Learning To Be Truthful

I missed class last Monday because I wasn't feeling well. Then one of my friends tells me she's dropped the class, and since she was my scene partner and she had actually been doing two scenes cuz there are (were) five of us in the class, she gave me her scene with her other partner. So it's back to the drawing board for me learning lines, but John was very understanding at last night's class, and none of us did any scene work since I was behind not having anything memorized.

I was actually completely unprepared for class last night, I didn't have an activity either. So John crafted one for me. The imaginary circumstances that he created for me was that the guy I have a crush on had moved to Portland, Oregon for a job and he had asked me to move with him. I had to write a letter telling him why I couldn't go. This activity was so intense, omg, I felt like a piece of shit, writing a letter instead of talking to him in person, and I wanted to move with him so fricking badly. I was having a really hard time writing the letter, and nearly crying a lot of the time. About half-way through the activity, John said quietly, "Follow your instincts, if you want to change your mind and move with him, do it." So after a moment, I thought, yes, okay I'll move with him, that's what I really want. So I crossed out what I'd written so far and suddenly realized I had no clue what to write to say yes.

John stopped the activity there, and most of his feedback was for my partner. I had asked John about what I wrote here last week, about almost feeling like I was cheating because the activity I picked seemed to be such a strong possibility, and wouldn't it help me grow more to pick activities opposite or different from my true emotional state. John said that at this point in our learning, it's important to learn how to truly be ourselves under imaginary circumstances, to live truthfully from moment to moment under imaginary circumstances. He said that if I wanted to craft opposite, I could, but at this point it's best to work from where we actually are emotionally in real life, but twisting reality into the imaginary, so we get practice using our imaginations. This will apply to our scene work as well. And we need to learn what it feels like to truthfully be ourselves under imaginary circumstances.