Theatre Racoon during 1987-88 (Saul in True West, someone or other in Don Juan, another character in Mrozeck's The Prophets, a Salvation Army nutcase in Womberang, Len in Pinter's The Dwarfs as well as a couple of shows I directed- Father Murphy and Mrs Brown, written by my pal Alex, and Pinter's One for the Road) Becket in Murder in the Cathedral (Filboid Studge) , the tours I did with Winged Horse (as Austin in True West) or Annexe (Trevor in The Surrogate), my early experiences of the Edinburgh Fringe (1984, 1985,1989, 1991 and 1992- including The Apple; Courteous Men, Songs of Jericho both directed by successful film director Ed Blum, and Strawberry Fields directed by a wonderful actor, Adam Godley, who since gone onto greater things- including winning Olivier award for a biographical drama about the late Kenneth Williams, as well as starring opposite Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), Mozart opposite Ian Aldred's Salieri in Amadeus, the various parts I played in Aida, The Merry Widow, Der Fledermaus and Oedipus Rex for Scottish Opera or Sam in Awake and Sing! at Watford Palace in the late 80s and early 90s, not to mention all those BBC Radio 4 plays I did and those bits and pieces of telly. I did happen to keep a couple of photographs of things though...

Dr Sugar in Suddenly Last Summer (1988)

This one was me playing Dr Sugar at the Edinburgh Fringe in Suddenly Last Summer in 1988 I think. I remember that the only reason I agreed to do it was because my hero at the time happened to be Montgomery Clift who had played the role in the film version...

...Much better than me in turned out!

And then there was a new play in 1990 called The Deal with a company by the name of American Connexion.

With Robert Cavannah in The Deal (1990)

The action was set in the world of dodgy business in Pittsburgh where I was a good fella entrapped into a dodgy deal by an FBI agent provocateur posing as my buddy. This production was very enjoyable experience, and we worked a lot with Meisner repetition and objectives. My colleague from that, a very fine actor by the name of Robert Cavannnah, went on to star in movies opposite Angelina Jolie.

As Jimmy Hunsinger in The Deal (1990)

So much for my early career. My old girlfriend, Pauline Males, says she has an old photo of me in a play when we were at college circa 1979-80 (although neither of us can remember the name of it) in which I played a camp Restoration fop. She says she's going to email it. I'll include it here next time if she remembers. Can't wait to see that.

Of course a great deal is missing here- but if there is anyone out there in cyber space who remembers directing or acting with me during the late 1970s, 80s and early 90s who may have had better sense than me to hang onto old photos of the shows they did please get in touch! I intend to do a few more follow-up instalments taking it up to the present day. As time went on I tended to get better at keeping photographs and reviews, etc.

The Deal (1990)

More to follow...

"It takes 20 years to become a master actor"

2008-12-16T14:13:00.001-08:00

So said Sanford Meisner.
So the Master Actor is… what?

He is the actor who is connected to his Higher Self.

Prospero in The Tempest (2008)

The next question then is: How do I become this Higher Self?

This question has been one that I have spent the last 18 months trying to answer, certainly since Anna Karenina, and in some senses way before that- perhaps for as long as I have been alive. I can remember sitting in the Razed Curtain meetings trying to come up with a sanitised, acceptable version of what I think our work should have been about but I felt embarrassed to share my spiritual focus- for fear of not being business-minded or ‘realistic’. I made every effort to make my own version of the mission statement sound less wishy-washy but I could help but feel it just came across as vague and unfocused anyway.

I wouldn’t have the same problem now.

Much of the spiritual and artistic journey to becoming one's Higher Self consists of asking the right questions. Michael Chekhov would sometimes admonish his students for asking what he called "unborn questions", and I guess that for most the last 30 odd years I have been acting I have been asking unborn questions. It was only when I hit upon the Sanaya Roman books about Spiritual Growth and Personal Power that I began to realise that I had been barking up a series of wrong trees, seeking inspiration in the wrong places, putting too much faith in the guidance of others and not enough in my own inner wisdom for a start. The question how do I become my higher self strikes close to the one I really need to be asking when it comes to my acting; for if it truly is my vocation, or at least helps me to access the higher realms, then I have to open myself up to the answers such a question might reveal in order to align myself with and hopefully connect with the Divine Source.

And the first answer I got to this question was quite unexpected:

You already are your Higher Self!

It is the self, the Me that unifies all the limitless and infinite aspects of your divine soul, all the possible combinations and outcomes that are inherent and implicit in you, and could potentially communicate with the universe. The Higher Self is the access point for an infinite number of soul dimensions. With the right inner work this Higher Self can be made manifest in your work. But what then is “the right inner work”? Well first and foremost all this depends on you believing the incredible truth that this Higher Self is a reality, and not just an imaginative construct. As an actor you are used to attributing the imaginary circumstances and characters you inhabit with as much truth as you can so that they become true to the audience. It is about paring away the unnecessary, so that the higher values and qualities are revealed. Acting is a spiritual process that has much in common with the mystics journey of discovery which yields to a shocking and revolutionary principle that all notions of personal identity on our plane of existence is maya: illusion, that despite the apparent flaws in or nature we are each of us capable of being perfect channels for the divine, and allowing that Self to explore those selves through visualisation, imagination and the embodiment of the Ultimate in order to enlarge one’s sense of who one might be at a soul level. And the point is not so much what you do in your daily life or which profession you have. Whether you are a road-sweeper or a doctor, an office clerk or a waiter- well, it makes no difference really. What really matters is your “state of being,” the energy that you send forth, the energy that you are. It is not what you do but who you are that is the source of transformation. And as an actor you can be all these people and more.

Acting is one of the most effective tools available to mankind for channelling those inner, transcendent dimensions in an intensely creative and deeply inspirational form. It works on the same principles as the law of attraction we have heard and read so much about in recent years. Potentially, we are all nothing less than beings of gargantuan spiritual power, able to download extraordinary levels of wisdom, beauty and sublime insight. You can plug yourself into that power and download whatever you require for your journey- like a Blackberry with infinite memory. The responsibility is so scary that many cower and run from it: they pretend to themselves and the world they are mere artisans, and as Marianne Williamson says they choose to shrink so that others won’t be intimidated or humiliated, our deepest fear being the realisation that we are powerful beyond measure. But the power I am talking of does not humiliate other souls- though it may scare their egos into realising they have settled for far less than their divine inheritance! No: work that is generated and fuelled by this light gives other souls as Williamson says “permission to do the same”.

So how do you do this then?
Let me try and make a list. I love and loathe lists at the same time. Lists are made by the intellect, and tend to encourage a ‘ticky-boxy spirituality’: i.e. Do all this and, hey presto, all will be well. But there are no real shortcuts to this though, because your soul depths already operate by these rules. The trick is to align the spirit and the heart and the mind to all operate according to the same principles- only then can the power be made manifest through the following means. So then- the list:

What you must do with this power is...

1. Trust the universe, the divine will always support you, making your path lead ever higher. All you need do is believe.
2. Believe that help is given to you the moment you ask. Learn to listen for that voice. This is what your life has always been about, and you are so very close to the critical mass point where you explode with love. And ‘the semen of your being will come into the cunt of the universe’, as you once so eloquently said to Derek Pryor 25 years ago while high on lager, sulphate and magic mushrooms!
3. Develop the talent for listening to the loving thought as opposed to the fearful one.
4. Choosing honesty over pretence.
5. Root yourself in the heart of intuition and love, rather than the egoic, thinking mind
6. Feeling your own soul’s understanding of beauty is always preferred to society’s understanding of it. Always.
7. Access your playful inner child and lure him out of hiding.
8. Use your intuition with grounded discernment. Often it will tell you things that seem… well… obvious. Enter the imaginary body and feel the psychological changes imbue every cell and seep into your heart, mind and spirit.
9. Know that you really do create your own reality
10. Remember to connect to the divine source on a daily basis- meditate, pray, say hi and say thank you
11. Think always of service to others, rather than yourself, because you will otherwise remained mired in illusions and egoic thinking.
12. The goal is to live your highest life as highest self and you cannot help but serve others
13. Your goal, your higher purpose is to heal, to enlighten and encourage.

But our souls are immensely powerful- so potentially awesome in fact that we have created an illusion and then lived it as if it were real in order to accomplish larger, much more noble goals for ourselves. It doesn’t tend to work though because we become divided and separated from the Truth of Love which remains invisible.

A faithfully embraced and fully-committed heart-relationship with your higher self is required. When the connection with your higher self is at least as important and as real to you as any of your other relationships, once you trust it enough to follow and obey its guidance faithfully, you will experience “critical mass.” You are closer to achieving this than you ever have been in your life. The universe is starting to cooperate as never before as you align yourself to your inner connection to truth. Meaning and opportunity abound and multiply. Connection happens when you act on your vow of devotion to higher service- to the healing and enlightenment of others, rather than trying to accrue praise, money or nourishment for your own ego. When the Universe then trusts it can rely on you real transformation occurs. You now discover your hidden gifts and realise your astonishing untapped divine potential by logging onto that inner programme that’s been around since the universe’s beginning–your Soul. Following through on your inner guidance helps you become aware of incredibly precious and beautiful gifts that have remained buried in the secret corners of your soul from the beginning of time.

All actors- all souls!- have a common, universal and divine purpose (to learn, to grow, to serve etc.) as well as a specific purpose based on individual identity (to act, to make people laugh, to heal, to inspire, to comfort). This suggests that the individual, the personality or “ego” should not be “negated”, but actually accepted- and yes!- accentuated. You have been ashamed of the apparent “selfishness” of being an actor in the past. Your response to George Docherty’s email which had been intended as a message of support for applying to the RSAMD but which you interpreted as a reminder of your selfishness, illustrates better than anything else how much of a tender issue this is for you, despite all the inner work you have done to get you this far.

After all, the bridge between this world and the kingdom of heaven that many of us yearn for lies with each of us fulfilling our own life purposes, using our individual gifts and talents. Your gift which you have devoted your life to developing, Mark- your extraordinary, divine talent- is for acting. This is not selfishness though, because your soul has always known that despite the praise you get for it, despite the joy you get from doing it- it liberates and inspires others. How heartening it was to come across a review of the last play I performed in (Tango, in May) yesterday.

“The situation is saved by the stunning Mark Coleman as Stomil, Arthur's father. His relaxed acting and lovable wackiness makes him stand out among some indifferent and tame performances.” The Skinny

Stomil in Tango (2008)

You have worked towards seeing from the soul’s perspective for a long time now, Mark- and your spiritual vision is to sharpen still more. This review was a wonderful encouragement to keep on developing my talent along spiritual lines, especially after I had been feeling at a discouragingly low ebb these past few weeks, wondering why no one appeared to be offering me any acting roles. I loved the fact that I managed to make such a flawed and arrogant character “lovable”. But actually this is not really about ego (well, not much!), actually it is more about recognition that I am not wrong! and that somehow God has been working with me on this role all along. I committed to applying deep, spiritual principles learned and expanded from Michael Chekhov about the Higher Self and Love to my work on that role, and that it happened to amuse and thrill one other person- in this case a young Polish girl who happens to write for a freebie magazine. It sounds disingenuous I know but in the end that one response really does make that work all worthwhile. Her words filled me with pride- but a good pride; with a humble gratitude to God for her encouragement that I am travelling on the right road. It’s not selfish to feel this way. If it were then it would please me to have Marta’s direction and the other performances in the production slagged off. It so doesn’t. It really upsets me, in fact, and I think it must have upset Marta too. That is why I perfectly understand why she preferred to keep the review’s publication a secret from everyone involved in the production for the last 7 months.

This time ahead as you apply for the RSAMD offers you such amazing opportunity, as an explorer and a vehicle for truth and freedom. I am already thinking deeply about writing my dissertation about the Higher Self and its practical use to the actor. This inner power, the soul’s power based on love, is what will turn this planet around. The spirituality of acting is such an important area of research that many of the academics prefer to ignore. They are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The time for this ‘new’ way of being is NOW. You as an actor are to be part of this movement and ascension up to the next evolutionary level of the art and the society it influences and helps to change. You will go as high as you can imagine. Everything you can imagine becomes real from now on.

But still, your own emotional body is very sensitive to fear, to anger and aggression and to all strong sentiments which easily pull you out of your centre. This was illustrated in the way you responded to the Anna Karenina debacle last year. In trying to unravel exactly what went pear-shaped then you have been required to stop blaming others and instead take responsibility for the emotions you feel, examining them and following them back to their source(s). In this process of internalization you do not search for the cause(s) of your problems in the outside world anymore but you look for them within yourself. Thus you take responsibility for your own energy and that is one of the most important things you have been learning in your spiritual life and will continue to learn through your acting, teaching and directing too.

Prospero in The Tempest (2008)

There are 3 danger-areas for you.

Firstly- Spiritual anger (if that isn’t too much of an oxymoron!).

In the past I have interpreted this as a creative energy, a drive for perfection, but actually unless used in the correct way it can so easily become very destructive! The desire to help and change things often contains a form of spiritual anger although this may go completely unnoticed. After all you seem to simply “want the best” for other actors or for the audience. But surely there is anger inside you when you feel inclined to force somebody – no matter how subtly – to change their behavior or their emotions. You get very impatient and it takes you out of your centre, away from the creative source. Often you do not notice that the time is not yet ripe for change.

This inner rage and itch for perfection feels like inspiration but it takes you away from your soul. There was a secret meaning behind the suffering incurred during this time. Each person involved- Dean, Sarah, me and all the others were there to unfold, to express and to learn more about what it is to be human and spirit at the same time. Each one of us proceeded according to his or her own path of development. And I was being asked by God to respect this, to take a step backwards and to concentrate entirely on yourself, on your own light. Instead I banged my gavel in judgement. You vibrated hate and rage for what they were doing wrong. You took on the responsibility for being their moral and artistic compass because you didn’t trust that they had to find their own way. There was no need for you to stand on the barricades. There was no need for you to fight. You should have walked away when you realised it was happening, instead of staying out of a misplaced sense of loyalty, and egoic preservation of your desire to be proved right.

Roverini in The Talented Mr Ripley (2005)

It’s strange but even though acting should be about actions, the emphasis your way of working has is really not about doing but being. When your spiritual energy is in balance, the healing energy you send forth to others flows easily and effortlessly, without physical or mental exertion. It feels light and smooth, not exhausting to you. You find your flow. Things, ideas, inspiration and people show up as if by magic on your path and turn to you for healing.

Each time you lock yourself in your righteous indignation and anger, even if it concerns injustice or suffering that you find unbearable to witness, you need to have the courage and patience and wisdom to just step backwards and move into the center of yourself. A state similar to the one you get into when meditating. Enter the silence and accept that things are as they are. Accept that everything completes its own cycle and has its own development, including the people who are dearest to you. Set them free, as the Kinks song says. Trust that it is enough ‘just’ to be there.

You ended up being blamed for the fall out during Anna Karenina, but your desire to be right was what alienated everyone. Sarah accused me of trying to force my spiritual principles onto others. It was a humiliating realisation but many months later I was able to come to the realisation that she was damned right even though I had been appalled at being blamed for this at the time.

So much for Anger.

Then there is Melancholy.

Feelings of depression or gloominess originate from low self confidence. Intellectually perhaps you may understand perfectly well that you carry a spiritual light within, that you are a sensitive, compassionate and wise soul. But the wounded 3 year child inside you, still standing at the top of the stairs looking down at his mum, still yearns for recognition and appreciation from the outside world. You cannot deny that there is a part of you that craves external attention and safety. The trouble is you can never get enough of this. You can’t find the sort of recognition you really seek because you are different. Others can’t recognize the real you and therefore cannot acknowledge and nourish you.
Your wounded, inner child will never be healed by something from the outside but only by yourself, your own power and wisdom
You are very prone to this kind of spiritual melancholy. The answer is to rekindle your Inward Light in order for the heavens then to fan it into a raging fire again. This is where the Quaker thing has really helped you. The Quakers remind you you are light.

And the third obstacle after anger and depression is plain old Fear. Particularly the fear to do with a lack of trust in your own inspirations, feelings and intuitions. If you doubt your own feelings, you worry a lot and you invoke a whole series of emotions which take you further and further away from your centre
Fear blocks the actor’s intuition. When the intellect and the emotions gain the upper hand ican easily create stage-fright and chaos. The intellect and the emotions need the intuition, the heart as a foundation. Only then can they serve you in a useful way when you’re acting.

Pedagogus in Electra (2004)

Set yourself free from worry and to go back to your heart. What do you really feel underneath all those restless thoughts and confused emotions? In breathing calmly down to your base chakra you are able to go back to your foundation. Then you may feel a relief valve deep within, a point of silence beyond thought and emotion. You may then choose a certain thought or emotion.
…
Every time you make contact with this inner center and take a step backwards you will find a renewed clarity within your soul- something changes at a very deep level- however imperceptable. From there you can observe your feelings and emotions without being absorbed by them or attached to them. You can watch your anger and send it love. You can observe your depression and offer yourself a healing hand. You can see the smallness of your fear and send it the energy of deliverance and transcendence.

You have now an armoury of tools for countering the negative energies of anger, depression and fear. For instance, the silent worship of the Friends’ meetings, your spiritual reading, your prayer and meditation discipline, your spiritual journal, your acting, your teaching (Yes, incredible as it may seem…teaching- But working with teenagers alerts you to all three of these spiritual pitfalls, and forces you to face them and overcome them. At last this time is coming to an end and you are going to conquer the limiting ideas of having to be a guy named “Mark”, of being anything somehow less than perfect, of being just material or thought energy. You can be Love and Light).

This is all heavenly nourishment you have been given just in the last 2 or 3 years.

It may be a cliché but there is much truth in it: as an actor you have access to the soul’s multidimensionality and in fact live many, many lives. At an early age you adopted the personalities and tics and habits and gestures of those closest to you. Your mother worried that you seemed too easily influenced, that you appeared not to have a strong enough sense of who you were (In actually fact she was saying that she was afraid I would never make an impact on the material world if my ego as so apparently swayed by the influence of others. She would say, “What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you got a mind of your own?”) But people like me are in fact powerful once they find their niche at least because they are not quite so trapped in their identity. I could morph, and this scared your mother, because she didn’t realise who you were any more. She identified the Mark she knew with the everyday Mark and not the soul that inhabited his body, the larger and universal energies that could take up residence within his energy field and transform him into many different people. Some of those energies were acceptable to her and others were not. But you were able to learn that you can shed your own egoic attachments when necessary- even for a little while- and can glimpse and show others something of the human’s potential to be Godlike and become anything they imagine themselves to be. In time you learned how to shed those energies once they had served their useful purpose. This is an incredibly powerful gift, and it is often really only a glimpse that is given, as if by flashes of lightning if you’re lucky, but then it is through acting you are able to gain far more access than many others, who are not able to live a life where they can connect with their own true life purpose and see it from so many different perspectives. In your case, as an actor you live many lives, inhabiting many dimensions, many hearts and minds. It is a tremendous privilege and it IS what you came to this earth to do. Teaching has been about trying to show others how to do this, but this coming year you are going back to actually doing it. You have done your time, serving others through the dense fog that is teaching and we in heaven have now seen that the time is now right for you to go back into the profession. But preparing for all of that will involve you going to college for the foreseeable future, getting training.

So then, how can you be the truly multidimensional, spiritually protean actor God intended you to be? How does one employ one’s multidimensionality in such a way that one can move freely through the many dimensions and levels of being and yet not lose touch with one’s divine spirit?
Being multidimensional from a place of wisdom and awareness: that is your chosen spiritual destiny. It is your destiny to become a fully conscious multidimensional creator with God. This is the path of the mystic.
Release the illusion of linear time and become more than just your body. Your purpose in this regard is fulfilled through acting. Do not be ashamed of this.
Acting gives you the opportunity of being consciously multidimensional.
But when you get stuck in holding limiting beliefs such as “I’m not good enough,” “That isn’t done,” “This’ll just go wrong,” etc., you sink into the illusion of separation, the earth-bound oblivion. You are trapped in the quagmire of linear time, the illusion that you are a body, the illusion that you are separate from God. In this way, the soul gets temporarily “stuck” and then in the habit of dwelling in the lower realms of creativity. Settling for less. The soul forgets about its true origins, its divine freedom... and begins to die.
Acting is your way of remebering your own divinity.
You become an aspect of God.
An actors using his higher self is not so much a person as an energy vortex or pattern with an individual flavor.
The Holy Spirit externalises and expresses aspects of Himself in this way, driven by the sheer joy of creativity.
And your Higher Self makes the CHARACTER a unique soul.
Not even God can be entirely sure of the results. I like to think this is what He craves of the actor: not to know everything he will do, but to experience something new! You become a co-creator with Him, stepping into an empty space, , a space of potentiality, a space of unending possibilities.
The actor finds out that he can create many forms and live in them. Every form you inhabit as a conscious actor has a certain angle or perspective to it which enables “unformed consciousness” to experience things in specific ways through the embodiment of the imagination.
At this very moment, there is a layer of pure divine energy inside you, a layer of pure Light. There are also layers of confusion and fear inside you. But you can choose, at any moment, to be the Light self, the angel that you are. This is not something you need to develop, it is simply a part of who you are.

You are beginning to realise you no longer need to look up to spiritual masters, guides or angels. There is not one authority above you. You yourself become God and angel.

The easiest way to get in touch with your Light self is through connecting with the layer of pure Spiritual consciousness within you. And you now know hot to do this- by becoming silent on inner and outer levels. This silence is always present within you; you only need to become aware of it.

You are what some spiritual writers would call a lightworkers, working towards a greater awareness of oneness with Spirit. You have travelled into duality a very long way in your youth, and now you can hear a voice calling you, telling you you are ready to come back Home. And Home is not a static place of bliss, but a dynamic, creative reality of divine, multidimensional life filled with joy and light.

Keep your longing and determination alive- trust that impulse, for it will bring you Home.

You are a lightworker. This is better than being a journeyman actor. It elevates you, and lifts you above the thick fog that has often surrounded you in egoism, fear, anger, weary despair and the desire to prove yourself.

Sculpt with light and feel the love!

Acting reminds you of all the levels we exist on and how they come together to create what it is to be in this miracle we call life.

King Lear (2006)

The Master Actor first teaches himself, and then teaches his audience the law of attraction the truth that the light of faith combined with the compassionate will to Love can and does move mountains.

A long blog this, but I'm buzzing at the moment

:-)

14 favourites from Spoon River

2008-12-06T07:38:00.000-08:00

Over the last ten years I have admired and grown to love the exquisite Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology (1915). Every time I go back to it I say to myself, "Wouldn't these make wonderful audition monologues?"

Well, here are some of the front-runners I am considering using for my RSAMD audition...

Edmund Pollard

I WOULD I had thrust my hands of flesh

Into the disk-flowers bee-infested,

Into the mirror-like core of fire

Of the light of life, the sun of delight.

For what are anthers worth or petals

Or halo-rays? Mockeries, shadows

Of the heart of the flower, the central flame!

All is yours, young passer-by;

Enter the banquet room with the thought;

Don’t sidle in as if you were doubtful

Whether you’re welcome—the feast is yours!

Nor take but a little, refusing more

With a bashful “Thank you,” when you’re hungry.

Is your soul alive? Then let it feed!

Leave no balconies where you can climb;

Nor milk-white bosoms where you can rest;

Nor golden heads with pillows to share;

Nor wine cups while the wine is sweet;

Nor ecstasies of body or soul,

You will die, no doubt, but die while living

In depths of azure, rapt and mated,

Kissing the queen-bee, Life!

Dippold the Optician

WHAT do you see now?

Globes of red, yellow, purple.

Just a moment! And now?

My father and mother and sisters.

Yes! And now?

Knights at arms, beautiful women, kind faces.

Try this.

A field of grain—a city.

Very good! And now?

A young woman with angels bending over her.

A heavier lens! And now?

Many women with bright eyes and open lips.

Try this.

Just a goblet on a table.

Oh I see! Try this lens!

Just an open space—I see nothing in particular.

Well, now!

Pine trees, a lake, a summer sky.

That’s better. And now?

A book.

Read a page for me.

I can’t. My eyes are carried beyond the page.

Try this lens.

Depths of air.

Excellent! And now?

Light, just light, making everything below it a toy world.

Very well, we’ll make the glasses accordingly

Faith Matheny

AT first you will know not what they mean,

And you may never know,

And we may never tell you:—

These sudden flashes in your soul,

Like lambent lightning on snowy clouds

At midnight when the moon is full.

They come in solitude, or perhaps

You sit with your friend, and all at once

A silence falls on speech, and his eyes

Without a flicker glow at you:—

You two have seen the secret together,

He sees it in you, and you in him.

And there you sit thrilling lest the Mystery

Stand before you and strike you dead

With a splendor like the sun’s.

Be brave, all souls who have such visions!

As your body’s alive as mine is dead,

You’re catching a little whiff of the ether

Reserved for God Himself

John Ballard

IN the lust of my strength

I cursed God, but he paid no attention to me:

I might as well have cursed the stars.

In my last sickness I was in agony, but I was resolute

And I cursed God for my suffering;

Still He paid no attention to me;

He left me alone, as He had always done.

I might as well have cursed the Presbyterian steeple.

Then, as I grew weaker, a terror came over me:

Perhaps I had alienated God by cursing him.

One day Lydia Humphrey brought me a bouquet

And it occurred to me to try to make friends with God,

So I tried to make friends with Him;

But I might as well have tried to make friends with the bouquet.

Now I was very close to the secret,

For I really could make friends with the bouquet

By holding close to me the love in me for the bouquet

And so I was creeping upon the secret, but—

Jonathan Swift Somers

AFTER you have enriched your soul

To the highest point,

With books, thought, suffering, the understanding of many personalities,

The power to interpret glances, silences,

The pauses in momentous transformations,

The genius of divination and prophecy;

So that you feel able at times to hold the world

In the hollow of your hand;

Then, if, by the crowding of so many powers

Into the compass of your soul,

Your soul takes fire,

And in the conflagration of your soul

The evil of the world is lighted up and made clear—

Be thankful if in that hour of supreme vision

Life does not fiddle.

Ernest Hyde

MY mind was a mirror:

It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew.

In youth my mind was just a mirror

In a rapidly flying car,

Which catches and loses bits of the landscape.

Then in time

Great scratches were made on the mirror,

Letting the outside world come in,

And letting my inner self look out.

For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow,

A birth with gains and losses.

The mind sees the world as a thing apart,

And the soul makes the world at one with itself.

A mirror scratched reflects no image—

And this is the silence of wisdom.

Francis Turner

I COULD not run or play

In boyhood.

In manhood I could only sip the cup,

Not drink—

For scarlet-fever left my heart diseased.

Yet I lie here

Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows:

There is a garden of acacia,

Catalpa trees, and arbors sweet with vines—

There on that afternoon in June

By Mary’s side—

Kissing her with my soul upon my lips

It suddenly took flight.

Lyman King

YOU may think, passer-by, that Fate

Is a pit-fall outside of yourself,

Around which you may walk by the use of foresight

And wisdom.

Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men,

As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill,

Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided.

But pass on into life:

In time you shall see Fate approach you

In the shape of your own image in the mirror;

Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth,

And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest,

And you shall know that guest,

And read the authentic message of his eyes.

State’s Attorney Fallas

I, THE scourge-wielder, balance-wrecker,

Smiter with whips and swords;

I, hater of the breakers of the law;

I, legalist, inexorable and bitter,

Driving the jury to hang the madman, Barry Holden,

Was made as one dead by light too bright for eyes,

And woke to face a Truth with bloody brow:

Steel forceps fumbled by a doctor’s hand

Against my boy’s head as he entered life

Made him an idiot.

I turned to books of science

To care for him.

That’s how the world of those whose minds are sick

Became my work in life, and all my world.

Poor ruined boy! You were, at last, the potter

And I and all my deeds of charity

The vessels of your hand.

Griffy the Cooper

THE COOPER should know about tubs.

But I learned about life as well,

And you who loiter around these graves

Think you know life.

You think your eye sweeps about a wide horizon, perhaps,

In truth you are only looking around the interior of your tub.

You cannot lift yourself to its rim

And see the outer world of things,

And at the same time see yourself.

You are submerged in the tub of yourself—

Taboos and rules and appearances,

Are the staves of your tub.

Break them and dispel the witchcraft

Of thinking your tub is life!

And that you know life!

Flossie Cabanis

FROM Bindle’s opera house in the village

To Broadway is a great step.

But I tried to take it, my ambition fired

When sixteen years of age,

Seeing “East Lynne” played here in the village

By Ralph Barrett, the coming

Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul.

True, I trailed back home, a broken failure,

When Ralph disappeared in New York,

Leaving me alone in the city—

But life broke him also.

In all this place of silence

There are no kindred spirits.

How I wish Duse could stand amid the pathos

Of these quiet fields

And read these words

Sarah Brown

MAURICE, weep not, I am not here under this pine tree.

The balmy air of spring whispers through the sweet grass,

The stars sparkle, the whippoorwill calls,

But thou grievest, while my soul lies rapturous

In the blest Nirvana of eternal light!

Go to the good heart that is my husband,

Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love:—

Tell him that my love for you, no less than my love for him

Wrought out my destiny—that through the flesh

I won spirit, and through spirit, peace.

There is no marriage in heaven,

But there is love.

Frank Drummer

OUT of a cell into this darkened space—

The end at twenty-five!

My tongue could not speak what stirred within me,

And the village thought me a fool.

Yet at the start there was a clear vision,

A high and urgent purpose in my soul

Which drove me on trying to memorize

The Encyclopedia Britannica!

Emily Sparks

WHERE is my boy, my boy—

In what far part of the world?

The boy I loved best of all in the school?—

I, the teacher, the old maid, the virgin heart,

Who made them all my children.

Did I know my boy aright,

Thinking of him as spirit aflame,

Active, ever aspiring?

Oh, boy, boy, for whom I prayed and prayed

In many a watchful hour at night,

Do you remember the letter I wrote you

Of the beautiful love of Christ?

And whether you ever took it or not,

My boy, wherever you are,

Work for your soul’s sake,

That all the clay of you, all of the dross of you,

May yield to the fire of you,

Till the fire is nothing but light!...

Nothing but light!

Tally's Blood "THANK YOU"

2008-11-27T16:00:00.000-08:00

“And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” (The Beatles)

Dear All,

Many of you know that Tally’s Blood was for me somewhat of a departure from the type of pretentious, arty stuff I usually do, both as a director and as an actor… But what an enchanting experience it was to work on this charming play with such a delightful team of people. A huge thank you each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart for everything that you brought to the last 2 months of hard slog. Your professionalism, your good humour, your patience and trust in me, your generosity, courage and talent added up to something even greater than the sum of all its parts. The warmth and affection you showed for each other radiated in waves out into the auditorium, and what a joy and a privilege it was for me to witness the tears and smiles of all those leaving the theatre at the end of each night, having been power-blasted with all that love-energy for 2½ hrs! :-) I like to think that the friendships that have been forged amongst us will grow beyond this experience- and perhaps it's this that will give me my most cherished memory of this happy time. Each one of you can afford to take enormous pride in all you did to make this production a truly magical experience- not just for me, but for hundreds and hundreds of people all over this city.

In love and deep gratitude,

Mark x

2008-11-27T15:14:00.000-08:00

As far back as I can remember I’ve been burdened with a deep-seated inferiority complex about my lack of intellect. This seems ridiculous to others who may be- on paper at least- less well qualified. Yet despite the nine O-levels, two A-levels, my good BA honours degree, and even that Distinction in Speech & Drama at Post Graduate level I still beat myself up for being thick. This stems from always feeling out of my depth as a child- treated by my parents and siblings, my schoolteachers and friends as if I was a bit soft in the head. I can now see that this was the impetus behind me studying so hard for all those years for all those bloody certificates and qualifications. I had a point to prove to ‘Them’, and to my self I suppose. And until relatively recently I have continued to flog myself to achieve some kind of academic status and credibility. And what a VAIN endeavour- in all the senses of that word! For what in the end does it all add up to? I have a career teaching others the same set of values, a career that extols the virtues of those silly academic qualifications. A career I have very little passion for any more.
I have a deep understanding and compassion for the academically challenged, but no sympathy at all for the lazy and wilfully ignorant who constitute the vast majority of my students. But, ironically enough, I reserve my most poisonous contempt for those who are gifted and lazy/ungrateful.. I earned all I have with blood, sweat and tears. I fucking worked for it without having any real natural aptitude. And yet I still find myself advocating the meaning of qualifications with no real faith in their importance- the chasing after the spurious and empty credibility of ‘decent grades’ and ultimately meaningless qualifications.

And yet here I sit in my study this evening, drafting an application for an MA in Acting Classical and Contemporary Text for the RSAMD. I ran out of space on the form listing all my qualifications and relevant experience. And yes, OK, it will be nice to have another piece of paper, assuming I get accepted on the course and do well enough; but- you know what?- for once in my life this is not why I am considering putting myself through the torture of formal education again. Because for once it isn’t fear of humiliation or failure that motivates me any more. It’s love.

And, yes, I know how just how lame that sounds. But these last two or three years I have begun to get in touch with transformations taking place at a very profound, ineffable level. I have found myself gradually shifting my focus away from the strivings of 'achievement' and egoic 'point scoring', and towards a far richer and more soulful- and actually quite self-effacing and humbling- perspective. And this is for me a paradigm shift. Of course to the outside eye I still look like I'm the same old me. But I’ve worked hard at finding a way through the fog of ‘adulthood’- a constructed identity that has grown quite dense around m. I've begun to value the importance of my latent gifts for connection with spirit- the child-like creative play where life has its true beginnings. “My Highest for His Best” has far less to do with being recognised for cleverness now than it ever has before. I have learned (un-learned?) to now be truly grateful for simple Passion and Devotion, to apply myself to the gifts of Kindness, of Faith to plain and untestable convictions. I know that far more than Knowledge and Understanding I seek Connection and Flow with my divine source- the Light, or the Seed, as we Quakers are wont to call it. Love. If I get accepted on this course it is not so I can improve my employment prospects. It's not so I can share my expertise with others in the classroom either. I am simply anticipating the unadulterated joy of expanding my consciousness at unplumbed levels, and most probably in ways I will never be able to fully articulate or justify to any one else. This will sound ridiculous to everyone else- especially other drama students and even the lecturers. I am looking to explore the profound union between my spirit and my art. But I can’t write that on my application form or I risk coming across as a time-waster/ wanker/ nutter. So I’m forced to trot out the predictable empty bollocks about 'augmenting my skils', 'enhancing my employment prospects', blah, blah, blah...

Utter shite of course. I don't actually care if they fail me.

No, this is something to do with becoming that ‘mystic without a monastery’ of which Caroline Myss speaks. (Actually, she was in Scotland for 3 days last week, lecturing at Findhorn and I would have loved to have gone along and met her if it hadn’t have been for Tally’s Blood.)
But right now it is much more important I know I am doing this for me…

For God.

And for Love. Pure and simple.
:-)

Farewell

2008-11-22T07:07:00.000-08:00

Last night of Tally's Blood tonight.

:-(

I am feeling sentimental and nostalgic already. But I have to ask myself what in the end have these two or three months of work actually meant? What’s been learned? What contribution has been made to the world, if any, with this Tally’s Blood?

Well, first of all, I guess I’ve finally understood that it is more important to cast folk who have an aptitude for getting on with other folk, rather than always the best individual talents. It has confirmed for me that people’s egos can and often do corrode the love that might otherwise generate and anoint truly beautiful work. To their credit this wonderful team of mine worked in an unstintingly ensemble fashion, very close to old Chekhov’s ideal I like to think, without any overweening egos getting in the way.

I have also learned that I can use my own experience and abilities as a director to forge deep personal connections between people, and so create uncomplicated joy and straightforward entertainment rather than experiments and artistic ‘interpretations’- my usual brand of grim, brow-furrowing, chin-stroking, serious ‘Art’. And that is actually OK!! The pretentious critics and arty snobs can get stuffed!!! We sold out every night; but that does NOT mean we ‘sold out’! There is absolutely no reason to feel ashamed when you consider the seeds of love and compassion sewn in those who have been involved.

I have learned that my dear Karen has a richer talent than even I realised before, making the work look so easy, and capable of moving many people to affectionate tears and laughter as Rosinella. She has made the most of the gift I gave her when I cast her in the role, and this fills me with such pride. She made the part her very own; and, as many others have said, it is difficult to think of anyone else who could play the role so perfectly. And of course Karen herself has had an absolute ball. I really couldn’t have done this show if she hadn’t agreed to play the role- and, not to put too fine a point on it, the success of the production is due to her- and Robert’s- experience, humanity, generosity of heart, patience and talent.

I seem to have rekindled faith in my own abilities as a director; and despite all the stresses and strains the last time I stood at the helm of a production I can afford to take some pride again in bringing out the best in performers.

As cheesy as it sounds, this cast have become like a family and I will miss them. They are definitely going to miss each other.

And ultimately it is this, more than anything else, which gives me the most satisfaction: the fact that I brought these people together and helped forge those personal, creative bonds and so bring about something just a little bit magical in the process.

PS … And I think our audiences loved it too! :-)

Tally's Blood 7

2008-11-15T04:30:00.000-08:00

I am overwhelmed with the response to Tally’s Blood. In all my 15 years at the Ramshorn- as an audience member/ actor/ director I have never known such vociferous and positive reaction to a show. It’s just astonishing the extraordinary levels of affection the actors are inspiring in those who come to see it. Every night the audience are in floods of tears and sniffles; there are warm gales of laughter, shrieks of delight and sympathetic “awwws” during the tender, sentimental moments; applause at the end of every single scene. Hormonal girls are even waiting at the stage door to pass on messages to the actors playing Hughie and Franco! And none of this is done ironically- which is surely saying something, given that the vast majority of the audience are hard-nosed teenagers. 35 of my own students came to see it last night and they were in raptures. I think they may have a little more respect for the advice i give them in the classroom now :-)

I know only too well that 15-18 year olds are, in many ways, perhaps the most difficult audience to please, even if they may not always (admittedly) be the most critically discerning. They can by turns be both cruelly cynical and sentimental, knowing and ignorant, enthusiastic and dismissive; yet I think it is a measure of our achievement that we have managed to pitch the show in such a way that we are able to appeal to the adolescent, whilst at the same time moving and engaging a more grown-up, theatre-literate demographic. This is because there are so many exquisite subtleties and nuances of observation to do with emotional psychology and the difficulty of love and human relationship in there too. Di Mambro’s writing does much of this, but it would be glaringly obvious to anyone if my production should somehow fall short of her vision of what the play should be in performance. My actors really are doing a fabulous job. I like to think she would find much to admire in our interpretation. I do hope she finds time to come and see it. I just hope the actors are not tempted to try 'to fix wot ain't broke' out of boredom, over-familiarity with the material or a desire to force growth. There are early signs this may be happening (-more of which below), and it must be stamped out now.

Some of the most positive reactions have come from adults, especially drama teachers. “Magical”, “wonderful”, “brilliantly directed”, “perfect casting”, “beautiful”, “the best show I’ve seen here”, “the best production I’ve ever seen”(!), “fantastic”, etc. They love the design, the acting, the choice of music, the direction, the composition of the blocking, and the clever use of set... etc. One middle-aged woman told me that she had seen several productions of this play over the years (where?) and ours was easily the best. The audience particularly warm to Hughie and Massimo’s characters; yet my Karen is attracting some of the best responses from the older and perhaps more astute and discerning members of the theatre-going public for her superbly judged reading of Rosinella Pedreschi. My friend Robert is particularly affecting too as her husband, Massimo. The pair of them are like twin pillars on which the rest of production rests.

The rest of the run is now completely sold out. And the whole cast and crew are lapping it up, of course! The theme of the play is Love, and so it seems perfectly in keeping that everyone involved- behind stage, on stage, FOH and audiences has been infected with that profound spiritual force too- not in a soppy way, but in a deep-rooted and powerful sense. Everyone concerned is really going to miss this show when it finishes. I couldn’t be more pleased. I’m now receiving several invitations from drama departments all over the west of Scotland, asking me to come as a guest speaker and talk about the job of directing.

But even now it is important that none of us grow complacent or cocky. I want the cast to keep the lovely ensemble feeling. There are early indications that the threatening shadows of ego-conflict are starting to loom, which India and I will need to keep a close eye on. Apparently there were some disagreements backstage after last night's show. India, Robert and Karen told me about them. Some actors (who must remain nameless) are making too much of their roles, trying to milk audience response with over-illustration and playing out- which tends to throw the production off kilter and steals focus from the thrust of the story while it places the emphasis on their acting. This is deathly, and must be resisted at all costs for the production to gel as a whole.

Ah, the perils of the Actor's Ego...!

I must be sure I manage these issues as sensitvely as I can, or the ensemble ethic could so quickly fracture and disintegrate. One of the main reason the play is such a success is because everyone involved has until now been so mutually supportive and trusting of each other. Without those precious and delicate bonds the whole thing might easily collapse like a house of cards. It seems my role is now less as 'Director' (the play is now up and running after all, and my job should be over) and more as 'Family Therapist'!

Me!?!! LOL

Tally's Blood 6

2008-11-04T15:33:00.000-08:00

I realised last night watching a stagger-through of Tally’s Blood just why I find the moment at the end of Act 1 so moving when Massimo returns from Canada. It is for a similar reason that I find the scene where Hughie is trying not to cry so moving. They both trigger the same emotional memory in me that reminds me of an episode from my very early childhood.

I was 3 years old and my mother, due to complications, had been in hospital during the last month of her pregnancy before giving birth to my sister, Katie. For some reason I had been forbidden by my father to visit mum during that time. Perhaps he thought it would upset or confuse me. Dad and grandma had looked after my brother, Julia and me during that time. Eventually of course mum came home. I can still vividly recall standing at the top of the stairs as my dad carried mum’s bag from the car, my grandma held the door open, and my mother appeared looking radiant and strangely different with my new baby sister in her arms. I can remember mum saying to grandma how wonderful it was to be home and then noticing me as I stood at the top of the stairs looking down on all this. My mum smiled hesitantly... “Hello, Mark. Did you miss me? Come and say hello to your new baby sister,” I feigned diffidence, knowing that this was a rite of passage I did not want to make, for as soon as I acknowledged this new arrival the whole family dynamic would change forever and I would have to become grown up and responsible as I had been warned. It would become somehow real, and things would never ever be the same again.

My mum’s expectations of a sentimental homecoming were dashed. I remember she looked so forlorn and disappointed as she looked up at me. She was heart-broken I hadn’t run down the stairs towards her and hugged her with all my might. I overheard her whisper to my father and grandmother, “He doesn’t remember me.”

Of course I did. Of course I remembered who she was! But she had changed, and for some reason in some deep part of me I couldn’t help resenting this. I hadn’t been consulted about this new addition to the family. I was irrelevant. But I knew it would be unfair to take it out on this tiny baby, and the only person I could take it out on was my mother. She said she would always love me, that she had no favourites and I then I would put this to the test.

I had been a happy, affectionate and effusive child until this point. It wasn’t long after this day that I became haunted with recurring nightmares which continued into my adolescence, as I strived to maintain this stiff, unbending visage of emotional restraint and indifference, a stiff-upper-lipped mask of ‘bravery’ which my mother had told me was the measure of adulthood and maturity- the placing others’ needs before ones own. This was the genesis of one of the most destructive and hideously subtle reptiles in my First Mansion. I was being forced to grow up too early, and follow the example my mother set for “adulthood” which seemed to mean resisting one’s natural impulses and emotions; sacrificing one’s own emotional needs and who one really was in order to conform to the onerous and ‘inevitable’ expectations placed on you by the world to be other than one’s true self.
As far as I could see, although I could barely say my own name let alone articulate any of this the rules seemed to be as follows:

Don’t cry.
Don’t be jealous.
Don’t be “silly” (i.e. sensitive).
Always put others’ feelings, especially your younger brothers and sisters before your own.
Don’t seek attention.
Be seen and not heard.
And, (perhaps most wounding of all) suffer in silence.

Inwardly I was not at all ready for these twisted notions of Catholic sainthood (Was I ever??!!). And so it was that I instinctively protested in an insidious and passive-aggressive way. Of course I had never even heard of the phrase passive-aggressive then (- and I suppose in the early 1960s this pop-psychology phrase probably had yet to be coined!), but that didn’t mean I didn’t know how to manipulate others through such means. Now i look back on this I realise what a conniving wee bastard I really was! After all- I had ben tutored in such tactics at the feet of a true master- my own mother. Oh the irony of that! I decided in that very moment that I would use this opportunity to give her a dose of her own medicine and to pretend that I really didn’t remember her. When I sensed she was upset by this I remained where I was on the landing, peering through the banisters. I didn’t come running down to her, I just stared at her as if she were a stranger to me. To her I seemed withdrawn and taciturn, even afraid- which she interpreted as me having forgotten who she was (…How ridiculous! Of course I hadn’t forgotten who she was! My mother and father had always branded me as soft in the head, not very bright, and never granted me any real intelligence at all- but I wasn’t completely daft- or at least only when it suited me to be so!!).

I recall I got this strange feeling of going hot and cold at the same time- a surge of dark power coursing through my legs and chest. The plan I hatched and put into operation there and then was to thereafter withdraw all voluntary displays of fondness towards my mother- and only to embrace or kiss her when she asked me to, standing aside to allow my brothers and sisters to claim the lion’s share of her affection. In retrospect of course this was terribly cruel of me and upset my mother a great deal I suspect- and to be absolutely honest it hurt me a great deal too- but that was precisely why I chose to do it- BECAUSE I KNEW it would break her heart that I had locked away all signs of emotional dependence on her.

She'd hurt me by claiming to know how I felt, and this would be my revenge. She was turning this into some silly drama by pretending that I didn’t know who she was- well then, so be it. If that was the game, then alright I’ll play by your rules, mummy, and we’ll see who backs down first. Why should she assume that because she was my mother that she should have an automatic entitlement to my thoughts, my love, my identity? Hadn’t she been the one to tell me that growing up was about breaking free of ones parents and making ones own way in the world? OK then, so be it. This little boy’s heart had longed for attention which I felt was going to be denied me forever more, and lavished instead on this new arrival, my sister Katie, and my other younger siblings. All mum and dad’s time and energy from now onwards would be taken up with caring for my three younger siblings; my needs would remain secondary to theirs- perhaps rightly so one might think; but to my 3 year old mind this was sickeningly unjust. I didn’t feel ready to be abandoned like this. I would take charge of this and do it myself.

This was a defining event in my early life, and marked the beginning of my individuation process as a nascent personality, and generally fucked-up ego. And perhaps even more interesting and significant than this was the fact that this early episode was in fact the very first time in my life I ever remember pretending to feel something other than what I truly felt inside. What I mean is, this was the first time I ever ACTED! It perhaps set the mark for everything in my life that came after. Inwardly, what I felt was a deep sense of loss and betrayal- but I chose to mask this with a frosty and cold rebuttal- a deliberately constructed charade that I didn’t remember my own mother. She had made this possible, and I wanted her to live with the consequences of having created this situation. After all, if mummy was always right- simply because she gave birth to me- and if, as she also claimed, she knew me far better than I could know my own self, and could see into my inner thoughts- well OK, so be it; I will behave as if that were true- and then watch her suffer the cruel consequences of her assumptions. My acting became about blocking her from seeing my true feelings. My damaged ego was fuelled by an unconscious but toxic envy of my younger brothers and sisters, and a naked fear of rejection by my parents and a rejection of this new regime of self-sacrifice that was being imposed on me. I was going to show her the consequences of her arrogant and false assumptions, and see how much she liked being rejected by me. Of course I am describing something I could never really properly think through at the time. It is only now I can see what happened in that instant.

The reason I mention all of this is because there are two moments in Tally’s Blood that, for me, are somehow deeply redolent of that primal scene. One is where the 6 year old, Hughie, is explaining to Lucia that his mother needs him to be the big, brave man in the family now his father has died, and has been forbidden to cry.

And the other moment that moves me even more deeply comes just before the interval. Massimo Pedreschi returns home after 4-years' incarceration in a POW camp for enemy aliens in Canada. He arrives at the door, and he greets Rosinella, his wife, and then turns to his erstwhile daughter, Lucia (now aged 10). Lucia stares and waits awkwardly at the other side of the room, reticent and cautious, as Massimo extends his arms to her. But she seems not to recognise him- he has lost a lot of his hair; he looks tired, older, thinner.

"Lucia...?" he asks, searchingly.

Lucia pauses and then takes one tentative step forward… and then another, before she begins to accelerate, and then finally launches herself into Massimo’s arms as he lifts her high off the floor. The music swells to a crescendo and the lights dim to blackout on this tearful family tableau. All rather cheesy you might well say... But this sequence is so deeply poignant for me because it contains echoes and parallels with that episode when I was three, offering a kind of evocation and artistic reconciliation of my own past.

And the reason I think I wanted to direct this play is because these two moments move me so much. They are so redolent of my own 'primal scene'. I hope it isn't that I am in any way using this project as some kind of self-indulgent psychodrama workshop, but these moments certainly do offer me the potential for deep inner soul repair, and psychological healing.

Emotional and sexual repression, matriarchal control, Catholic exclusivity, that whole sorry paradigm of 'sanctification through suffering' and the denial of affection are all woven deep into my directorial interpretation of this play- and these themes are very recognisable to me and reminiscent of my own childhood.

Art as therapy anyone?

Tally's Blood 5

2008-10-27T16:07:00.000-07:00

"I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of the imagination. What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not - for I have the same idea of all our passions as of love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential beauty ... O for a life of sensations rather than thoughts." John Keats

A fortnight to go before we open. Eek! And it’s all come around so quickly. Christina and her army of set builders along with the cast and other crew will be coming in for the get-in on Sunday lunchtime, hammering, screwing, bracing and gluing. Ursula- a reformed character apparently- will be hanging our lights; Alan will operate sound (and although this is likely to make our cue-to-cue tech run drag on twice as long as it should, he’s solid and reliable fella and I know we’ll be able to trust him). Lighting desk duties will have to be shared between Karen Barclay and Francesca (at last a genuine Tally is a part of this production!!). Sandra, now back from her holiday in New York, and Lorraine, now finished with working for Susan’s White House Murders, will be rummaging in the Ramshorn store and various second hand shops over the next ten days ferreting out 40’s and 50’s hats, bags and costumes. It’ll be thrilling to see it all come together. Debbie has managed to source gas masks and old ginger boxes. Karen’s sister had two or three cornettis to choose from for the Bridget character. Debs and Linzi are doing a fabulous job as the stage management team too. And I cannot tell you how wonderful it was to learn Robert has a contact that can run up a set of Pedreschi logo white aprons for the cast. Dee is being a very patient jive choreographer- great to see her at work with Hughie and Lucia on the Blue Suede Shoes jive sequence. And of course India, my ‘glam assistant’, - although she is busy rehearsing Bruce’s radio dramas this week and won’t be with us again until Sunday- has been real pillar of strength, managing all the rehearsal scheduling, emailing and phoning round and all the general spade work I have neither the time nor inclination for. But in the end it will be the actors who will make this piece really fly. Yesterday the hair and make-up lady, Sharon, came into rehearsal to see a run-through of Act 1 for the first time. She hadn’t read the play and actually knew nothing about it at all. By the end of the first half she was sobbing her little heart out! God knows what she’ll be like when she sees what happens in Act 2! She didn’t strike me as the soppy type, but this is a very sentimental, heart-warming play, and it’s a great relief to know that it is not just India, the stage management team or myself it has this effect on. You’d have to be an extremely hard-hearted bastard not to be moved to tears by it I think.

I'm really looking forward to seeing it with the audiences. Everyone who has worked on this deserves it to be a really wonderful success.

:-)

Tally's Blood 4

2008-10-16T18:56:00.000-07:00

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I spent all of yesterday compiling the sound and music CDs. With some research and with Sarah’s kind help I’ve managed to compile a really nice aural accompaniment to the action. Music and sound effects are such key elements to creating atmosphere and nostalgia in this , and I think it will really add an extra dimension to the run on Monday. I'll ask Linzi to operate the deck.
The acting performances continue to grow- inevitably some faster than others, but with just under 4 weeks to go until we open I am feeling delighted with the progress we've already made.
Karen, Jennifer 1, Michael, John, and David are all now completely off-book. Jennifer 2 (Lucia) lags behind slightly the rest- but forgivably, as she has been busy performing in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest this past fortnight, and has only been able to attend weekend rehearsals for Tally’s Blood. However she is so well cast, even though I do say so myself, and is charming and very believable, even as a 5-11 year old girl in Act 1. Throughout the play, her relationship with Michael’s Hughie is very sweet but never remotely sickly, and it’s beautifully but effortlessly modulated. Michael too has invented some delectable little details for Hughie. It’s never laboured or over-stated though, and along with Jennifer 2 he is adding more and more delicately understated but highly effective physical and vocal touches to his characterisation. The audience will really connect with his character.

The only member of the cast I remain slightly concerned about at this stage is Robert (Massimo). Having had the pleasure of working with him on several previous occasions I know he will eventually find it, but Massimo is outside his usually playing range, and he is floundering a bit right now. Massimo needs to be comic, light, touching and warm. Robert seems disinclined or unable to learn the lines, and appears ill at ease with his own work. Of course, he has other things on his mind, having discovered last Monday that he’s unlikely to be able to continue with the university course he was so enjoying because he has been refused student loans- in which case maybe it’s perfectly understandable he comes in looking preoccupied and weighed down by stuff. The trouble is his current disposition really doesn’t go with the optimistic and spirited Massimo at all. I really want Robert to get much more fun out of Massimo, if only to make up for the shittiness of his own life outside rehearsal. I was relieved to see that it appeared to make a perceptible difference to his work the other night when I directed him to look for opportunities in the script to smile more. When Robert relaxes he radiates such warmth, but then he’ll relapse into melancholy again just when the scene needs another hearty injection of cheeriness. Robert still appears nervous and uneasy- ungrounded- as he constantly transfers his weight (Standing or sitting- he looks, quite literally, shifty!), and isn’t really finding a true fit with this avuncular, jolly character of whom it is said repeatedly everybody likes. It may just be he isn’t used to playing comedy, but he definitely comes across as too dejected and down-in-the-dumps for the positive archetype Massimo is meant to personify. Robert has shown me his Psychological Gesture of expansiveness for his character and it's very close to what I want from him, but I intend to have him explore and develop it further by irradiating it with a range of qualities such as Joy, Largesse, Honesty, Sunshine, Passion and Mirth. I do love working with him though. He has such a dry and sardonic wit, a smokescreen for a sensitive, kind and magnanimous nature. He buys us all sweets and biscuits and who wouldn’t love him for that ? :-)

Jennifer, as Bridget Devlin, is just great to work with. She takes direction so well. She is like an acting sponge, soaking up everything I suggest to her, and so delighted when I suggest certain nuances which she eagerly incorporates with subtle facial expressions that transmit many-levelled, emotional complexity and insight. How satisfying she is obviously thinking deeply about and working so hard on developing her part away from rehearsal. She has such sound creative instincts, and she absolutely loves her part. She’s just a real pleasure to work with. I can’t wait to see the scenes she has with Rosinella when they are performed in front of the full houses because I know the predominantly young audiences will really connect with Bridget’s tragic emotional trajectory. Jennifer makes her journey compelling.

John is also doing good work as Franco. What John lacks in experience he more than makes up for in stage charm and good looks. He too is an eager student. I do wish he was a better singer and dancer, but then the schoolgirls in the audience are going to love him anyway. He reminds me of a young Paul McCartney to look at. He needs to articulate with slightly more care and project his voice more in the intimate scenes with Bridget.

David has made Luigi his own and his comic timing of the scene with him, Rosinella and Hughie in Italy is a delight. Each time they run it now they find something to add that makes me laugh more. It’s one of my favourite scenes in the play, and I never expected it to entirely work when I first read it. David has the opposite problem to John in that he tends to over-project, but he takes direction well and I am confident that he will have adjusted this the next time he is in rehearsal.

Oh and then of course there’s Karen. What can I say? I may be biased but I love being able to work with my wife again- for the first time in about a decade I think. Accusations of favouritism and nepotism from those who auditioned for the part of Rosinella and didn’t get it will prove utterly, utterly groundless. She is so very funny in the role. She manages to balance Rosinella’s ugly and unattractive qualities and attitudes with a cathartic, livid energy that is actually very satisfying to watch. It seems odd to say this but this Rosinella’s actually at her most loveable when she is her most bitter, twisted and racist! Her hybrid Glaswegian-Italian accent is perfect. Her timing is just wonderful. I cannot tell you how relieved and delighted I am she agreed to play the role for me, and how fantastic it is to know she is having such an enjoyable time. I hope that directors and agents will come and see her in this and finally give her natural talent the chance to flourish in other leading roles. She amazes me with how she manages to make it look so easy and effortless.

I still don’t have a costume or a lighting designer, or any technical operators for the desk. We are also short of folk to build Christina’s set. These issues are starting to concern me a little, but it will come together, it always does. We have a production meeting on Sunday.

I can’t wait to see its effect on audiences. We have made such astonishingly rapid progress I have to trust we haven’t peaked too early! It’s very early days perhaps, but I think we may just have a hit on our hands! I am to say the least very, very proud of what we are doing.

Love and Giving

2008-10-15T09:52:00.000-07:00

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not Love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not Love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not Love, it profiteth me nothing."
(1 Corinthians 13)

I have not written here for a while . My spirit has been hibernating I think, plus I have been busy of course with rehearsals for Tally's Blood.

What follows is really going to be just a vomited random stream of consciousness, maybe a sort of prayer, a snapshot of where my mind/heart/soul is 'at' right now. It's no doubt heavily influenced by my reading of Carolyn Myss' Entering the Castle and Anatomy of the Spirit, James Hollis' The Middle Passage, lots of poetry and of course Michael Chekhov.

Choosing to follow the Light does not mean you will be able to avoid darkness, but you must never seek the darkness or go out of your way to suffer just so you can either learn, or even unlearn. The way of light is the one that will lead to your ultimate goal. If you are in darkness it may well not be your fault; and yet, on the other hand, it might be! This is for you to pray about- but there are always choices available. Those choices are best made in the quietude of contemplation, that's all. You are alive, ergo you will suffer pain- it's absolutely unavoidable. Accept that, and carry on. This might scare you, but you must face it down. Carolyn Myss has made me realise that sometimes I do attract suffering and chaos into my life as a way of getting personal space- illness comes, separation from what I love, feeling blocked etc. But this is the way life and God teaches compassion- in the grace of solitude that suffering brings with it, for even loneliness is not without its subtle gifts and blessings and opportunities. And remember you always survive and cope. Always. Fear is, in time, transformed to joy. You eventually accept the lesson with grace and move on stronger, wiser and more compassionate than before into new life. "Be patient, be patient," He whispers. "Wait, just wait; and listen... Just listen."

I often get an image of God, where He is holding me with a tenderness and intense energy that wants to squeeze me tight like a tiny baby but must handle me so very gently as he tells me how beloved I am, treasured beyond measure. Love streams toward you constantly and you remain completely oblivious and unaware of it most of the time! Any self-blame, blame of others, irritation and hatreds, any criticism of yourself or others- spoken or unspoken is nothing to do with your divinely created soul or God. It is only ego. Resist it.

The thing about the greatest artists is that they were not- as they are so often caricatured- narcissistic, jealous, vindictive, egotistical, vain, attention-seeking monsters. Van Gogh, William Blake, Michael Chekhov, Emily Bronte, Shakespeare, Rembrandt; these individuals were full of love, of kindness, the quintessence of disciplined and altruistic devotion, surrendering their entire selves to something far far greater than mere self. Acceptance, fulfillment, nurturing affection were their predominant characteristics.
Most of them suffered unbearably, and endured such rejection and prejudice and ignorance but it never was used as excuse to say- "OK, I'm not going to do this any more; just let me teach for South Lanarkshire Council..."! No, they felt compelled to give, give, give the only way they knew how. You choosing NOT to emulate them, is egoistic because it is false humility. If you are not aiming to do the same as them then you have no real right to call yourself an artist. It would be a denial of God's perfect vision for you. These artists' connection to the divine was so deeply embedded in their natures that they never wanted for anything else but to remain connected to their Source. And the more they tried to empty themselves the fuller they became- like eternal spring of the sweet water of divine love- bubbling up to the surface and still doing so generations after they left us. You want this too.
We are all potentially just as capable of creating the same exquisite beauty as these geniuses in many unique ways .
Your mission (should you decide to accept it!) is to unlearn all the habits and the obstructions you have put in your way and forgive yourself in order to achieve oneness with your Source again.

Yes, passionate devotion to Truth represents the highest attitude to adopt for your acting, teaching and directing at this time. And agape is the best way to upgrade this energy to an ever-higher vibration. Look to nature, look to the heart-truths of what that teaches you. Take time to meditate carefully on it, not at a superficial level but at a deeper spiritually-connected level. Never just go by appearances but allow the imagination to really work with it and see that the process of creation is everywhere in the sights, sounds and even smells of nature and how God constantly feeds your own understanding of the artistic process through it. If you can't feel Him or sense Him then you need to clean your glasses! Nature reconnects you to your divine source- the trees in the park and the flowers, the grass, the birds, the insects, the animals, the earth all talk. Put your roots into the soil and draw up energy from the heart of the earth beneath you. Breathe in the sky and realise how richly blessed you truly are. It will always give you what you are looking for whenever you may feel blocked, or if God should seem absent or far away today. Nature is a gift that will keep on giving. Prise your heart open wider. Wider! Dwell on nature's beauty, its power and majesty; its holiness. Its preciousness and infinite intricacy, its patterns of perfection and plurality are sublime teachers. A kaleidoscopic symphony of colours, hues, sounds, a symphony of odours and textures surrounds you at all times. See it as God might see it and know that He's in charge of all of it, and it's all there to be inherited by you in any given instant. Ask yourself then,” Why would He not be able to find you and help you create with Him if He can do all this?" He hasn't left you stranded: He's always with you. Let Him meet you wherever you are. Succumb and be ravished by the verdant, fecund majesty all around you. Breathe it in deep, until you are one with it; until it and your Source are one with you.

Then go back to the work, fully renewed.

A prepared actor becomes surrounded by a radiant aura, invisible to the naked eye but sensed by the intuitive and the attuned spectator. This aura bathes the actor in a charisma, an energy that electrifies and thrills us. It comes from being present, fully present in the moment, in a state of grace and readiness to give- to keep on giving- in Love.

But as an actor you often find it difficult to sustain full connection. Moreover, the search for a formula that will fill in the missing pieces will remain a fruitless one until you acknowledge that you actually have the ability to heal yourself if only you will take authority in your own life, have the courage to follow what your inner voice is telling you moment by moment. You have finally heard your still inner voice say to you, “Get some acting training”, after opting not to listen for such a long time because you didn’t want to have to put your teaching career on hold and spend money learning from someone else. You chose to block out the voice within because it meant accepting a daunting, humbling challenge, being led away from the beaten track, requiring the difficult admission of uncertainty- “I don’t know this… I need some help… I am lost… I'm scared.” Your pride and laziness are always wrapped up in very 'reasonable' excuses. But reason, reason, reason cannot- cannot- produce miracles! Reason cannot comprehend, still less produce moments of sublime beauty and grace. It is no match and certainly no substitute for the irrational power and immensity of Love to create new worlds, or to usher in the age of the Ideal Theatre. You need to give up the blaming, the questionings, the shaming, the denial, the excuses, the human neediness that characterises the egoic response to failure. It is now time to unseat reason (and when I say this I don’t mean just choose to be reckless- not that kind of UNreason!), and allow God to be your guide and compass. You must cede control and allow reason to step aside, and so discern what the heart of God is communicating to you. And then just do it. To the vast majority of people this is just madness, but to a true artist it is the only way. Genius has the guts to follow and obey the inner voice. In years to come the reasons for the guidance given may become clear, but for now it is vital just to trust that you know the direction you must walk, but not your destination. Otherwise you will die here waiting to be given a map that will never materialise. Keep moving in the direction God is pointing you to go, and trust that eventually you will find life and the living springs once more.

The other voice that complains and whinges to God- “You owe me. I did this for you… I did my exercises, studied for years, I learned my lines... I prayed to be able to serve you to the best of my ability… I love you, therefore you owe me” will keep you wandering in circles. You harbour the unconscious expectation that God has to be reasonable, that as long as you give Him what he asks of you you are entitled to something back. No. Your duty to God is to serve him no matter what the price, and to be willing to keep on giving, giving, giving until you're empty. His perfect wisdom has something to teach you in the anticipated desert experience, but you will not learn that lesson as long as you continue looking only for the answers in places you have already been. "I need Equity minimum... I deserve star billing... I deserve to hit that rich vein of inspiration after all the vocal exercises and meditation, prayer and Psychological gesture work I’ve done..." No. NO. Miracles are not 'fair' and certainly not reasonable!

But it’s time to grow up and just accept that life is never fair. You are not a character in a fairy tale, but never be ashamed of your calling, your vocation. You are a son of God. Give all of yourself to radiating compassion and devotion to your Source. There is no room now for yielding to fear or doubt anymore. Acting at its best replaces fear with love; judgment with compassion; separation with unity. That is your calling as an artist, and is perhaps a good definition of your deep soul purpose as a teacher and writer too. This is a very profound form of healing, and it is best achieved when you call upon the Higher Self. love transforms, love liberates and inspires, love enters into the object of its love and sees deeply, love forgives, it vindicates and encourages, it absolves and blesses us and its object. It turns its object into a thing of beauty.

Juliette Binoche, interviewed on TV last night by Alan Yentob immediately following her first night performance (alongside the Bangladeshi dancer Akram Khan) of In-I at the National Theatre, was asked if she could sum up her feelings about the work. She replied, “It’s all about giving. Love and giving.”

Uh huh.

Tally's Blood 3

2008-10-01T15:14:00.000-07:00

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"I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy."
Rabindranath Tagore

I have been listening in the car to Michael Chekhov's lectures on CD over the last few days, and what comes across to me so vividly, hearing him speak- much more so than in his writings in fact- is the true significance, depth and sheer beauty of his highly practicable spiritual wisdom. What he called 'the Love thing', his radical ideas of Giving ("...giving! Giving!!") and the 'expansion of the Soul' through the Imagination underpin his entire philosophy. The concepts of the Higher Ego and the transformative power of Divine Love were woven into every single aspect of his teaching. What a disservice the editors, critics, teachers, academics and biographers do when they neglect to appreciate the importance of those spiritual ideas to the maturation of the actor's development- opting instead to focus their attention on Chekhov's technical discoveries alone! Wonderful as they are, his legacy is far, far richer than just the Psychological Gesture, Physical Centres and the Imaginary Body exercises for which he is still most famous. Chekhov demonstated such extraordinary courage venturing as he did to share the 'crazy', 'simple' idea of Love and its primary importance to the art of the actor, especially with a deeply cynical and no doubt utterly bemused Hollywood of the mid-50s. I know he loathed the name of 'Mystic' being attached to him, but he is the closest the theatre has ever come to having one as their patron saint.

Tally's Blood is very obviously all about Love. That's really what attracted me to the play in the first place. Family love, friendship, romantic love, patriotic love, love of God, love of the past, etc. As I conduct the relaxation and psycho-physical warm-up exercises each day I coax the actors to focus on something or someone that their character happens to deeply love and then to express that love in an ardent PG. I ask them what as actors they most love about their work? and then get them to imagine inwardly a multiplication and an immense expansion of that love- connecting and merging it with the love their character has. The quality of the work produced is very, very high from those members of the cast who are willing to yield to this strange exercise. I am convinced that this simple shift and opening-up in our thinking can transform the humblest artist into a genius. I have been very moved by what I have seen from the actors already and we have only had eight rehearsals,. Progress has been rapid, and working with them is a joy. I'd like to think they are feeling as positive and excited as I am.

The Right Choice

2008-09-27T06:37:00.000-07:00

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My Ego tends to drown out my still small voice even in prayer and meditation. My own egoic avoidance/distraction strategies typically include
Panic-mongering, and/or Flattery

-when it comes to major life-choices.

The question of whether I give up teaching and go back to acting, or just stay put is still troubling me. My ego keeps butting in; either warning me I will suffer financially/spiritually if I make the 'wrong decision', or it tries to convince me what I am doing is really great, how much I deserve recognition, approval, money, success, blah, blah. Discernment and inner alignment becomes impossible as my Ego just can’t seem to keep its trap shut. I can't get clear reception because of the static interference.

Freedom or service…? Creativity or security…? Love of art, or mature, responsible living…? Accountable to my talent? To God? To my heart… ? Common sense???
Aaaahhhgghhh!!!

It feels far TOO important right now I choose wisely :-( I guess what I really mean is I desperately need objectivity and detachment (if that's not a total paradox!) from my fear and my vanity, and be capable of resting quite content with whatever my heart/soul finally decides.

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