Where does the actor meet the director in the process of creating a memorable dramatic performance? How do I, as an actor, blend my preparation and emotional passion for my character with the the vision of the director so that we can truly be partners in this creative endeavor? This recent, memorable workshop on exploring the expressivity of our emotions and bringing that to the stage offered some inspiring insights.
We all say “I love you” from time to time – to our spouses, our special friends, our children and our pets. But what does that mean? Ted, facing the imminent death of his long-term partner, seeks an answer in this fictional story.
Learning to become a more authentic actor requires opening up more fully to the full range of my emotional being. It’s perhaps safer when playing a character on the stage, but it’s still not easy. The reward is that I am at the same time learning to connect more fully with everyone around me in my real life. I’ll never be finished with this exploration as long as I’m alive, but it is an extraordinary and exciting journey for sure.
Harold Pinter was considered to be one of the most influential of modern British dramatists with a career spanning more than 50 years as a playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005. He wrote plays that emphasized that unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. Coming to understand what this means for me personally has been a long journey.
The news seems particularly depressing these days. Have we lost touch with with our capacity to joyfully experience the miracles of our daily life? Here are three short stories where unexpected joy was discovered.
It was with great sadness that I read of the death of the Israeli actor Chaim Topol a few weeks ago. Topol’s performance as the the impoverished milk farmer Tevye in more than 3,500 stage performances as well as the movie Fiddler on the Roof made him virtually synonymous with the role. The movie confronted me with many questions and issues that I had not thought about before and has had a profound impact on my life.
I was part of an acting workshop recently in which we explored how careful attention and deep listening can result in more authenticity in our stage performances. In this post I write about some of my insights and discoveries from that magical day.
The assertion that the mistakes and inadequacies of parents cause significant problems and issues for their children and grandchildren can be found virtually throughout recorded western history. It was an important theme in Greek drama, was referenced numerous times in both the ancient Hebrew Bible books and in the New Testament, and has been the inspiration for countless books and (more recently) movies. What is often overlooked is the real meaning of “visit” in Euripides’ quote. It does not mean that the mistakes and misdeeds of the children are all the fault of the parents but rather that those children will be challenged to deal with the consequences of those inadequacies in a better way than their parents did. In this post, I explore some facets of my own journey in dealing with the challenges of being an adoptee.
Paul thought he was going the visit his sister for a couple of months to help out when their mother died. It didn’t quite work out as he expected.
The companion book to the historical fiction novel “Before We Were Yours” was was a non-fiction work. Entitled “Before and After”, it tells the personal stories of twelve adoptees interspersed with Judy’s journal describing her journey to a reunion in Memphis, Tennessee. In this post I want to add my story. Like all the others in the book, it has many common elements – yet each one is unique and describes a path to a successful life despite the trauma of its beginnings.
Lisa Wingate has created a masterful book of historical fiction about the Tennessee Children’s Home Society and the crimes perpetrated by the principle characters. In this post, I explore the disturbing way in which media treated these principle characters as dedicated angels until the disclosure of their criminal activities – and then, virtually overnight, as the very devil incarnate thereafter. The uncomfortable truth is probably somewhere in that gray area in between – they were neither purely good before nor entirely evil thereafter.
Whenever I watch a performance of Mahler’s second symphony, The Resurrection, I am spellbound by the intense emotional connection to the arc of my own life. John Williams Jaws is inseparable from Steven Spielberg’s story – so much so that the first couple of notes is all that is needed for me to see again that shark attack. What makes music so powerful and how can I learn how to use that power in my own creative life?
