Favourite Inspirational Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And- (of course!) ...

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

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

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.

Dealing with Inner Daemons (Part III)

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

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

2. What do i not do so well?

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

Respondent #1

What you do well:

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

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


What you don’t do well

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

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

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


Respondent #2

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

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

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

Respondent #3

Things you don’t do well:

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

Things you do well:

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dealing with Inner Dæmons (Part II)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s what I came up with:

MY AFFIRMATIONS

I am a PHENOMINALLY gifted actor.

I am likable... lovable!

People love to be around me.

I am a generous spirit.

I am extremely knowledgeable and experienced.

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

I have fun.

I have the answers within me.

I am balanced.

I am patient.

I am so funny!

I have a wonderful, life-giving laugh.

I am confident…

… because I can afford to be!

I can laugh at myself.

I have plenty of time.

I have a sense of proportion.

I am living my life healthily and fully.

I am an extraordinary person.

I radiate light wherever I go.

I have the right to have fun.

I have the right to be wrong sometimes

I don’t need to always follow my rules!

I speak up when something bothers me.

I am intelligent.

I learn much from others.

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

I am allowed to be child-like.

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

I have the right to be heard.

I bring light, laughter and joy wherever I go.

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

People admire me.

I am always enough!

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

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

Ah! Progress!!

:-D

Dealing with Inner Dæmons (Part I)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s that list.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Love blinds you.”

“Love wounds.”

“Love hurts.”

“…Avoid it.”

“You have a right to be moody”

“You are obliged to be moody.”

“You moody, difficult fucker!”

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

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

“Love crucifies.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“All the best artists are messed up.”

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

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

“Always obey the director, like a professional.”

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

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

“Keep the personal out of it.”

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

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

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

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

“Give it all away… Especially your happiness.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Humourlessness is proof of your integrity and commitment.”

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

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

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

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

“Nothing and nobody should matter more than acting.”

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

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

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

“Amateur equals shit.”

“Your inevitable failure is unpardonable.”

“Working till you collapse builds your stamina.”

“Pain and suffering is character building.”

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

“’Concentrate’ means blot everything else out.”

“Flexibility is your fatal flaw.”

“Rest is for wimps.”

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

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

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

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

“Never admit weakness.”

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

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

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

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

“You NEED me.”

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

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

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

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

“The audience despise you for failing them.”

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

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

“It was good? You got lucky.”

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

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

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

“Genius is a curse.”

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

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

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

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

“You are deluding yourself.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Martyr yourself."

"Be Mr Spock when you drop your character."

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

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

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

What do I do well in the rehearsal room?

and

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

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

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

Phew.

:-)

Titus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But, hey, upwards and onwards!!


“For it now is done.”