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

There's No I in Failure

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'."

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.

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

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...!

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.

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?

Nae Pressure Then...?

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...

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.

So why Drama School...?

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

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

"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 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!

"It takes 20 years to become a master actor"

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

:-)