- 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.

Natural High

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The scales fell from my eyes.

BINGO!!!!!

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

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

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

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

The experience was quite literally unforgettable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And loving it.

Glad Tidings

I received two wonderful bits of news yesterday.

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

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

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

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

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

And the second exciting bit of news...?

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

"Well let me think. Yes."

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

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

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

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

Not Dead Time: LIVING Time!!!

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

Mr Crocker Harris is 'retired' from teaching

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

Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exciting times.

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

Max in The Homecoming (with Ronnie McCann) 2005

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

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

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

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

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings!

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

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

Mr Crocker-Harris in The Browning Version 1997

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

Titus in Titus Andronicus (2000)

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

Spooner in No Man's Land (2005)

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

Herbert in The Talented Mr Ripley (2005)

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

"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

:-)

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

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

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

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

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

For God.

And for Love. Pure and simple.
:-)

Tally's Blood 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Me!?!! LOL