“..And it is a privilege to love everything before death can touch it.” – Eboni Booth, from the play Primary Trust.
We are endlessly lucky to live this life. That means we’re lucky to see brilliant sunsets and we’re lucky to wait for our internet browser to load.
This whole thing is a miracle.
What are do you appreciate right now that you would usually take for granted?
Every night in the show Mrs Krishnan’s Party we have the guests set the table with plates and cups.
Approximately 10 minutes after that they have to move it all so Mrs K can dance on the table.
Of course it’s scripted this way. We know she’ll end up on the table, so everything on the table will have to be moved.
So why set the table in the first place?
That’s a little detail I love about the show. It’s thousands of moments like that which build the illusion of reality.
In real life sometimes you do something only before needing to undo it.
So that’s why we do it in the show.
The fact that you’re a human being means you have a way in.
Early on as a teacher I’d easily feel out of my depth when teaching things I didn’t have all the answers to. We get hypnotised in the culture to believing that we have to be experts.
More often than not, we don’t need to wear that responsibility. We just need a way in.
In acting, we’re encouraged to find truth in the imagined circumstances of a character. One of my teachers Miranda Harcourt calls this ‘make it true for you’. The text talks about a cousin? Build an internal reality of that person.
Make it true for you is the secret to finding confidence when we feel out of our depth in other arenas too.
I don’t know about drums and I can’t play the drums. So I have not connection to them right? No way to make it true for me?
Well I’d say the fact that I can’t play the drums is a relationship to the drums. I know what drums are. I had a friend at high school who played the drums. I’ve always liked that drum solo by Phil Collins.
I suddenly have found my way in.
No matter what we bring ourselves to, in any arena, we always have the ability to make it true for ourselves.
Education is about connection. So finding that connection to any material we teach is vital.
Make it true for you and you’ll have a never ending source of connection.
A director I worked with gave me a key question that I use to guide all of my work.
It was after a show and he’d given us all a few pages of notes for things to focus on and improve in the show. A collection of ultra specific tweaks.
He turned to us, knowing that hitting all these in one show was a long shot. He acknowledged this and said simply “All I’m looking for is the life. All these notes are there just to support that. So all your job is is to search for the life.”
“{Is it alive?”
That’s it. We have tonnes of technical moments to hit, emotional beats to play, connection to each other, the material, the audience- one million things that culminate in a single outcome; life.
When I act I come back to the question.
When I rehearse. When I create. When I teach. When I converse. When I collaborate. When I build. When I help. It’s all in service of the same question:
Is it alive?
I watched a touring company of a musical in St. Louis.
It was outstanding- the level of craft these performers have is insane and their ability to bring that every night as well as their magic human energy.
It never ceases to amaze me to see an expert at work.
When flawless craft disappears, magic emerges.
It’s inspiring and a great reminder of how important it is for us as creators to refuel. Here’s the magic that inspires us, seek it and consume it!
So many things happen to you and around you on a daily basis.
If you wanted to you could find tiny moments that you love.
Little instances of joy.
Micro snaps of magic.
They are there but only if you look. And it’s easy not to look. I’m enjoying journaling as a way of catching them before they’re forgotten forever.
You don’t have to journal- but I’m inviting you to create some way of catching these as well.
In a bad mood? You have a choice.
Feeling overwhelmed? You have a choice.
Feeling bored? You have a choice.
I like to remind myself that I always have a choice. Things may indeed be really difficult. When I have a few too many things to do I can buy into the hype of overwhelm and “stress as a status symbol”… but that’s all it is; hype.
And hype is rarely worth buying into.
You can have a lot of things to do AND still be fun to be around.
You always have a choice
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.
In te reo the word for small is iti.
It’s such a cute word. There’s also a word for making something small:
‘Whakaiti’
‘Whaka’ means to ‘do’ or ‘make’.
‘Iti’ means ‘small’.
To ‘whakaiti’ a person is to make them small. I love the simplicity of that translation. I don’t, however, love what it represents.
Making people small is, unfortunately, really common these days. Couples make jokes at the expense of their significant other, we laugh at peoples attempts or push them down when they try something new.
What we should aim to do is make people big: to whakanui them. That is, to shine a light on them. Uphold their mana. Listen when they want to be seen anew. Celebrate them and support them.
Remember, it’s not always obvious if what you’re doing is a whakaiti or a whakanui. And it might seem like a little joke here and there doesn’t matter…
But one cut still draws blood.
Here’s a simple question if you’re unsure: is what I’m saying or doing honouring the fullness of this human being, or shrinking them down for a quick laugh or aside?
It’s easy to whakaiti someone. But it takes real guts to make others big, celerbrate them and honour them no matter what.
I think we all encounter magic now and then. It’s that spark we feel when we completely fall in love with something, when what we’re working on ‘clicks’ or when we are held spell bound by something.
Magic can happen with people, with the art we consume or create, in random encounters in the world or in the work we do in the world. And a million other places.
If magic is the ephemeral and abstract, what is it’s predecessor?
Thankfully, the genesis of magic is concrete (well, some parts anyway). Here’s a few ingredients.
Generous.
Magic comes from a generous act. When the intention behind an action is a generous one. Magic is magic because it increases the level of joy in the world, and generosity is directly aimed at that.
Possibility.
Magic arrives when we invite something that didn’t exist before. We must release the need for certainty and open up to what could be. Just because something hasn’t happened before doesn’t mean it can’t. It just means it hasn’t happened before.
Presence.
Magic is alive to what’s happening now. It’s alive and it’s listening intently. Magic requires you to forget what you thought you knew and be with only what is.
Magic is mysterious but it’s downstream from these beautiful pillars.
Care to make magic?
