An actor in rehearsal is building the future.
You’ve heard of vision boards, right? Don’t lie I know you have one!
They seem kind of embarrassing when others see yours, but they are powerful visualisation tools. When I first heard of them I thought it was all a bit mystical, but the older I get the more I understand how important it is to see something before it exists.
To build a house you draw up the plans for it.
To take a road trip, you use a map to see and plan the journey.
I knew all this in theory, but I recently realised that the actor’s rehearsal process is also a visualisation exercise.
To get a desired outcome, we have to have a sense of certainty of what it will be like when you do it.
The first day of school is daunting because we can’t picture in our heads what it will actually be like- who will I sit next to? What do the classes look like? What will happen? (Sometimes we imagine it worse than it will be). We don’t have a store of images and experiences ahead of the first day of school, we can’t visualise it, therefore it’s a difficult experience before and possibly during.
The 513th day of school on the other hand, is a lot less daunting- or at the very least we know exactly what to expect.
An actor in rehearsal is laying the foundations and ruts of certainty.
“I will go here, I will do this and then this and then this. The audience will be there, the lights will be there and then I go backstage and have 7 minutes to get changed, have a drink and get the rubber chicken.”
Without this methodical and gradual process, actors don’t have the certainty they can perform at their peak come curtain.
When I think forward to 3 months from now when we’re remounting a show I tour in the US, I get zero nerves because I have laid hundreds of ruts of certainty. I can visualise exactly what it will be like.
So a fun game I’m playing is to create that level of internal certainty for things I don’t yet have in my life.
I think this is what the vision boards are all about. If we can make our desired realities as clear, as vivid and as real as our actual realities, we’re a heck of a lot more likely to get them.
