Day 17 -- Meisner Technique

My brain was so fried. In the Daily Acting Workout, we spent nearly the whole hour playing games that require focus and concentration, and I was unable to keep up. I was always getting out, or getting stuck in the center of the circle, and as soon as I got myself out of the center, the person would turn around and get me out again before I'd even had a chance to catch my breath, much less realize that I'd gotten out again. But when we finally got around to repetition, I felt alive and connected, which actually took a large effort of energy on my part to pull off.

In the Meisner Technique class, we had been asked to bring our own activities to class with a simple, specific, urgent reason for doing the activity. So I decided to bring knitting, my reason was that my sister was leaving and I wanted to make something nice for her.

A. asked if she could work with me, and I agreed because I knew she would challenge me. She has a very strong personality and does not back down. So when it was our turn, I went onstage with my knitting, A. went out the door. (The other person has to knock, and we have to decide if it is worth interrupting our urgent activity to let them in and deal with them.) As soon as I sat down with my knitting, I felt very afraid, and my hands were shaking. But I tried to ignore the fear and focus on the activity. Then A. started knocking, and she sounded playful, so I let her in almost right away. And she proceeded to beat me up emotionally, like a cat playing with a mouse. And I sat there like a doormat and let her. I had no clue what I was doing on stage or what she was doing to me, and I was extremely stressed out and frustrated, but I could not fight back, even when she took the knitting needles away from me. I tried to make light of the situation, laugh off her beating me up, make friends so she would stop, I had no clue what I was doing or how to deal with it all. And Mark was inadvertently adding stress as well, he kept asking me, "What are you not dealing with?" and I felt like yelling at him, "If I knew, I would fucking call it!" I just kept going back to the knitting.

When Mark stopped the exercise, he started talking with me about what had happened. I didn't have a clue, but I felt obligated to try and provide some sort of answers to his questions, and so I stumbled through that process as well, "Maybe this is what happened?" And he told me that I had allowed A. to bully me, that I had done nothing to fight back, that I had allowed myself to be a victim, I had allowed myself to deflate and A. to distract me from the urgency of my activity. Mark said that this has been a chronic thing for me, that I developed the habit because it served me in some way, and that I needed to move past it, and find the confidence to stand up for myself, to fight for what I want.

I felt like shit. I felt like shit because A. had beat me up. I felt like shit because I hadn't been able to stand up for myself. I felt like shit because I'd had no clue in the moment about what was going on or how to deal with it. I felt like shit because I have done so much work on myself over the last 10 years to improve my self-confidence and my self-esteem, and I've made huge progress, and in that time on stage with A. it all disappeared. I let her beat me up. I allowed myself to be a victim again, in a huge way. I felt like shit.

When I went back to my seat, I started journaling about the experience. And I discovered a major factor in what had happened, and A. had nothing to do with it. Even before she knocked at the door and I let her in, I had stepped on to stage feeling incredibly insecure in my activity. I didn't know if it was a good enough activity, and even more importantly, I felt almost ashamed of my activity. I remember thinking as I started, "Okay, I feel like a dork, here I am knitting in front of everybody, what are they going to think of me?" But then I tried to ignore that, tried to pretend that I was okay, to deny that I was feeling so scared and insecure. So then I realized that because I had started the exercise feeling insecure, when A. started beating me up, I didn't have any solid ground to stand on, and in that moment of panic, I reverted back to all my old habits. I still felt like shit, but at least now I understood what had happened.

After class, L. and I were going to rehearse together, and she allowed me time to purge and cry softly over what had happened. I was surprised that I only needed to cry a little bit, considering how hurt I felt inside. Then for rehearsal we improvised a conversation between our characters, like Michelle had suggested to me, and I am so glad we did because we both discovered so much about our characters, our relationship, and the really neat thing is about half the discoveries I made about my character came from stuff L. said to me in character during the improvisation. Very very cool.

Day 16 -- Scene Study

To be honest I don't remember much about this day, except that I nearly fell asleep in class, I was so tired. My eyes just would not stay open, and all of a sudden I heard myself starting to snore, so I forced my eyes to stay open after that.

L. and I performed our scene in pretty much the same way as we had the week before, and Michelle tweaked our actions a bit, and asked us to bring in the circumstances of the play this time, and to deepen our character relationship.

I had my one-on-one meeting with Michelle, and she said that she didn't see any problems with me moving on to Boot Camp II, but she'd have to discuss the decision with my Meisner teacher and they would come to a decision together. (Apparently they decide who gets invited, I was mistaken in believing it was based on our scenes being filmed.) I mentioned that I had been having a hard time getting my head wrapped around choosing an action, and I wished we had spent more time on how to choose a good action. I also mentioned that I was frustrated with the rehearsal process, because in both my scene with D. and with L., we were uncertain how to explore and find new ways to perform the scene, because the stuff she gave us in class was so good, we couldn't see any way to improve it. So Michelle suggested that L. and I improvise a conversation between our characters. She also said that while my energy was clear and connected, that she would love to see me be less contained with it, and with my physicalities. When she said that, I realized that I had been holding myself back in Kennedy's movement class, I was letting fear get in the way of exploring the physical expression of emotion, action, etc.

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.

Day 13: Actor's Instrument

Today in the Daily Acting Workout, again the instructor challenged me. (Different instructor than yesterday. And I think it's really cool that the instructors are starting to challenge us in the DAW and not just letting us run with it for better or for worse.)

Anyhow, today's instructor teaches every Wednesday, and he's been nudging me every week to not be nice. He'll say to me, "Tell him he's an f-ing bastard!" So today he called me on covering up some stuff that was said to me that really did bother me, but I covered it up with being glib and laughing it off. And then when I was confronted with one girl who was a cocky, condesending bitch, I actually called her a bitch on my own, didn't need any prompting there. (Although in all honesty I didn't call her on her condesending behavior at first, the instructor had to really push the realization into my awareness: "Look at how she's talking to you! She's treating you like you're nothing, like you're trash!") I said, "You're treating me like fluff!" She said, "You stand like you're fluff!" So then I called her a bitch. The instructor said to her, "What does it feel like that she called you that?" She just looked at me. Then the instructor coached her, "That is a real person across from you, not just an object. Take a look at the real person." So she took in a deep breath, and really saw me. "You're afraid I'm going to say something mean to you." I agreed.

So, on to the Actor's Instrument class. I really enjoy this class, it's so cool to explore the connection between body, voice, and acting. Today, we learned how intention and gesture is connected to body & voice, as well as exploring how leading with different parts of our bodies while walking changed our perception of ourselves. For example, when I led with my head, I found myself very worried, almost pissed off. But when I led with my knees, I felt like Goofy. Then when I led with my stomach, I felt like a fat lazy slob who didn't give a crap about anything. This probably makes no sense to non-actors, and I can't really explain everything we learned.

After class, J. and I finally had a long talk about what happened between us on stage last Thursday. After he had called me on Saturday night, when I came in to class on Monday morning, even though he had told me everything was okay, one look in his eyes told that they were not okay yet. So I've kind of been avoiding him. But today we finally talked about it, which I'm really glad for. He also pointed out a lot of things to me just from this morning's DAW, such as I set myself up for that girl to tell me I was standing like fluff (which I was, looking back on it), he also said I called her a bitch from my head, not from my gut, my feelings. (Which when I look back, he is also right about.)

And then I was rehearsing after that with L., and we decided just to do a straight Meisner repetition to get connected, and she really saw me (or perhaps I let her really see me), and one of the things she said to me was, "You don't feel safe." And I realized that I am not allowing myself to feel safe, even though the classroom is absolutely safe. And actually, J. said something to that effect as well, that no one in the classroom was going to hurt me, or reject me. So now the challenge for me is can I allow myself to trust in the safe space, and strip myself of my protective emotional guards, and really just let myself out? I've only got a week and a few days left.

Day 12: Meisner Technique

So yesterday, in the Daily Acting Workout, the instructor brought a habit I have during the repetition exercise to my attention. She said, "I want to challenge you." She pointed out that whenever someone makes an observation about me, I make an observation about their response to their observation of me, which keeps the repetition self centered. For example, they say, "You're happy." I say, "You like that." The instructor made sure that I understood that it' s not wrong to do that, but I also need to be aware of what their behaviors are, not just their responses to me. (I am really f-ing self-centered, aren't I??) So I tried, and immediately wound up in my head, and not being able to see a damn thing about the other person other than their responses. And that seems to happen to me a lot (not being able to see the underlying behaviors) which is why I have fallen on using that habit a lot I guess. I don't know if I just haven't learned to see deeper yet (which might very well be true and would explain a lot about my life experiences) or if they're just not giving me anything and I'm failing to call it. Or maybe it's vice versa, I'm not giving them anything and they're failing to call it.

Anyhow, yesterday in Meisner class we started with an activity added to the repetition. In other words, we have to carry on the repetition exercise with one person juggling or balancing an umbrella on their finger as if their life (or a loved one's) depended on it. It makes the repetition much more difficult because the person doing the activity cannot give the other person their full attention. So I got paired up with L, she had the umbrella. At first she was moving all over the stage with it, and I did my best to honestly express what I saw and felt. ("You're not paying attention to me.") Then Mark stopped us and said, "There is so much fake energy on the stage right now." That really shocked me, but then he singled out L. She was making a performance out of how difficult and urgent it was to balance the umbrella. He told her to hold still, not move her feet, and instead of her own life being in danger, to imagine it was her daughter's. The effect was immediate and L's reactions suddenly became frighteningly real. I felt so much compassion for her, watching her try to balance the umbrella, watching her struggle with her emotions, that I did not want to interrupt. I made observations quietly. But I did feel disconnected in the moment, I remember vividly feeling that she was alone on stage even though I was up there with her. Mark kept prompting me to stay out of my head, which I thought I was doing. I was doing my best to see her behaviors. Then when Mark stopped the exercise, he asked me what was going on with me during the exercise. I said I felt very drawn in by her, and I didn't want to interrupt. Mark said, "That was you thinking." CRAP! Then he said, "You have a responsibility to the other actor to interact fully, in spite of the activity, in spite of their emotional repsonses. You were very timid on stage today. Very timid." Disapproving, disappointed. And then he moved on to L. And then time necessitated moving on to another pair. I was extremely disappointed that I did not get the opportunity to try again, to make a better effort, and angry that he did not call me on it earlier in the exercise.

So between this exercise and last week's exercise with J, I've discovered that I'm very timid around extreme emotions, and that could present a problem during performance. BUT, I also believe that me being myself in a repetition is different than being a character in a performance. I believe that if I know where I have to go in a scene, and what my character's action is, I won't have any problem dealing with strong emotions, I will be able to hold my ground and interact fully. Evidence the scene I just did with D. last week. He was fully yelling at me, and I was fully yelling back, no problem.

Day 8: Actor's Instrument

Today classes were so much fun! Every single minute of it!

Starting with the Daily Acting Workout, did some warm up exercises, and then we started the repetition exercises, one person standing far stage left with their back to the rest of the stage, the instructor tells someone else to stand facing the first person’s back, the first person turns around and calls the first thing they see about the other person, and the repeat is off.

I got paired off with a level 2 guy I’ve worked with a couple of times before in the Workout, E., he’s really cute. We’ve never spoken to each other outside the exercises, although I’ve waved and said “Hi” a couple of times. Anyhow, I think he thought he had me figured out, that he had the upper hand on me, but today I intimidated him. (A new thing for me, I didn’t know I could intimidate anyone.) We were repeating, and the teacher called him: “You haven’t been seeing her for the last 15 seconds! She was being nice about it.” (If you want to be nice, work in customer service.) So E. just stops and stares at me, looks me up and down, says “You’re...” and just motions helpless with his hand at me. The teacher says, “Dude, it’s all right in front of you.” So E. starts rubbing his chin and his brow is furrowed, staring at me and I say, “You are thinking Really Hard.” And he laughs very loudly, steps back from me, his face turns completely red. The teacher tells me, “You intimidated him. Tell him that.” So I say, “You’re intimidated.” cautiously, because I didn’t really believe it. He agrees completely, “I’m intimidated.” still laughing, still red faced, so I got all proud, “You’re intimidated!”

Then the teacher had E. sit down, and another young woman, level 2, got up. When I turned around to face her, I couldn't pin down my reaction, I was just stabbing in the dark, and she got upset that I wasn't reading her correctly. Then she accused me of something, I don't remember what, and I've become aware that I shut down and hide when I hear that stuff. (Yesterday, someone called me a robot.) So today, I took a deep breath and I think I managed to stay connected with her. She started to say something else confrontational, but the teacher said, "She's being couragous." So the young woman said, "You're being couragous." And after a few moments she really saw it, and I became aware that she admired that. And I was really glad the teacher saw that I made sure I didn't shut down.

Today in The Actor's Instrument, we had our regular teacher for the first time, Kennedy Brown. Last week we had a substitute. We started out with breathing exercises to warm up our diaphragm, then we started adding voice to the breath, and then articulations on top of the voice. Then we got speak what Kennedy calls "Amesh", which is a nonsense language using our tongue, teeth and lips to articulate and explore different sounds.

So we got in a circle, and each person said something to the person standing to the right of them in Amesh, the person receiving the communication nods and says okay, then says something in Amesh to the person to the right of them, so on around the circle. I was nearly at the end of the circle (if you consider Kennedy to be the beginning), and it was so much fun to watch how each person communicated in Amesh, and the reactions of the people receiving. Some people were just spitting it out, some people were throwing it, some people were giving it gently, some were hyper or silly, and reactions were just as varied, from scared to grateful to "Wow that was weird". I started laughing watching all of this, I couldn't help it, it was so silly and so much fun, I tried not to laugh too loudly to avoid interrupting the exercise, but when my turn came, I turned to the person to the right, mananged to get out two thirds of a sentence in Amesh, and then I just bust out laughing hysterically, you know red-faced-can-hardly-breathe laughing. The woman I had been speaking to turned to the next person, but the teacher pointed her back to me and said, "She's not done yet." I thought that was kind of cool that my laughter was part of my communication.

Then we practiced breathing some more in various positions, allowing the breath to go deep into the belly, there was no pain there this time, Yay! And then we stood up and after some visualizations, keeping our eyes closed we were coached that we were each the greatest poet on the planet, (we were each from a different planet), and that we were to speak the greatest poem we had ever written in Amesh. So we all spoke our poems simultaneously, and then Kennedy went around and touched each of us on the arm to signal us to speak a single line from our poem. Again, there was a wide variety of poems in the room, but this time it was all very touching. One of the poems was loud and aggresive, some were soft and quiet, one was very simple, one was full of rage and frustration, I could hear the guy breathing raggedly next to me after he spoke and when we were done, I opened my eyes and there were tears streaming down his face.

My poem...it's hard to describe, I could feel it radiating from my heart as I spoke, and I spoke calmly and peacefully. The teacher commented "Beautiful" after I finished, but he had been giving compliments all along. (In other words, I'm not the only one who got a compliment--Why am I trying to devalue it??)

Anyhow, that was today. Absolutely Awesome!

Day 4: Meisner Technique

Wow, I finally have some time to update my blog!! Yippee! Thursday & Friday were non-stop busy, and I spent all of my free time yesterday (about half the day) decompressing from the week.

So, I did some personal journaling Wednesday night, so by Thursday morning I was feeling pretty good again. During the Daily Acting Workout we started with some warm up exercises, physical movement, then a visualization exercise while we were walking around. He coached us to visualize a light in our center, maybe it was flames, maybe it was a glow, maybe it was ice. I tried visualizing a glowing orb in my center, but it really wasn’t a strong visualization. So I asked myself, okay then, what’s really there? Immediately I saw it was a freaking black hole that was sucking everyone else’s energy. Crap! And then, he coached us to share our energy with each person in the room individually, as a way of discovering how strong our energy was, if we could receive someone else’s energy at the same time as projecting our own, or if our energy was overpowering, or withered under some one else’s. I didn’t want to share mine, so I whispered that to the teacher, and he said, “Okay, stay private then.”

I felt so bad for withdrawing from the group, and I was starting to worry that this pain I kept finding would interfere with the learning process. I did not want to draw special attention to myself, but by withdrawing from the group, that’s exactly what I did, and that hurt too.

I stepped back into the group as they started the circle repetition exercise. (Everyone stands in a circle, and one person starts a repetition with someone else in the circle, everyone else observes the repetition, and if the observers see a behavior in one of the two people that the other didn’t call, the observer calls it, and the repetition goes between that person and the person who’s behavior was called. Example: A says to B, “You’re cute.” B repeats, “I’m cute.” A says, “You’re cute.” B repeats, “I’m cute” but doesn’t call the fact that A is flirting. So C says to A “You’re flirting!” A repeats to C “I’m flirting.” I hope that makes sense.)

Anyhow, I was extremely uncomfortable stepping into the circle because I didn’t want special attention, but I knew that my behavior was demanding it, and I didn’t know how to change that. And of course one of the level 2 guys started the repetition with me. “There’s something going on inside you.” I repeated and agreed. Then Melvin (who is in my class) said to me “You’ll get through it.” I repeated and allowed that statement to sink in, it’s something I definitely needed to hear. And then the repetition went on to other people, and I was able to breath a little bit easier.

But then we went into a line repetition (two lines facing each other, and after a minute or so of repeating with the person across from you, everyone steps to the right to face a new partner) Almost everyone that stepped across from me said, “You’re distracted.” – “You’re self-centered.” – “You’re thinking” And I was, because I was still worried, and my predominant thought was, “I need to talk to the instructor about this after class, because I don’t want it to be a problem.” And I had been relieved in the circle when the attention was taken off me, but now it was being brought right back again.

So after the workout, M. approached me and asked if I was okay, if there was anything I needed to talk about, so I told him a bit about what was going on. He was very kind and supportive, said if anything came up during class and I needed to leave the room he’d walk out with me. The workout teacher left (we have a different instructor every day) while I was talking to M., and that really distracted me so I didn’t hear a lot of what M. was saying (Sorry!) But then when our regular Meisner teacher, Mark Piatelli arrived, I asked if I could speak with him privately and told him the basics, that I’d been hurt a while ago, thought I was over it, but it was resurfacing during some of the exercises in class, and that I didn’t want it to be a problem, and I was concerned especially after today’s workout class that it might be because everyone kept bringing attention back to it. Basically he told me that I needed to take care of myself, that during an exercise I just needed to bring my attention back to the other person and not myself, and if he saw that I was moving away he’d bring me back to the exercise, and if I still was having difficulties I could simply sit out and observe. That really helped me out, and I was able to focus much better during class.

I ended up doing the repetition exercise with M. during the regular class. He stays in his head so much but totally does not see that. I said to him, "You're thinking." He repeated it with no change in his tone and after a few back and forths, I laughed and said, "You're still thinking!!" Mark called me on that one. He asked me, "What do you want from him?" I said, "I want him to get out of his head and connect with me." And Mark asked, "And what did you do?" I said, "I told him he was thinking." Mark said, "You smiled. You were nice about it." He pointed to a sign at the back of the classroom, one that gets referenced a lot. It says, "If you want to be polite, work in customer service." And I think that's about the only note I got for that day.

Nearing Maximum Overload

As my Meisner class moves forward, my teacher is becoming more demanding, and I'm beginning to feel overwhelmed. Last night was so frustrating.

I finally made forward progress in the repetition, but only after John brought something to my attention. He said, "You're not demanding your partner be present with you because you're used to not demanding anything in life. You've learned to be quiet and not to rock the boat."

As he spoke, my breath caught in my chest and I couldn't speak, because he was right. So I pushed myself to connect and demand my partner connect, and for the first time, I sat down after the repetition with my heart pounding and feeling a little tender in my center.

Then we moved on to the scene. I had decided that I can have energy and stand up for myself without yelling. So I entered the scene that way. John stopped us almost immediately, and asked me what I was doing. I started to explain my thinking behind my choice.

The thing about John is he gets impatient sometimes if we're not picking up things fast enough. And he tends to yell at us when he gets impatient.

So John cut me off and yelled at me: "You're not supposed to be thinking!" And from that moment on, he did not allow me to say another word, whatever my thoughts or feelings were became irrelevant to him after that. He said, "You don't know yet how to be open, you can't think about crafting your choices!" And he sent me back out of the room to start again with more energy, without letting me speak or ask any questions. And I was extremely frustrated because it seemed John wanted me to yell just for the random sake of yelling and that was supposed to be having energy in the scene.

So I funnelled my gathering frustration into energy, and came into the scene yelling at the top of my lungs. But again he stopped the performance because this time I wasn't connecting with my partner. I wasn't aware of his responses to me, I wasn't letting him affect me. John scolded me for this. I said, "I don't know what you want." And he started yelling again, "Don't do that, that really pisses me off. All I want is for you to listen and connect to your partner. Send your energy into your partner. Don't just randomly throw it everywhere." Then he sent me out of the room to start the scene over for a second time.

Third time, I was so frustrated I was in knots, but again I channelled the frustration into energy for the scene. John coached us to repeat lines as a way of connecting, which helped, but he also impatiently called me when I didn't catch a response from my partner. He called me relentlessly, and at one point I just stared him down and was so close to going off on him, but I turned and threw that back into the scene too.

I chose not to go off on John because last month, John had been belittling my friend who has since dropped the class for not being committed enough because he wanted to run class to 11:30 instead of 11, and my friend asked to leave at 11. So John belittled her and questioned her commitment, and she went off on him, yelling at him for disrespecting her. If it had been a repetition, it would have been wonderful and awesome, but unfortunately it wasn't. John then proceeded to throw a temper tantrum and refused to let her speak, and then blamed her that the class couldn't go on that night, and then pulled me in as a manipulation tool to blame her that I wouldn't get my turn. My friend and I both thought long and hard before going back to class. Yeah. So I decided not to yell at John last night as much as I wanted to.

John said after that run of the scene it was much better, much more connected and alive and real, my scene partner said it felt better, but honestly I was just too frustrated to really be able to tell what the hell happened.

And now we're learning about emotional preparation, we need to come to class Friday with an sad preparation: In other words, we need to be able to cry for class. Our homework is to spend time fantasizing a circumstance that could lead us to that emotion. John told us about one of his class mates from when he was in classes fantasized about being raped and it was seeing her boyfriend unknowingly standing nearby that caused her to cry.

I am dreading this assignment. I have a hard enough time crying in private even when I want to. There are so many times when I want to cry, but the tears just won't come. Sometimes I think there must be something wrong with my tear ducts. That being said, I have actually cried twice since last October. One time I was extremely fatigued and extremely stressed out at work, and someone said something hurtful to me about how I was handling my work and the sobs just wracked uncontrollably through me, I couldn't stop the tears for several hours after that. More recently, I cried off and on for several hours because I hurt myself emotionally by reading too much into something rather than taking it at face value and then having to face the truth of that. And I was tired and stressed out. Seems I can only really cry when I'm tired and stressed out. =/ I don't know what I'm going to do for class on Friday. Purposely not get enough sleep?

And to top all of this off, last night my behavior in a personal circumstance was revealed to me with a flood light. For the first time I can see clearly how overwhelming my behavior has actually been. I feel badly for how I have unintentionally treated a friend I care about. But as I spent some time today looking at my behavior and letting it sink in, I realized that it's an old habit that I'd forgotten about, I thought I'd conquered it long ago. And that helps me a lot, I'm reminded that I'm not a victim of my emotions, and I know how to stop the behavior.

Improvment Needed

First--Another great blog from Bob Fraser: How To Be A Pushy Actor This blog has good points to make about how to sell yourself and become successful in the business.

And now on to my class. My scene partner and I had been given homework for Friday's class, to take our scene out and about into different environments: A library, a busy street, and the grocery store. We were to run our scene in these different environments, just focusing on listening and connecting with each other, and be aware of how the different environments affected the moments between us.

So Thursday night, we went to the grocery store first, we could talk in normal voices. At first we were both more focused on "performing" the scene than actually listening to each other. Plus we were still struggling with the lines a bit. We walked around a bit and would generally stay in one spot if there were other people near by, we'd subtly check out their reactions or if they were even listening. We figured if we were really connected and listening to each other, the people around us wouldn't be able to tell we were acting or running a scene, they'd simply hear a couple having an argument.

Then we took our scene to Borders at the mall. (We'd swung by the library and it was closed.) Again, we would find a place with people nearby to run the scene. But we started walking around more, and started playing with being aware of each other as we moved, would he walk away at this point in the scene or would I? How did who was walking away from who affect the scene. We kept our voices down as if we were in a library, but it was interesting to see some of the people around us noticing our argument but minding their own business.

After that, we took our scene out in front of the movie theater, there were tons of people there. This was actually really fun, and we had to speak loudly in order to hear each other. The last time we ran the scene, we moved to the front of a busy restaurant across from the movie theater, stood under a tree next to the patio as if we were waiting for others to join us. My partner actually shouted his last line at me, which caused several people on the patio to look at us, so we both immediately walked away as fast as we could, laughing from embarassment and at our spunk. It was fun.

Class Friday night went okay. I feel like I'm falling behind in my skill level. Apparently I'm still having a hard time being fully open during repetition, but once I do open myself, I let my partner off the hook so much, don't stand up for myself and demand that he be completely present and honest in the moment with me. At this point, I'm having a hard time seeing when he's not being fully present and when I'm letting him off the hook. But it's now or never, so I've got to be demanding of myself to figure it out. John is certainly being demanding, but I wouldn't want anything less from him.

Then we ran our scenes--this is requiring a completely different mind-set than usual for running scenes. At this point we are not focused on crafting a performance, but more on opening our instrument, allowing ourselves to be completely emotionally open to the other person affecting us in the moment, and allowing ourselves to respond to our partner emotionally and behaviorally without thinking or censoring. So, it feels akward from a performance stand point, but, I keep reminding myself, that's not the focus of the exercise.

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.

Alive In The Moment

Class last night was so much fun, I was in such a good mood! =)

For my activity, the imaginary circumstances that I created were that the guy that I've had a crush on finally asked me out, he was going to pick me up in 10 mintues, and I was putting on my make up. Lots of nerves, lots of laughing, and again my partner that entered into the scene joined in with me. =)

And the cool part was, the next two activities I participated in after I'd put on my make up, the two other guys in class both commented on how nice I looked. =P (I don't usually wear much make up to class.) But when I went into the bathroom after class and looked at myself in the mirror, I thought I'd actually done a crappy rush job on my make up, but oh well. At least it was just imaginary circumstances.

And then, to keep the date theme going, when it was my turn to knock at the door, the need I created for that was that my date was coming to pick me up in 10 minutes, and I'd locked myself out of my apartment by accident, all my stuff was inside still, including my cell phone, so I needed to use my scene partner's phone.

So the feedback I got on my activity was that I was lively, entertaining, honestly passionate about what I was doing, and John complemented me on choosing an activity based on my passions in real life but adding that imaginary cirumstances twist-- but I almost feel like I was cheating because even though the circumstances are imaginary at this time, I could so connect to it because there seems a very good possibility of it becoming a reality at some point in the future. So that made it very easy to connect to my activity, very easy to be alive in the moment. But as a professional actor, what if I needed to play a scene like this, but I've just been dumped hard core in real life, or a family member just died? Or vice versa, I need to play a death scene, but I feel so vibrant in real life. How alive and connected to the moment would I be then? I'm wondering if I wouldn't better serve myself by choosing activities that are not necessarily linked to my real life emotional state?

As for my needs for knocking on the door, that hasn't gone so well. Monday, I didn't have quite enough urgency attached to it, so it got lost in my scene partners activity. Last night, I'd made it a little bit too urgent, and John said something about we're not supposed to be working at performance level yet-- if we were learning to play piano, we'd still be working on learning scales, not actually performing a full song. I guess that means I came in at performance level with my need? I didn't realize I'd done that at the time, but looking back I guess I did rev myself up a little bit too much, so that I wasn't simply connected to my need or to my scene partner.

We also got our first scenes for the class. At this point all we're doing is memorizing the first two pages, only our own lines as one continuous paragraph, without any inflection or emotion. We're not making character choices or breaking down the script in any way. We're simply memorizing the lines so that we can repeat with them and be connected and reacting to our partners.

Letters

Meisner class last night was interesting. Somehow, my experience in this class isn't half as profound a learning experience for me as the other class, but I think that the profoundness came from learning how to repeat (how to see others, how others see me, how to see myself) which I already knew how to do going in to this class.

So, I'd been struggling since the last class to come up with an empowering activity. I asked my instructor for suggestions, and he said to consider what I'm passionate about in love and in my career. Not really helpful, unfortunately.

I decided I would write a letter, everyone else in class had written one, so I figured it was my turn. But what to write about? I had a few vauge ideas, but nothing that seemed empowering enough or urgent enough, or something that I could "safely" create imaginary circumstances around.

My friend who is also taking the class suggested that I write a letter to a specific family member. So as class started I was rolling that around in my brain. I came up with the reason for writing, and just before it was my turn to do the activity, I created the urgency for it. But I hadn't completely settled on the idea, and had a back up idea to present to John (our instructor) to see which he felt would be better to work on. He usually dialogues with us about our activities and offers adjustments to strengthen them before we start.

When it was my turn for the activity, however, our instructor surprised me by saying, "I'm not even going to ask you about your activity. Just go focus in the corner on whatever you've picked and go for it when you feel connected."

I hesitated because I really wasn't sure my activity was good enough, if it was empowering, but I realized that I was already feeling my activity on a low-key level, so I just went to the corner, and then started my activity.

I was writing a goodbye letter to my family member. I'd been unintentionally verbally / emotionally abused by this person growing up, and the imaginary circumstances were that the person hadn't changed, and I was now choosing to walk away from the relationship. I'd packed up all my stuff, and this letter was the last thing I needed to do before I left, and I had to leave in 10 minutes so I would be gone when this person got home.

I was really surprised by all the emotions that came up while I was writing. Hurt, anger, deep love for the person, wishing I had another choice, wishing the other person would change, or at least acknowledge how they'd hurt me. I was very close to tears at one point, and as I wrote about leaving I became so scared I could barely repeat with my partner, my words came out barely a whisper. My partner was so gentle and supportive in the repetition, and I was grateful to her for staying with me rather than leaving because it seemed too private.

After I finished my activity, John only said it was good for a beginning activity, without ever asking what I'd been writing about. I guess that falls under the "No Feedback Means You Did A Good Job" category. I believe that John's intention in this, his not asking about my activity and giving minimal feedback, is for me to learn to trust myself and my choices, trust my instincts, instead of relying on others for permission and approval. It feels uncomfortable.

So for Friday's class, we need to bring a more active activity--instead of writing a letter of goodbye, we're packing up our stuff to leave. Once again, I feel clueless. *sigh*

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Just on a side note for those of you who may and will worry about what I wrote about being emotionally abused: In reality that family member has changed for the better, and I have long since forgiven that person because it was unintentional, that was just how that person was brought up and so didn't know anything else, didn't know any better.

Meisner class

I haven't written about my class previously because the last couple of weeks have been review for me, stuff I already learned in my previous class. I was happy to discover that my perceptiveness in repetition hasn't deteriorated any since then, and over all I'm much more open and connected. But I've discovered that I'm using my perceptiveness as a shield to keep my partner from actually seeing me. They see what I want them to see, and even though I am right there with them, connected, I am still thinking a lot.

So now our class is taking a different turn than the one I previously took. This class is the entire Meisner basic program as taught by Meisner himself, except the 2 year program has been condensed into 5 months. Now there is not so much emphasis on straight up repetition, but we're working more on repeating within improvisations on activities we bring. For example, in last night's class, the activity I brought was extending pricing sheets from work (Quantity x Price for each line item, then totalling the sheet) I brought an adding machine from work with no paper so there was no way for me to double check the math without re-adding everything on the sheet for a second time. The imaginary circumstances that I brought to this activity was "My boss wants these sheets finished in 10 minutes without any mistakes. I've been making a lot of mistakes at work recently, and if I turn them in with any mistakes, I'll be fired on the spot. If I am fired, I can't pay rent, I get kicked out, and I also loose my health insurance. My boss said to me Don't make me regret hiring you."

So with me working on the pricing sheets under those imaginary circumstances, my scene partner enters the room and starts repeating with me based on my behavior.

I've been having a hard time the last couple of weeks really allowing myself to respond fully. I'm still much too polite. I think I've been protecting as well, I'm already feeling very sensitive and vulnerable because of some personal issues that have popped up recently that I'm dealing with.

Anyhow, our instructor suggested that I find more empowering activities, that I can live the part of the underdog very well, and I need to challenge myself by finding activities that allow me to stand up for myself.

Working on "Boundaries"

The Great News: I got an email from one of the student directors I worked with recently, that was totally awesome! The last couple of lines of the e-mail: "I'm sure we'll work together again. Who knows, maybe one day I'll have a budget and can actually pay you!" WOO-HOO!! That just totally makes my day!! =)

The Good News: Tuesday night, we finally started shooting the scene from Good Will Hunting I adpated, and have titled Boundaries of Love & Fear. (I adapted the scene by re-writing the dialog in my own words, so it is not a breach of copyright.)

First of all, I think working on a new scene was exactly what I needed, because even though I had promised myself that after the in-class performance, I would let go of all the baggage I re-connected with to play Cathy in On The Wire, I was still struggling with low self-esteem and poor self-image for the week that followed. At least I didn't feel lonely anymore, though.

I feel much better now, after having worked on Boundaries..., thank goodness. I'm glad I've truly been able to let all that crap go again, and not hold on to it anymore. I hate being there.

Anyhow, we worked from 8pm until almost midnight, and only got somewhere between a third and half of the footage shot. (One & a half pages of the script.) Unfortunately, we're only using one camera. But we got about 50 minutes of footage, which I have watched, and most of it looks really good. There are only 3 things we need to go back and fix before we move forward and shoot the rest. We've scheduled to shoot again Monday night, we're gonna have to be very disciplined to pull it off, I think, finish shooting, I mean.

I was so tired by the time we decided to stop on Tuesday night. We had pretty much all agreed to stop and continue another night, but the guys weren't making any motion as if they were going to leave. In my head I was thinking, "You can leave now. Why aren't you leaving?" Then a realization finally made it's way through the haze of my sleepy, non-functioning brain. "Ohhh. I'm the director, aren't I? I haven't actually wrapped them yet." So I said the official words, "Okay, we're wrapped for tonight."

Wednesday after work, I hooked up my camcorder to my computer, and told Windows Movie Maker to automatically capture the whole tape. After the 50 minutes of footage was downloaded and had somehow become 42 minutes, it took another hour and a half to convert the footage to a computer file. When it was finally done with this process, it turns out the automatic capture process had completely screwed up the footage. All of the clips were out of sync with visual and audio, and some were playing twice as fast as they should be... Note Bene: Windows Movie Maker automatic capture sucks! So now I have to go back and capture the footage manually, in smaller chunks.

A couple of weeks ago, I also started taking an on-camera cold reading class on Saturday mornings. All of our cold readings are filmed extreme close-up on split screen, so we can observe ourselves listening and reacting to the other actor. We're not really cold reading the scenes, though. We'll read through it, the instructor gives us feedback about what we're doing well, and discusses the character and circumstances of the scene to help us understand and connect to those on a deeper level. After the second or third read-through we'll actually film it. I think it's really helping me learn what I am able to accomplish as an actor, how strong my skills are, what my limits are, what it feels like on the inside when it looks good to an audience or to the camera. I am also beginning to know what I really look like on camera, I can see for myself what I'm bringing and what I'm lacking instead of relying on other people's feedback. Although the instructor gives wonderful feedback and constructive critism.

It's interesting because two weeks ago, we read a scene from Amadeus. (The movie version.) At first, I felt like I wasn't connecting to the character of Constanze at all, even though I love that movie and practically have it memorized. Then so quietly I didn't even really notice it, I was connected to her. Watching that footage back however, I thought my performance was empty and boring. Yes I got her essence, but I lacked objective and action.

Then last week, we did a scene from The American President, and for whatever reason, that was the easiest scene ever for me to connect to. I got right away what her purpose in the scene was, and how to convey that through my actions. My only difficulty was in making her a stronger character, making her Hillary Clinton instead of Meg Ryan. But I started to get there.

So the benefit of this class for me is working with many different types of materials, and trying out different character types, and really seeing what I'm capable of as an actor.

Day 11: Scene Study

Today was okay. Michelle gave more time to each of the scenes this time around, which was great! But I was feeling extremely frustrated because D. is having a hard time wrapping his head around the concept of an action. I can understand where he's coming from because I had a really hard time with this too, and I wasn't able to effectively explain any of it to him because I've just barely got my head wrapped around it myself. There's a list of 8 things that an action should and should not be (from A Practical Handbook For The Actor) . An action is what your character wants to do to the other character or get from the other character, ie "boost a friend's confidence" or "demand an apology".

Anyhow, D. came over yesterday so we could work together, and we really didn't get anything accomplished. We sat down and unsuccessfully tried to brainstorm actions we could use for our scene, so finally we gave up and just played around with different charicatures, then D. had to leave. But the playing opened up my creative mind, and I came up with a bunch of different actions we could use after he left. We had agreed to get together before class to work some more, I showed him my list, but he still didn't seem to understand what to do with it. We tried running my favorite idea, (the doctor was holding her prisoner) but D. didn't seem to understand how to play with the idea. So when it was our turn to show the scene in class, we ended up showing pretty much the same thing we'd done on Friday.

But we got new scenes and scene partners today. I'll be working with L., she's really awesome. And the scene that Michelle gave us is really intense, from Between Daylight and Boonville by Matt Williams. (I'm really glad she gave this to me, because it shows that she believes I can handle the material, and/or that the material will stretch me.) The scene is between best friends whose husbands are trapped in a mine after an explosion. They've been waiting for two hours for any news and have heard nothing yet. Their conversation turns to where their lives are at right now, my character Marlene has her husband up on a pedestal, and L's character Carla tells Marlene that her husband has been having an affair. Marlene refuses to listen, but then in the end confesses that she's known about the affair from the very beginning.

And this is the scene that will be recorded on camera at the end of Boot Camp I and will serve (I believe) as our audition for Boot Camp II.

And I'm a little bit frustrated with myself because in the Daily Acting Workout this morning during the repetition exercises, a couple of people told me I needed to back off but I didn't listen. Very bad, not listening. I was too busy enjoying being myself, I guess, showing myself off unapologetically. I only realized later this afternoon that I hadn't been listening. =(

Day 10: Scene Study

So, I memorized that David Mamet scene over several mornings while driving in to L.A. Traffic always slows down to stop and go somewhere along the way, and so I would drive two inches, stop, grab another line or two, drive a foot, stop, grab another line...I got half the scene memorized that way on Wednesday morning.

I was really disappointed with the way class went on Friday however. Michelle spent nearly an hour playing with the first scene, then 30 minutes on the next scene, which left only 10 minutes each for the rest of us.

But most of the scenes were really fun to watch (which is why the time went by so fast and unnoticed until it was too late). Once Michelle helped us discover our actions, everyone did really well, it really brought the scenes to life.

She had us play with saying our lines moving forwards, backwards, or holding our ground as our instincts dictated. Then she added action, asking us what we wanted from the other person. My first choice was I wanted an apology from the Doctor. His choice was he needed me to leave so he could get on with more important things. Michelle told us just to sit and take each other in for a moment before we started to say our lines. So I looked at "The Doctor" (D.) thinking to myself, "You owe me an apology you f-ing son of a bitch." After a moment I heard the rest of the class rustle uneasily in reaction to watching us take each other in. So then we started the scene, and in a few moments we were full on yelling at each other, I was so angry at him without even trying. Then Michelle stopped us, and gave us new actions. D. was trying to ask me out on a date, and I was talking to a special needs child. This went well too, because my frustration and anger was clearly visible even though I was speaking in a calm, even tone, (again without my trying) and then D. mananged to charm me momentarily, the class laughed at that. My biggest problem with the whole exercise was everytime I heard a reaction from the audience I broke from the scene, from my action. I also noted (after the fact) that each time she stopped us, I immediately went into little girl mode.

The really interesting thing I'm learning from all of this is if you focus on your action and the other person instead of on manufacturing emotion, it's very easy to jump into the moment at the snap of a finger, and it's just as easy to let go of afterwards (in general).

Day 9: Meisner Technique

Hello! Sorry I haven't updated for a few days, starting Thursday I barely had enough time to get a decent amount of sleep and eat, never mind updating here or checking my e-mail even. But now I have time, finally, YAY!

So, Day 9 was Thursday. Mark was having 5 minute one-on-one sessions with each of us before class started, to discuss where we were in the learning process and what we needed to focus on to move forward. When it was my turn he asked me what I felt I needed to work on. I said, "I need to stop being nice, and I need to be more aware of myself so that I can catch those impulses as they go by."

Mark said, "Yes!" He sounded so relieved that I knew that already. He said, "You're wonderful at listening and responding, but you seem like you have a coquettish little girl inside you. You need to become a woman on stage.

As soon as he said that, the fluffy cloud of fun that my inner child had been floating on vanished with a *POOF!* and I felt the thump as she landed on her butt.

Mark saw it happen, too, he said, "Did you see that? It was like a weight has been added to you. You need to bring that weight with you on stage. If you continue to be a little girl, no one will take you seriously. You'll be cute and light and fun, and that's it." (In other words, a ball of fluff. My words, not his.) I don't really remember what else we talked about at that point, but I think we touched on the same stuff that M. had already called me on earlier in the week.

Mark said, "I know that's hard to hear, but..."

And I said, "It's not so much that it's hard to hear, as I'm not sure what to do about it."

He said, "You don't have to do anything about it. Just know that the seed has been planted and allow it to grow."

So my session was the last for that morning and class got started right after that. Since I hadn't had the opportunity to work on Tuesday, along with three other students, I was the first up along with my friend J. I was working on not being so nice, which means letting someone know when something bothers you. If they do something that pisses you off, you say to them, no bars held, "You're pissing me off." So J. was extremely tired and was having a very difficult time staying connected, but we our repetitions were still playful and open. I told him that he wasn't connected, and I attempted to show my displeasure at this, but I ended up stomping my feet in a childish manner as I did so. Mark stopped the exercise right there.

He said, "Isabelle, you're still being nice and childish, even though we just talked about it. J, she isn't being completely honest with you. She is deceiving you into thinking she's having more fun with you on stage than she really is," Mark looked straight at me, "and it is a deception." He continued to maintain eye contact with me until that statement really sank in to my mind. Once it did, I felt ashamed, guilty, embarrassed, I hadn't realized until that moment that by hiding and protecting myself behind being nice that I was also deceiving the other person. I looked over at J. and he was staring at me with terrible realization. Mark spoke to J. again. "She's very good at it. Did you see it?" J. said "No." still staring at me. I felt so dirty and ashamed. (Please understand that Mark absolutely was not shaming me. He simply laid all the cards on the table for both of us, and once I realized exactly what it was that I was doing, and that it was wrong, I felt shame, guilt, etc. And yes, it was harsh, but I think that was the only way to get it into my head that I wasn't just being "nice", and the only way to get J. to see what I was really doing.)Mark coached both us of to be completely truthful, and to fully express whatever the other person made us feel.

Mark had us start the repetition again, this time when I looked at J. his eyes were hard and he was closed. I said, "You don't trust me anymore." and it hurt to see that. He said with anger and conviction, "I don't trust you anymore." I said, "You're angry." He said, "I'm angry." And suddenly he was in my face, screaming the repetition at me, his nose a milimeter from mine, "I'M ANGRY!" I backed away, smiling (which I hated, but I couldn't stop, I tried and my mouth refused to move) and finally I squeezed my eyes shut and screamed "GET OUT OF MY FACE!" Mark stopped the repetition there and J. backed off immediately. I immediately covered my face with my hands, breathed in with an uncontrolled sob, my eyes watering. I let the breath out and focused on Mark.

Mark spoke to J. first. "You didn't take her in or respond to what she was giving you." Then to me he said, "Sometimes you will provoke an extreme reaction and you need to be able to hold your ground when that happens." Mark reminded us that whatever happens on stage is just work, and once we step off the stage, even after an intense moment like that, we could be like, "Man, that was great! Let's go get a beer." He had us clear our minds to start the repetition again. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, shook out the excess energy, let out the breath and let the previous moment go.

This new repetition was much calmer, I stayed grounded and more honest, I don't remember what we were repeating, but I caught myself sighing a couple of times. Mark stopped the repetition again after a few minutes, and said I was still holding back because I hadn't said anything about them. I said, "Every time I sigh, I ask myself 'What's going on?' but the difficulty I'm having is that it wants to come out as an 'I feel' instead of being focused on him." (We are supposed to say what we observe about the other person, or what the other person is doing to us--ie "You make me happy" instead of "I'm happy" or "You're boring me" instead of "I'm bored".)

At the break, I asked Mark, "What's the difference between being playful and being nice?" Because I enjoy being playful with who ever I'm on stage with, and up until this exercise I honestly thought that's all I was attempting to do. Mark's answer (in my own words): When you're being nice to cover up something negative you're feeling, that is a deception. When you're being playful to draw someone out or avoid telling them how you really feel, that is a manipulation. But once you've confronted those things that are bothering you, the conflict will resolve itself, and then you can be playful together in a genuine and honest environment.

The whole exercise really shook me up because the habit that Mark nailed me for using on stage is one that I use in life as well. Not in every circumstance, but many times I play at being happy and nice when I meet new people so that they'll like me. I felt that nobody in the room would trust me anymore, I had been exposed. And there was really nothing I could do to fix it. After class I asked J. if we were still friends. He looked at me with a big fake smile and fear in his eyes. "Yeah, sure. You'll get through this."

Days 6 & 7: Scene Study & Meisner

Okay, yesterday was interesting. It started out wonderful, in the Daily Acting Workout we were visualizing joy, which put me in a very good mood. Walking around the room with joy in our movements, vocalizing the joy, lots of fun!

Then we went into pairs for the repetition exercises, and I ended up with M. He thinks he's connecting when he's not, and when you call him on not being connected, he says, "Can I explain?" and it's like, "No, we're in the middle of a repetition!" So after the class was done, he asked again if he could explain, so I said "Yes" and he tried to justify why he felt he was connected. It sort of turned into an argument, which ended with him insinuating that by my being bouncy and smiling etc in a repetition that I was being fake. That really hurt me.

It really shook my confidence as well, because I started questioning myself, was I being fake in the exercise on Friday? D's hugging me and holding my hands had really scared me, but I hadn't acknowledged that in the moment. Plus going into the exercise with an agenda and a preconceived notion. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized I have been really pushing the "I'm so happy to be here" attitude, and pushing the being happy & friendly & nice & available attitude in my repititions. And while it's true that I am excited to be in the class, being that happy about it all week was really exhausting. I finally realized that I was protecting myself, I didn't want anyone to see that pain I found again early last week. So in that sense, I had been fake.

As soon as I realized and accepted that, the pain I felt from M's insinuation vanished. But I still wanted to discuss all of that with Mark, just for clarification and validation that I was seeing all of this correctly. And it's funny how the Universe works, because every single one of my questions was answered today just in observing everyone else work and listening to Mark's feedback to them. And the answer I got was that I figured it all out correctly.

So in Scene Study class yesterday, we got new partners and real scenes to work on. I'm paired with D., which scares me a little bit, but the scene we'll be doing is called "Doctor" by David Mamet, it's a two page vingette. My character is arguing with the Doctor because she doesn't think she should have to pay the bill he sent her--I don't think D. can hug me or hold my hands during that scene. I held back while reading through the scene aloud in front of the class, because at that point my confidence was still very shaken from my argument with M, and also I didn't want to put any kind of a character into it yet. And I'm running into my old habits which is to read the lines the way they hit me, the way I think I'm supposed to feel saying them, not from listening and responding to my partner. I think this class is going to be harder for me than the Meisner Technique class.

Day 5: Meisner Technique

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.

Day 3: Actor's Instrument

Wow, today was rough.

I decided to enroll in The Daily Acting Workout class because of something Eugene said yesterday. "You can't expect to get better at the skills your learning by doing an exercise for 10 minutes in class." Which is really what it comes down to. We did two exercises yesterday, one before break, one after, and everyone got approximately 10 minutes for each exercise. (20 min total for the 3 hour class time.) Which bothers me a little bit, considering how much I've paid for the classes, BUT, 20 minutes per class is better than the 10 minutes every second or third class that you'd get in a community college class with twice as many students.

Anyhow, the Daily Acting Workout. Most of the people in the class today were in Boot Camp II (second level Meisner), (although there were two other people from my Boot Camp) and WOW is there a difference in their repetition exercises compared to what we did yesterday. Forget noticing physical things such as "Black shirt", the instructor put me up first with a second level guy, and he nailed me to the wall: "You're nervous." -- "You don't like being scrutinized." -- "You're embarrassed." Holy cow! And then, the guy left the stage, and another young woman took his place on stage with me, also level two. The exercise starts with one person's back turned to the other, the one with their back turned turns around and makes an observation about the other person without thinking, first thing that strikes them. This time, I had my back turned. After the young woman and I repeated for a few moments, the instructor stopped us, and he told me, "You had a strong reaction to her when you turned around, and you didn't call it. We've been programmed by society to be nice. Turn your back again, and when you turn around, take her in and call it this time, don't be nice." I have no idea what sort of a reaction he saw from me when I turned around that first time, or what it was he wanted me to notice about her, as far as I know I didn't have a negative reaction to her. I guess that just shows I still have a lot to learn about being aware of my own thoughts and impulses.

Then today's class was The Actor's Instrument aka movement and voice. I'm not sure how much I'll get out of this class since it is only once a week, four classes total for the session. But actually, today I did get a lot out of it. We did some stretching, some alignement exercises, we gave each other mini-massages. We also did some breathing exercises, and that's where it got rough for me. First we were just lying on the ground, focusing on conscious relaxation and breathing into our bellies, (between our belly button and pelvis.) Then the teacher asked us to put one hand on our lower belly, and feel the breathing. So far so good, I've done this lots of times, it's very relaxing. Then she tells us this is where the root of our emotions live, and to think of those emotions as a colored liquid. What color is the emotion in our lower belly today? At first, I was thinking, "What emotion? I don't know that there is an emotion there." And then suddenly, I couldn't breath into that part of my belly anymore, and the emotion that was there was all the pain and lonliness I've been feeling the last few weeks. I thought, "Oh, there it is. That's where it's been hiding." The instructor coached us to breath out a noise that reflected the emotion we felt there, and the room was filled with contented sighs, maybe some frustrated sighs, but I remained silent because I knew if I voiced the emotion, I'd start crying again, and the classroom is not an appropriate place for that. So I felt the pain, but did not express it aloud. I'm planning to do the exercise again on my own a little bit later, and allow the emotion out at that time.

It was after this exercise that we gave each other mini-massages, and we began discussing the importance of human touch and human connection, the need for validation. And that really struck the lonliness I already feel. Pretty much the only time I have contact with another human is when I'm hugging my mom goodnight or when I get a massage. And those don't fill my real need to be held and feel cared for. As for validation, writing this blog and your comments are pretty much the only validation I receive in my life, and that is pitiful. But I don't know what I need to do to change that. I don't know if I'm alone because of something I'm doing or if it's other people that don't want to connect with me for whatever reason, or if it's both. And there's a lot more where that came from for me to think about, but I'll do that on my own time as well, not here.

Thanks for listening.