Why playing games is good for families.
-There’s a shared low stakes goal.
-Everyone is focussing on the same thing.
-Different combinations of people have to deal with the difficulty of losing (and winning)
There’s a reason actors use games in a rehearsal process. They’re building connection, emotion and love.
Might be time to get a pack of cards out.
Imagine if you were on a spaceship with a group of strangers.
Imagine as well that it was common knowledge that in approximately 60 years the spaceship would crash into an asteroid.
And there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
How do you spend those years? Do the people stay strangers?
If you knew you’d be gone after the asteroid, how would that affect your day to day?
Earth is a bit like a giant spaceship isn’t it?
And our inevitable end is an awful lot like an asteroid.
With stakes like this, it’s not just about using our time wisely, it’s about using it lovingly.
Wouldn’t you agree?
There’s two types of communications:
Building and dismantling.
“Yeah but…” dismantles
“Yes, and…” builds
Our job is not only to find the ones that build, but to eliminate that ones that dismantle.
The ones that dismantle are good at hiding from us.
They hide behind our need to protect ourselves, our ideas and our egos.
If we can release the need to protect whatever it is we feel we need to protect, we can focus instead on the ‘yes, ands”
We are the ones who get to decide what things mean to us.
Is this the beginning or the end?
Is life a war or a test?
Yes, yes this is all great in theory… but this morning I spilt a third of my pristine smoothie and had an unsatisfying amount left.
The knee jerk meaning was that “this sucks, life sucks and I’m sad now.”
But then I realised that your highest behavioral aspirations only have real meaning when the going gets tough.
Sad smoothie? Yup that’s tough going.
So I decided to change the meaning. I looked down at the spilt smoothie and smiled…
“Yay, I get to have more breakfast!” I made a bowl of weetbix- something I don’t normally do- and enjoyed a Petit Déjeuner instead of being mad at my one third empty smoothie.
Oh wait, no- it was a two thirds full smoothie 😉
They say that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.
I think the same is true for things we know.
Something that is a piece of cake for you might be the missing piece for someone else.
One person’s breakfast is another person’s breakthrough (Trying to coin a phrase, is it any good?)
We’re often too close to our own abilities, skills, stories, distinctions and remarkable results to see the potential value they can provide to someone.
So don’t be stingy with the magic you make, it’s your responsibility to share it.
Here’s a frame to set abstract outcomes succesfully.
An abstract outcome is what I call something that doesn’t necessarily have a finite beginning or ending. Want to enjoy a day with the family? Have a restful day? Feel like a cool uncle?
These are all abstract and so they require a frame that pulls them from the abstract into something you can action while not necessarily being able to measure or quantify them
Stealing from the actors’ methodology of objective and action, have a think about what it is you want to do.
-I want to make my mum feel special.
-I want to make my niece feel heard.
-I want my friend to feel inspired.
These could qualify as objectives for an actor to play in a scene. And if they’re good enough for an actor they are good enough for you! They say a good objective for an actor should have it’s test in the other person. Said another way, is your objective set up in such a way that allows you to, at any moment, use your senses to ascertain how successful you are in your pursuit? This is what keeps actors active and it can do the same for you too.
This one is less useful for actors, but super useful to you. The strongest force in human psychology is to remain consistent with our identity. So choose the identity you will live into. I will be a loving son. I will be a strong partner. I will be a playful prince. What ever is is for you! When we are intentional about who we are being when we show up, we are far more likely to act in congruence with it when we pursue our outcome.
So using the frame we put the two together.
“I will make my mum feel heard and be a loving son.”
Or
“I will light my students up and be a master of ceremonies”
-What you want to do?
-Who you want to be?
When the outcome isn’t clear cut, see if this fit instead.
It appears in phrases like “You always do that” or “It’s always like this”.
If they really did always do the thing you’re talking about, they wouldn’t have time to eat or sleep. So no, they’re not ‘always’ doing that.
It can seem harmless, right? Yes, we all know we don’t mean they literally always do it- it’s just a figure of speech.
The problem with that is figures of speech tend to pop up in other places and they affect how we think about things and so what we do.
A powerful habit is to be able to destroy generalisations and vagueness. When we aren’t clear on the details of something, we have little hope of effectively dealing with it.
If you have a ‘mountain’ of paperwork you’re in a less powerful position than having 78 documents to read and sign.
Give yourself the best shot and remove the generalisations from your speech.
Opportunity is attracted to movement.
Ever notice how job offers, new clients and requests come flying in the moment you decide to focus on your own creation?
This seems to be true in the acting world. It’s like a Murphy’s law of sorts; you wait for the phone to ring and it never does. Then you decide to go build a sand castle and it’s ringing off the hook.
We have to be careful though…
We mustn’t make the sand castle to try and coax the opportunity; it doesn’t work that way.
We also mustn’t create movement for movement’s sake; creating more busy-ness doesn’t help.
The real secret is building a sand castle so grand and so exciting, that when the phone rings you genuinely consider not answering it.
That’s where the real juice is. When your sand castle is more compelling than someone else’s (and it will be, because you made it the way you like) you end up leaving them to do their thing and guess what?
You’ll be picking up the phone to call in some talented people looking to apply their skills.
Don’t wait for the phone.
Become the phone.
The actor in rehearsal is simultaneously like a kid on a playground and a bomb squad member cutting the red wire… or was it the green one?
Nowhere else have I experienced the utter joy of play and the deepest danger of humiliation.
Actors are uniquely bred to weather both of these.
Play too much and it dies for the audience (you can’t have all the fun, you have to let them it!)
Don’t risk anything and we might as well give the show a miss.
Great actors toe the line.
Andrew Scott said the job of rehearsal is for the actor to try everything they can possibly think of. He often feels humiliated, small, silly or dumb in rehearsal. And the fact that he is willing to do that, over and over again means he gets to deliver ‘Andrew Scott’ performances.
What can we learn from the actors rehearsal room orientation in other aspects o work?
It’s one of the first things I learned from my teachers at drama school. It’s being able to be watched and, like many of the most sought after skills, the path to getting there is indirect.
We cannot push to be unselfconscious and we can’t even pull to do it. When you try to be comfortable being watched, that very tension manifests in the opposite which is self consciousness.
So how do we do it? Well I don’t have all the answers, but there seem to be patterns that help actors get there.
We can’t create unselfconsciousness, but we can place our focus outwards and invite it in.
