A kind of Magic
Jean Marc’s comment on yesterday’s class: “as to the process … it just mystifies me … a sort of magic!” remind me of the old saying about good luck, how it seems to happen more to people who work hard. Yes, acting that is alive and exciting and involving for both performer and audience does seem to come about as if by magic. But we know how much work has to go in to getting it to that stage. What is really important is the kind of work, and I am so pleased to see you all engaging with such commitment to the different tools and techniques I’m spreading in your path.
Yesterday, after a very thorough warm-up through the training exercises, we approached our text work first as words on the page – which they undoubtedly are – then as words which actually meant something very specific to each of us, by exploring the literal meanings of the words and phrases themselves – and finally as sounds expressing something from within. That ‘something’ was not nothing, it was what the words meant, informed by your personal physicality and focus at the point of speaking. And sometimes, as if by magic, it felt like – what? ‘Just’ saying the words? Oh my, what a world of humanity there can be in a ‘just’, when the preparation has been done.
See you next week!