Performance: Just Not Feeling It

Somedays you would rather just stay in bed, with Netflix, and forget the outside world is there. Somedays you are actually feeling ill. Some of these days you still have to get out there and speak to humans, sometimes lots of humans.

This is where cultivating the actor's mind will help you. An actor trains their sense of play, the availability of colors on a palette of emotions, a range of movements. We practice nuance within these concepts working on intensity and focus. We do this to create characters, to tell stories, to connect.

Verbal communication has many of the same goals and can benefit from the same practice. Can you incorporate play into your life? Can you explore your emotional landscape and make choices about variation in your responses? Can you explore what your body does or does not do? That is the actor's practice in a mundane context. Exploring it will fuel you on the days you just don't want to. I had a teacher in college who told me that technique was not for the good days, it was for the days when everything was wrong. It was and remains a great truth.

In the heat of it all, the brain doesn't always care if you want to be there, sometimes it will let you settle for true. And, if you've done the work, it may just give you something wonderful.

***