Days 14 & 15: Scene Study and Meisner

Holy cow, I've gotten so behind on my journaling, I've been so brain dead by the time I get home from class, and I feel like I didn't really get a weekend this week...

Anyhow. Let's see if I can remember this.

Thursday, Day 14, Scene Study

L. and I had started out reading our scene together after class on Tuesday. When we read through it, I read my part very calmly, almost unemotionally, and L's reaction to that was very strong. (But I also think she may still have been worked up over her umbrella repetition.) It really bothered me that we seemed connected, but I wasn't feeling anything. I thought I should be getting some sort of emotional reaction from being connected to her. So I started pushing myself to connect, to find some sort of reaction to her within myself.

When we got around to performing the scene in class on Thursday, it had gotten very forced and overly emotional, a lot of screaming at each other. Michelle said that my character has the power in the scene, that I shouldn't feel I need to defend myself against her attacks, and she gave me the action of "holding a child at arm's length." When we performed the scene again, it came out the way we had done it when we first started reading the scene: My character very quiet and unemotional, L's character reacting to that. And the scene was much more honest, powerful and touching that way.

On Thursday after class, L. and I started doing straight repetition exercises together rather than running the scene, we weren't sure what else there was to find in the scene or how to explore it further. As we repeated, L. said she could see I was sitting on a bunch of stuff that wasn't being expressed. She's taken some sort of actor's instrument class with a private instructor where they focused on clearing emotional blocks, purging exercises, so she guided me through some of those. It consisted of saying everything that made us angry, that hurt us, that we hated, without censoring anything, also yelling at our parents for their mistakes in bringing us up, for creating the problems we have now as adults. (Even as I was yelling at them, I know that it wasn't their fault, they did the best they could, they didn't intend to hurt me.)

Anyhow, I really allowed myself to scream and cry during this, and I felt more open afterwards, even though I could still feel a lot of stuff stirring in my heart chakra and my solar plexus (upper belly between ribs & belly button). There always seems to be a turning point for me in any acting class that I have taken, usually during an improv game, where I step into the game and find a reason to scream my lungs out. And after that, every single time the teachers have commented that I have changed. And I think for this class, that catharsis was the purging exercises with L. We also repeated where we actually started calling each other on being nice or smiling when we were frustrated or not happy.

So Friday morning (Day 15), when I got to the Daily Acting Workout, I was very confused about the repetition exercises. I had it in my head that other people weren't calling me on being nice, or smiling when I wasn't happy, that they were letting me off the hook. I felt extremely akward and insecure during the DAW repetitions, and I decided that I was being fake again when I did laugh or play along with someone else, and I also felt obligated to create reactions within myself, because so many times I don't feel any kind of a reaction when repeating with someone other than frustration that I didn't know how to express. Very confused.

After the DAW, I saw Mark in the hallway and absolutely tackled him with my panic: "I'm getting so lost in the Meisner exercises!" (Sorry!) He asked me if I was journalling, and reminded me that the work is always about going back to the other person, it's not about what I'm feeling. I asked him about other people calling me on being nice, and he said that there was a fine line between making a demand from them to look closer, and telling them "You're letting me off the hook.", which makes me a victim, it's not their responsibility to make sure I'm being honest. He asked what had changed for me since the last class, so I told him about the purging exercises I had done with L., and suddenly it seemed like they hadn't been such a good idea after all because I was feeling so out of balance.

So I sat out in the hallway before the Meisner Technique class started, and I did a small amount of journalling, in an attempt to bring my focus back where it needed to be, then I meditated as best I could with people walking by and talking in the hallway, and tried to remind myself just to breath, deep belly breaths. The meditating helped, it brought the thought that Mark and I had just discussed that it's not about me or what I'm feeling, it's about focusing on the other person, it brought that thought into my center where it needed to be, not just floating abstractly in my mind.

Then once class started, it turned out many of the students had questions similar to mine, it seemed we were all getting lost. I was relieved that it wasn't just me having difficulties. Then Mark said something about giving yourself permission, and that it was important to write it down because the action of writing it down seems to give the statement more power. So I grabbed my journal and started writing down permission for myself to connect with other people, to feel safe in the space, to allow other people to see me, to fully express myself, an entire page of giving myself permission to do what I needed to do in order to be more successful and comfortable in the repetition exercises. And I think that really helped a lot as well, and everything came together when it was my turn for the repetition exercise.

This time I had the umbrella, and I connected with the urgency of balancing that, I connected with my partner, I was much more aware of myself, if I caught myself smiling when I was frustrated I dropped the umbrella, squeezed my lips together from the sides in an attempt to get rid of the smile, and yelled, "I'm frustrated, and I'm smiling and I fucking hate it!!!!!" Talk about letting out my inner sailor! But Mark had also encouraged me at the beginning of the exercise not to hold my frustrations back. So, I do swear a lot when I'm frustrated. And then during the repetition, my partner would say something, and I would loose the umbrella and say "Shit!" and then repeat, and then she would repeat back with the "Shit!", which always made me laugh because I thought it was hilarious that she would add that in as if it were part of my response to her statement. And looking back on it, I didn't tell her that during the exercise. There were also a couple of moments where she said something such as "You're mocking me!" when I was simply frustrated at myself for smiling again, but rather than telling her I was not mocking her, I laughed and said sarcastically, "Oh, yes, I'm mocking you."

My partner really called me on a lot of my smiling and niceness as well, really brought it to my attention, told me I was hard to read when I do that. I thanked her for not letting me off the hook. And looking back, I was very self-centered during the exercise even though I was connected to her, she commented after we stopped that that was the most connected to me she'd felt in all the times we'd repeated together. But I was spending just as much time being aware of myself and getting frustrated at my smiling, as I was checking in with her, calling her behavior.

Mark said that my becoming aware of my smiling and being nice was progress, and now I just have to take responsibility and not let myself off the hook, don't rely on others to catch me.