Acting and Spiritiuality- A Request for Help with Research

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

This Is Where I'm Coming From

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...

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

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.

Dealing with Inner Daemons (Part III)

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)

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

Titus

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.”

Only Once

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

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!!!

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.

Q

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

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.

Flurry

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

Audition Speech 1

'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

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

Actor Agape

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)