Starting Stanislavski

It's official - I got the call from BACE today. My Chekhov & Stanislavski class is going forward tomorrow night with 5 students.

My goal in doing this is not to turn out perfect Stanislavski actors -- that takes semesters of intensive work. My goal is to give them a taste of the technique, to encourage them to explore this work in detail. I've had at least three or four solid Stanislavski-based teachers - all totally different - and learned a great deal from all of them. You can take the same technique, any school of acting you choose, hand it over to four teachers and they will each find something different in it. The Stanislavski system itself is a prime example - it gave rise to Meisner, Adler, HB and, to some degree, Strasberg. All different, all have their point of view and their value. I don't absolutely love them all. For example, I'm not mad for Method myself -- I much prefer Meisner -- but I have colleagues I respect who swear by it. And my attitude is, whatever works.

Of the four, I freely admit I'm most partial to Meisner. The best teachers I've had were Meisner-influenced and Meisner principles. Over the years I've discovered that most of the actors I admire studied with him.

The thing is, it takes many teachers and many ideas to bring a student to mastery. As I'm putting the finishing touches on my lesson plans, my overall question is - what is useful here? What will inspire them to go deeper on their own? How can they take these ideas and own them?

And there will be some who are shocked that I'm irreverent to this great master. I will admit I'm a fairly irreverent person. My second Estragon from my NYC production of "Waiting for Godot" quit halfway through rehearsals with the complaint that I wasn't treating Beckett with the appropriate reverence. I was lucky enough to replace him - and quickly - with absolute clone of Bert Lahr (the resemblance between the two was eerie) who was as irreverent as I was.

I'm almost done with Stanislavski's book and do not intend to follow it slavishly. My first goal is to create a safe environment for my class, so I will start with the exercises for physical awareness and set up a protocol for feedback. This is not just to safeguard egos, but to train them in observation. It may seem structured at first but I've had good results with it in other classes. Also, this process keeps the students in the audience invovled in what they're seeing. They know they'll be questioned at the end of each scene. What qualities does X have? What did you see? What did they do? What works?

These are important questions. And these are the questions we will all be limited to. The magic is not in the question themselves, but in how each student answers them, in how they hone their own process of observation.

I have tomorrow's class mapped out already - intros, presentation of each student onstage, then some exercises. Also, the prepared monologues. There will probably be some discussion about Stanislavski and why he was so important, but this will mostly be a class about doing.

We also have to create physical safety, so we will start with the focus on the Actor's Instrument which as you all probably know, is the voice and body.

After all, I don't want any would-be Kolyas breaking glass props in their hands.

An Actor Prepares - Stanislavskis's Continuing Drama

Remember, this book is written like a memoir, not a textbook. Be prepared for drama. Be prepared to dig to find the technique.

I have just finished the chapter where Kostya, the first-person character, has injured himself during an improv exercise. He had gripped something breakable in his hand when the emotion of the scene overcame him, cut himself, injured an artery, lost massive amounts of blood and had to spend several days in bed, missing class.

This triggers Torstov's lesson on physical relaxation, which his classmates come to report to him on their visits. It's actually a good lesson, with concrete exercises. Kolya enrolls the help of his cat, always a wise idea.

This chapter left me with quite a few questions, the first one being - do we really have arteries in our hands? Since the sight of blood makes me queasy and I find anatomy charts indecipherable, I e-mailed the best authority I could find: my cousin, the doctor. He assured me that we do in fact have arteries there, so I guess Stanislavski did his research.

My bigger question is why the hell did the teacher let a bunch of untrained, inexperienced, exuberant students loose on a stage with breakables?

Since there's no mention of "hold harmless" agreements being signed at the start of term, Torstov is lucky he didn't get sued. Perhaps 1936 Russia was not as litigious a culture as our own, or perhaps it just wasn't allowed. Either way, a modern student would have had Torstov's butt in court sooner than he could blink.

But back to my question -- students with breakables? You know that's a recipe for disaster. The instrument of the actor is the voice and the body - the purpose of theatre training is to develop this instrument to the point that it seamlessly does one's bidding. I understand that this incident in the book was created to illustrate a point and lead into the lesson on physical awareness and relaxation (which is actually quite good) but the issue is important.

Why didn't Torstov have his assistant remove the breakables, or remove them himself? How can fledgling actors experiment and make the mistakes they need to make, if they're concerned about potentially fatal injuries?

OK, so I'm exaggerating here but my purpose is twofold - first, it's an important thing to be aware of in any school. The first job of the teacher is to create safety, physical and psycological safety.

My other purpose is to take Stanislavski off of his pedestal, or at least shake him up a little. We can't learn from him if we handle him with kid gloves. We have to be willing to take his ideas and work with them, get our hands dirty, make mistakes -- see what works! We can't learn if we just swallow the ideas whole.

Incidentally, the exercise in this chapter, relaxing every muscle that is not occupied in doing something, is very good to do if you're having difficulty sleeping.

Money and Art

I have been grappling with the artist and money issue most of my life. It can be any art, not just theatre.

To be transparent and revealed here, I don't still have it solved either. I've made some progress,but everytime I think I have a handle on it, I see that I have a long way to go. We have so much conflicting programming about it, some of it good...some not so good. I made a list once, of the conflicting statements I'd heard, on the subject of art and money.

1. You should do it for free.

2. You shouldn't think about money, just be happy to do your art

3. You should only care about your art

4. You should put a price on your art.

5. You should give it away.

6. You're not a real artist unless you're making money.

7. You're a sell-out if you do your art for pay.

8. It's noble to struggle.

9. Have something to fall back on.

and of course -

10. Who do you think you are?

And we wonder why artists go crazy.

I'm not blaming anyone - I don't think it's anyone's fault, the thoughts are just there, the habit of thinking this way. Catherine Ponder and Florence Scoval Shinn, both well-known prosperity writers refer to this as the Adamic Dream. As in Adam. As in human. And illusionary.

People repeat these ideas to us for all kinds of reasons, not necessarily malicious. Some think they are being practical, some are uninformed - some jealous, yes. Many have given up the idea of earning their living doing work they love. But most of them are well-meaning, just perhaps a bit...unconscious. For a lot of people, earning money at their dream was never a possibility because they never allowed themselves a dream to begin with.

These messages have always been here. They slip in before we know it. From parents, teachers, rivals. We can drift along on this programming or we can choose what to believe. That's where our responsibility comes in.

It's our choice to assimilate these thoughts.

We should include this in an artist's training -- how to protect against detrimental ideas. It's challenging enough to be an artist -- it may look easy to others but we know different. We love it so much we don't see our learning process, we ignore the false starts and mistakes along the way. And because we love our art, we sometimes don't realize how hard we are already working.

This leads people -- and us as well -- to think getting paid for our art is taking the easy way out. And it really isn't - we just forget how much work creation takes, we love the process so much. And because we love our work, we do feel a bit guilty about getting paid for it.

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand said all wealth is created by the human mind. So I'm willing to use mine to better advantage. I'm ready to let these thoughts go and choose some better ones.

One good exercise, for anyone who works with affirmations, is to take all the negative thoughts listed above and write a contradictory, positive thought, then take that as an affirmation. I'm partial to sets of 10, either written or repeated right after the alarm goes off, when the mind is nice and receptive. This is also a good way to fill "empty" time waiting for the T or an appointment.

We also need to affirm ourselves, to be in our own corner. Some of us are naturally self-effacing and the idea of self-promotion is a little...distasteful. This is a big one for me, I am by nature a behind-the-scenes creator. I don't like to be centerstage myself - I like to direct the "centerstagers". And I am finding the balance between self-effacing and self-awareness.

I think it's in how we talk to ourselves. For example...

There is a lovely scene in the beginning of "A Star is Born" - specifically, the original with Janet Gaynor as Vicki Lester. She wants to be an actress and is told, early in the film, "You have a one in a million chance."

And she says, "What if I'm that one?"

That's a start. We need to tell that to ourselves. The antidote to "Who do you think you are?" The answer to #10. "What if I'm that one?" A step toward healing this confusion.

Now this may sound contradictory but this is exactly why I'm such an advocate of volunteer work in the theatre -- although it is work we are not exactly paid for, compensation is happening on a very deep level. We are making a gift of our skills and that increases what my teacher would call our "deserving index." Any skills and time donated are treated with tremendous appreciation -- if you're volunteering with the right group, of course -- and you increase your community of like-minded people. I've talked about this before, I will probably continue to do so. It is a prosperity practice to give our work as a gift and this is a great environment to do it in. Giving prepares us for receiving -- we frequently screw it up by blocking the receiving. We think as artists we must give and give and give without receiving. Many of us distrust prosperity and refuse to allow success in. That's the false conditioning.

The fact is that we derserve to be paid for our work, to be valued for our work. But we must own this idea first, we must take the risk to value ourselves, as Stanislavski says, the art in ourselves. Even when we get paid for our art, what we give to that art is beyond the payment we receive.

Slogging Through Stanislavski

My Chekhov & Stanislavski class at Brookline Adult & Community Education (BACE) starts in a few weeks, assuming there are enough enrollments. I've been brushing up on Constantin Stanislavski's book, An Actor Prepares, in preparation. I have to say, it's pretty tough going.

Stanislavski was a gifted director, actor and teacher. Writer? Not so much.

It's partly the literary conceit of the book. It's written as a first person novel from the point of view of an eager young acting student, Kostya who idolizes his teacher, Torstov, the great master.

Kostya is short for Constantine - get it? That's how subtle he is.

Except that Torstov is the character that is based on Stanislavski. Kostya is there simply for us to identify with and follow through the storyline.

We follow the mishaps and progress of Kostya and his peers as Torstov holds forth with gems of theatrical wisdom. It's sort of like "David Copperfield goes to acting school." We're supposed to identify with Kostya & Co through their training but they're all so cardboard, they are there simply to demonstrate Torstov's theories. Ironic, since the lessons Torstov gives are geared toward creating well-rounded characters and believable reality onstage. Most of the students are just whiney. And Kostya just gets on my nerves, constantly piping up with the perfect question or the clever comment.

Yeah. It's that precious.

So why bother? Well, it's still Stanislavski and Stanislavski is the father of most modern acting techniques - Meisner, Adler, Strasberg. It's the source. The writing is pretty sad, but if you can get past the whining and the rhetoric, the acting technique is solid. And this is the Stanislavski technique in his own words. Maybe it's not as straightforward as a textbook or a memoir but perhaps this indirect approach could be talking as much to my subconscious as to my intellect.

I do know this -- much as the book annoys me I find myself returning to it periodically. And I each time I find something new, in spite of the writing. You just have to dig a bit. This time I'm planning to read it twice - scanning through the first time, then going through slowly, with a notebook at my elbow. The last time I read it was as a student, identifying with Kostya (and probably as annoying as he is) but now I'm following Torstov's character, looking for the purpose beneath the exercises. Later, I'll go back and note down the process in detail.

This will be the second time I've taught at BACE. That was the Shakespeare course (has anyone else noticed how many shows in Boston are Shakespeare or Shakespeare-inspired). The first time was a great experience and I'm still in touch with 7 out of the 8 people that were my students. After the class was finished, most of the students wanted to continue, which is how my freelance class got started.

I hope to give the students enough of a taste Stanislavski - and some good scenes from Chekhov - to encourage them to continue it on their own. I'll only have 8 weeks and, although I want them to discover something new, I want them to have fun. 'Cause if it's not fun, it's too much damn work.

Story Slams Hit You Where You're Human

I'd like for you all to meet Massmouth.

Massmouth produces story slams (similar to poetry slams) in and around the Boston area. These are at once competitions and celebrations of storytelling. There are ten contestants, selected from volunteers (names in a hat usually) in a mix of veteran and fledgling storytellers. There are guidelines to adhere to (time limit, theme) and the focus is on the story, not the personality of the storyteller. Anyone can win and in the last five months several newcomers have won.

Storytelling is not just for children. It's not just for experienced or professional storytellers -- it's for all of us. We all tell ourselves - and others - stories about ourselves, our families, our lives and decide what they mean to us. An event that focuses on Story enlivens this process for us, supporting the expansion and choice of meaning in our lives. Story is at the base of everything. The Slams are great fun, there is a wonderful sense of community and opportunities for the more courageous audience members to participate as well. In these days of high-tech living there is something truly magical in a live performance.

I've gone several times as a spectator. Then Norah Dooley, who had been my Shakespeare student last fall, invited me to be a judge - Chief Justice of the Cambridge Slam Court, to be precise. Learning their guidelines and what makes a good story helped me step outside my comfort zone and see the world in a different way. I had a blast, especially at the Valentine's Day slam. The theme was "The Errors of Eros" and since it was my first Valentine's Day as a "singleton" I found it very therapeutic to be with my friends and laugh at love.

The picture, above, is me (center) with the some of the other judges at Ryles in Cambridge on February 14th.

I highly recommend visiting Massmouth's webpage - they have info on the upcoming events and videos of past performances. I have a special interest in the next show on the 15th since Norah is one of the cohosts. Here is a link to check out her webpage: Norah Dooley.

Serving the Muse

There are many good arguments for volunteer work in any walk of life. It's recommended for career changers who want to experience a new industry, for the underemployed to beef up the resume and to learn new skills. There's the obvious do-gooder aspect to any kind of volunteer work and while I agree it's good to help any worthy cause, that's not what I'm talking about. Volunteering is an elegant and efficient method for expanding our own prosperity.

We can so easily get a little locked into ourselves - not just artists, but anyone. And any artist will tell you we don't necessarily do it deliberately. It can happen simply because it's big challenge for artists is to hold their own vision on a daily basis in the face of opposition. Volunteering increases our community of like-minded people and gives us a wider circle to hold intention with us. And a wider community increases our own prosperity as well - we can't establish prosperity in a vacuum.

Anyone familiar with prosperity practice knows that another big rule is that we can only receive what we are willing to give. Supporting another's dream through volunteering creates support for our own. To help a theatre group with their shows creates audience for ours. To go in as a volunteer is to make someone else's work a priority for the time you are there, an offering of time rather than money. There is a healing quality to this, an antidote to the tendancy to see so much of life as an exchange. It's a form of surrending, surrendering the immediate gratification of a paycheck to see a deeper result manifest in our lives.

I've volunteered a few times this year at The Actors' Shakespeare Project. They honor the plays as Shakespeare wrote them while exploring their relevance to the modern audience. I love their work - they did Midsummer Night's Dream a few weeks ago and are opening this week with Othello. I show up for a few hours and do what ever they need me to do, things I've done on any number of "B" jobs. I'm more than happy to offer these administrative skills in service of the muse. This is a group I admire and respect, one that resonates with my own passion for Shakespeare. I'm just grateful they took me on as a volunteer, just to be around their work -- beyond that they always make me feel so appreciated, I carry that feeling along with me into the rest of my life. I'm also looking at my (non-theatre) skills with more of a sense of value, because they've been "offered to the muse."

I think the most valuable lesson I've learned as a volunteer is about surrender. Surrender new ways of doing things, new priorities. Ideas that are not one's own. Trying on a different method. As a director and theatre teacher, it is too easy to hook into wanting to be in control all the time. Surrendering to another's lead shows me different points of view, making me a better leader as well. It keeps me flexible.

Noticing Ebb & Flow, New Cheese and In Praise of Former Students

Everything changes.

At this point, I've lost a total of four students -- all for good and proper reasons, like out of town moves and schedules. Tonight I have another one down with a sprained ankle. The weather's a bit dicey, but that by itself is not a problem. But, combining that with all the other issues, I have cancelled class for tonight.

I see that it would be easy to go a little crazy at this point. Losing students is usually considered "bad" from the business point of view. However, I recognize that the world (probably the Universe itself) is built on a rhythm of ebb and flow -- tide in/tide out, breathe in/breathe out, increase/decrease. Cycles. We humans are definitely not OK with change, as a species - have you read Who Moved My Cheese anyone? But change, inevitably, happens. The issue is not to avoid it, or to be afraid of it, the issue is to recognize that this is part of the universal rhythm and what it really means.

My weekly class grew out of a Shakespeare class I taught at Brookline Adult and Continuing Education last fall. When the class ended, many of the students wanted to keep going. So we just kept it going at one of the student's (actually two students, because it was one of two married couples in the class) house, once a week.

I can see that my class has been a good stepping stone for the students who have moved on. The very first one, Norah Dooley, from my semester at Brookline Adult and Continuing Ed, went on to a TV internship that conflicted with class. You may have heard of her - she is one of the founders of Massmouth and organizes the storytelling slams (similar to poetry slams) in the Boston and Cambridge area and has a busy performing schedule. She is also a published writer. Let's be blunt here: she is the Renaissance woman.

I can admit this freely now - I've even told her - I was actually a bit afraid of Norah when she turned up in my class. (OK, I was freakin' terrified!) She is an accomplished performer, well known in the Boston area and beyond. If she'd chosen to, she could have given me a very hard time and challenged me at every point. I know this because I've had a couple of students who have - they take a class to prove it wrong. Instead, she totally jumped into the class, participating full-out and became my strongest ally. Her interpretation of Lady Anne in the "courtship" scene from Richard III was fierce! Unlike the many I've seen who play Anne as a fragile weepy victim, Norah took a fresh take on the part, playing her with passion and outrage that gave Richard III a run for his money.

Another student was from the business world and had a tremendous breakthrough in self-expression. He's now back in his busy life of international meetings and clients, expressing his vision with more passion. The third was a young scientist, originally from China. She took my class to improve her English (after all, if you can do Shakespeare, you can pretty much do anything!) and made huge strides. All her friends, she told me, were jealous of her verbal improvement. For the record, she did not start incorporating archaic language into her daily life. Instead, the demands of Shakespeare trained her speech to a higher level of fluency in regular English. She's moving to Seattle to join her fiance.

My most recent departing student is Norah's husband, Robert Fairchild. Robert's theatrical passion is Improv and he is a seasoned performer. By his own admission, scripted acting was never his favorite, but he still brought a tremendous willingness to explore to our class. In the semester at BACE, he called us all to battle as Henry V (we would have followed him in a heartbeat!) and, with our Asian student as a delightful Ariel, he plotted vengeance as Prospero. We didn't know at the time that last week's class would be his last, but I'd say he went out on a win, with a blood-curdling interpretation of Marc Antony's "Cry Havoc" monologue.

I refuse to say this is "bad". I actually think it's pretty great. These four people played full-out in class, had their breakthroughs and are now on to new challenges. I have grown from working with them and now they are on to new dreams. I also know that they are no longer my students, they are my friends for life.

Toni Stone, of Wonderworks in Vermont, says "You get what you say you are getting." So I say that their leaving, although a bit sad, makes room for new students to come in. And if the freelance class does end, that just means the space is open for the next adventure.

I can't wait to see the good that comes out of this.

Joining the Late Bloomers Club...

Dreams still come true. They just take a little growing into, sometimes.

First, a little background. For those of you who don't know me all that well, things fell apart a year and a half ago. I'd been building a coaching business with my then-boyfriend, living in NYC in a fairly decent apartment share, working a fairly good "B" job and had been coaching actors and singers for years. Every few years, I'd have enough money saved and raised to do some Off-Off Broadway. It was not my ideal life, but it was workable. Compromises had been made on the dream, but fragments of the dream were still there.

Then it all fell apart.

I won't bore you with details. I might bore you with the result, but tough. It was about a six-month process. When the dust from various events settled a year ago -- almost to the day -- I found myself kicked out by the roommate, unemployed, back in Boston and suddenly single. Because of the economy, my quick-cash fallback skills were useless. The boyfriend had bailed without much explanation. I did not press the issue and refused to do the "let's be friends" nonsense.

Instead, I followed Gerald Murphy's guidance that living well is the best revenge. In my job hunt I noticed that every job I was interested in required an MA. So, I took the GRE exam. (Some women react to a break-up by shopping, others by drinking. I took the GREs.) And now - a moment to brag- my verbal score was in the top 10%! Math? Well, we won't discuss math. I have enough math to budget a show and pay my vendors. Enough said.

Then I applied to Emerson College. My choice was determined by several things. Yes, there was the recommendation of family and friends, but mainly you can hardly open a newspaper or look at a theatre program without seeing an Emerson grad. These people are serious about preparing their students for the working world. Emerson also owns several working theatres, showing their focus is on the professional world. Also, I felt a sense of consonance with their vision.

Drumroll, please! I have just received my acceptance for Emerson's MA program in Theatre Education!

I may turn out to be the oldest student in the classes -- I don't really care. There's a lot to be said for being a late bloomer. Deep in my life, I know I wasn't ready for this before -- big dreams especially take a lot of growing-into. My life simply was not big enough before.

Also, I wasn't clear on my own personal definition of success. It's very important to know what your own vision is. I'd been led by other people's opinions for too long. When it all fell apart, there was just me and my emerging vision. There was no one to be accountable to and gradually the path to grad school and teaching full time -- on the college level -- chrystallized.

At my age, I know it doesn't always go as we plan. But I do know that I have made more progress on my dream in this last year than I have in all the time I spent in NYC.