Friday, in the Daily Acting Workout, I felt much better, much more prepared to deal with the Level II students. In Thursday's Meisner class the focus had been "Have an opinion about everything." It's okay to disagree with an observation someone makes about you. If someone says, "You're sad." and you're not, you repeat once, "I'm sad." but you can use your tone of voice and body language to disagree, and the other person may catch that and say, "You're not sad." or if they don't, on the next repeat you can say, "I'm not sad." And that along with the knowledge that I'm supposed to stay focused on the other person, I felt much more prepared to take on the level 2 students, to defend myself against their attacks, to stand up for myself instead of being at the mercy of their observations. And we didn't do any energy exercises, so it was all good.
A new exercise we did was one person stands in the middle of a circle and repeats with one person, but everyone in the circle repeats what the outside person says, and anyone in the circle can change it at any time. Three more women from my class joined the workout for the first time, and they had the same reaction I did the first day, feeling attacked. The difference was, M. kept stepping in and rescuing them. The repeat would being going "You're nervous" -- "I'm nervous" -- "You're nervous" -- "I'm nervous", and you could see each of them becoming more agitated by this, especially with the entire circle repeating, "You're nervous." back to them. Then M. would change the repeat and say, "You're calming down." And the women loved it. (He was a cop up until a week before we started Boot Camp, so he's still got the knight in shining armour thing going on.) And it actually pissed me off that he would do that. I know it's really wonderful of him to help them out in that way, but it is completely not the point of the exercise. The point of the exercise is to observe the other person, and call what you see in their behavior, not to psychologically lead them and rescue them. So when it was my turn to be in the center of the circle, I don't remember what we were repeating about, but M. steps up and says in my ear, "You're beautiful." Which was completely unrelated to whatever I had just been repeating about with the other person. Now I know why he said that to me. His intention was to boost my self-esteem because of the conversation we had on Thursday. He's in a committed relationship, so there was no other motive behind what he said other than that. And I appreciate what he was doing, but in that moment during the exercise, it really pissed me off. My first thought was, "Don't you f-ing do that to me." But I turned to him and repeated, "I'm beautiful." and I tried to be nice about it. (If you want to be nice, work in customer service.)
In our regular Meisner class, as I watched the other students in the repetition exercises, it just suddenly hit me what a vast difference there is between us and the level 2 students. In the Daily Acting Workout, the repetitions between the level 2 students are so alive and vibrant, and in our class, it's like pulling fingernails to find the smallest spark of life. Some people are doing better than others, I can see Audra, who has been in the daily workout class the last three days with me, is starting to come to life as well, be more vibrant in her repetitions.
I was one of the last people to get up to do the exercise, and I was paired with D. Now the thing about D. is he's one of the one's that has been completely in his head, and didn't seem to understand how to get out. So I decided when I went up there that I was going to do whatever it took to get him to connect with me, get him out of his head, because I was so freaking bored watching the fingernail pulling from the rest of the class. Now I know I probably made a mistake in that, going in to the exercise with an agenda, and I was bringing in the past as well, a pre-conceived notion of how he would behave in the exercise. But I allowed myself to be completely open and vibrant, and D. actually really opened himself up as well, it really surprised me. I said, "You're open." He said, "You make it easy." Next thing I know, he came over and hugged me, and then he held both of my hands in his. I said, "You're connected." He said, "We're connected." I repeated, "We're connected." He said, "You like that." I couldn't help but bounce and laugh, "Yes, I like that!" He said, "You like that" and I said, "You're happy", and he said, "We're happy together." And I looked down, there was a lump in my throat. I tried to sing the words "So happy together", but I choked at the end. I couldn't meet his eyes. Mark stopped the exercise there, and D. stepped away from me. I felt insecure, embarrassed, and I tried to listen to Mark's critique, but found pushing at a spot on the floor with my foot much more absorbing. All of Mark's feedback was for D., after he finished speaking I made eye contact with Mark, and he said "thank you" so we sat down. M. was sitting behind me, and immediately he leaned forward and whispered, "Are you okay?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Are you sure?" So I stopped and listened to myself for a moment. I realized I was trembling, and that I had a lot going on emotionally inside. I replied to M., "Yeah, I'm okay, I think it was just more than I'm used to." Because I haven't had that close a connection with someone in a very long time. I took a couple of deep breaths and started to let it all go. By the end of class 10 minutes later, I felt normal again. I realized that the connect I had made with D., him coming over to give me a hug and hold my hands, that really frightened me, because before that exercise we hadn't really said more than two words to each other. And then as I was driving home, I also realized that what he'd said about "We're happy together" had touched that painful place I keep finding. And that I had not been intellectually aware of what was happening to me in the moment, because I remained focused on him. And I'm not sure that's a good thing. I mean, it seemed to be a good thing at the time, because I was able to let it go much more easily afterwards than if I had known exactly what was happening. But it seems to me that it is important to know what impulses and reactions are going on inside of yourself even as you keep your focus on the other person. I'll have to ask Mark about that next week.
The Don Juan Project is still running, and when I went to the theater that night, I couldn't stand the thought of being hidden again. I usually don't say much to anyone there, there were a couple of people I'd say "Hi" to if they happened to walk through, but mostly I just kept to myself, but after a week of Meisner, and learning to connect with people, feeling so alive, the thought of hiding again was unbearable. So I just started saying "Hi" to everyone as they arrived, I couldn't contain myself, I was bouncing off the walls. "Hi, how are you?" They must have thought I was manic-depressive or nuts or something. And to be honest, by that point after 5 days of getting up at 6 am to drive into LA, all the emotional focus and concentration required, and Thursday and Friday being non-stop, I was pretty slap-happy, and high on feeling alive. By the time the show was over, however, I had crashed energy-wise, and just slipped out the back door without saying anything to anybody.
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