✑ Vulnerability & Connection, and why I’ll always fight for it. [On the true value of Acting and Actors.]

     Why does one desire to pretend to be different people?

Why would anyone want to expend so much time and dedication into… being something other than yourself? After all, the empirical goal of the world we live in today is to become ‘our best selves.’ Whether that be measured in our washboard abs, our 2.5 kids or that lambo everyone keeps talking about.

Playing pretend, they say, is the realm of childhood. And that those who cling to it have simply failed to mature. Ergo, those who chase this quality of exuberance are innocent and ignorant. Infantile. Idealistic dreamers who spend far too long with their heads in the clouds, they say. Out of touch with reality, they say. Impractical, they say.

And yet, at it’s highest level, being an actor is a well-rewarded and respected art. Those at the very pinnacle of this discipline are widely regarded as the very best at their chosen craft. They are the Tchaikovsky’s, Da Vinci’s, Einstein’s and Hokusai’s in their world. It is understood for this group of elite people, that they have sacrificed much for their great skill in… what, exactly?

What exactly is the craft of acting?

We know that they pretend to be other people, real or otherwise. We know that they make it their business to come to understand the reasoning's of these said characters. We know it is their job to bring a written character to life.

To life. So what does that mean, exactly?

What is it about a great acting performance that makes it so stunning?

Is it the aesthetic perfection that can seemingly only be achieved on the silver-screen? Is it our voyeuristic fantasies being played out for us in a dark, still room? Is it simply a pretty face?

Or is it something more? Something deeper, something stronger? Something more human.

In my first journal entry I alluded to the connection one can experience in a dramatic setting. When in-role, it is your job just to be with that other person. Yes, you may have an over-reaching goal for a scene, but it is your job to go about achieving that goal within the presence of this other person.

How often have you been at your 9 to 5 with a specific goal? It might be to get a definitive decision made from a meeting or simply to get through the day without flailing another co-worker. How often have you been the one dishing out this agenda? How often have you been the one on the receiving end? 

How often have you been outside this kind of phenomenon and seen this push-pull play of agendas unfold so clearly before your eyes? How often have you so clearly been able to identify the fact that this person doesn’t actually care what I think. This person is not listening to my concerns, criticism or even praise. This person is not considering the true facts of the circumstantial setting we are in. 

I believe that this break between position and perception is at the root of so many dysfunctions.

It’s to blame for the current economic disaster we can all sense coming. It’s to blame for the catastrophe that will come out of fossil-fuel fever. And it’s to blame for the pandemic of addiction spreading through our population.

The breach between our own personal positions and the perceptions we have of our circumstances, relationships and possibilities is echoed in all of the examples I’ve listed above.

And it is the reaffirmation of this skill, this quality, this function, that makes a perfect dramatic performance so touching.

In a dramatic performance, if you’re not taking in the information of your circumstantial position and using it to inform your character’s perception, you’re not doing your job right. And you should be corrected on that.

And so, just this passed week when I saw a young man play out many scenes within a rehearsal and not a single once look into his co-star’s eyes and truly receive what she was offering him, I was furious.

Dramatic performance in a way is the last frontier protecting vulnerable connection and not just because it facilitates it to happen within a safe space. I believe that we find good performance so enthralling, so stimulating, because it offers us an example of what we could gain for our own experience of life.

It shows us an example of how the consequences of our actions affect those around us. As in story, we are never truly isolated from the world around us.

In a world where vulnerable connection is in an extreme detrimental deficit, this young man was given an opportunity to help nourish and be nourished by it. And in his actions, he declined that opportunity.

Now, I don’t know this lad’s motivation for getting into acting, maybe he wants to harness an over-active imagination, maybe he’s a born-creative. Maybe he wants to be famous, I don’t know. And likely he doesn’t know either.

But I do know why I want to get into acting. It’s because I want vulnerable connection. And I want to fight for it, to strive for it. I want to help facilitate it at every turn. Which is why I forwent the opportunity to be in this show with this lad, and write it instead. And so, as writer, I got to see this ‘dramatic’ moment as an outsider.

Yet he decided to be lazy this day. He decided to go on auto-pilot. He made a predetermined decision about what he was going to do within this scene and never a-once accepted the gauntlets thrown down to him by his co-star. Which is such a shame, because I know he can, because I’ve experienced it with him in-role before. But this time, he didn’t seem to care.

It made me angry and frustrated. Angry, because I could see him squandering the opportunity I’d love to have had. And frustrated, because his actions adversely affected every one else’s performance.

But it has also reaffirmed to myself why I find this discipline so enchanting and, frankly, worth pursuing. 

It’s re-dedicated me to the cause. It’s re-fuelled my exhausted levels of motivation, and it’s reminded me of why I fell in love with the discipline in the first place. Because in discipline, in craft, I can find as in vulnerability and connection, the truest freedom. A freedom that doesn’t take take take, but share share share.