This week, an actress whom I had never worked with contacted me cuz her agent recommended she take private coaching with me.
I invited her to a complementary session to see if we were a fit and this is what happened when she showed up:
Boogie seemed a little angry at me. Which was quite interesting since we had never met;-)
She sat down in my office and said “ I have taken so many acting classes, I am sick and tired of it. None of it works and when I have an audition, I end up spending my time trying to figure out if I applied all the tricks & methods I am supposed to. I hate the feeling of it and I am starting to hate acting”.
Has this ever happened to you?
That you are so worn out by all the different methods you learned, that your head spins trying to remember everything you are “supposed” to do for the part, rather than what you WANT to do for it?
I can definitely relate to Boogie’s frustration. There is so much out there. We use so many crutches that I often feel I can no longer walk without them.
Just like when you are using your GPS so much that you have no idea how to get to known places without it anymore.
This is definitely the time we are living in.
The pro is everything is available for us, -literally at our fingertips-, and the con is that the temptation to fill gaps with all these available external tools prevents us to use our inner guidance system.
So I told Boogie: “ You’ve let other people’s methods take over so much space inside of you that there is no more room for your SELF”. “ You invited OTHERS and you have lost your SELF as a result.”
Tragedy.
Cuz that can’t be. YOU JUST CAN’T LET THAT HAPPEN.
You are here, having this human experience to be YOU, experience YOU, create YOU.
You are not here to live by other people’s dogmas in order to become a clone of every other actor out there.
Still upset, Boogie said: “So what do I do to get my self back?!”
I replied:
-create some space
-listen
-hear
-embrace
-commit
Her face said WTF?! ;-)
So I continued:
You will just have to kick everyone else out, to make sure you are capable of having space for your self. And your self hasn't had a chance to say much for a while, so you will need to be a little patient in this new uncomfortable void;-)
Boogie started to get emotional. She knew I was right, cuz I was just confirming a deep & scary feeling she had always had but never dared to act upon.
So I reassured her and suggested the following steps for our future sessions:
We will first and foremost create space for you by purging what is creating noise, doubts, judgements, toxic fears, blocks.
Then we’ll make sure you get used to listening to your true self again. I will remind you how to hear with your intuition, look with your eyes, feel with your emotional instrument, taste with your sensations, and sense with your whole being.
Then, we will move beyond hearing and accepting yourself and into embracing, and celebrating every single little bit of you.
Finally we will commit to honoring your self -and no one else- by appreciating exactly what is, - no matter what-, and keeping your eyes on your ball.
As I was going through this, Boogie was looking more and more inspired… Until I got to the last part… Her WTF expression came back;-) so I rephrased, smiling:
Finally, I said, we will train you so that you will able to COMMIT to the unique and powerful choices YOU will make for YOUR roles.
Boogie smiled with me. She said “I like that. That’s why I started acting in the first place. To be free and truthful”.
Welcome back Boogie, I ended. Your SELF is never very far. It just sits there waiting for you to uncover it;-)
So to conclude, by coming to see me, initially, Boogie was angry cuz she was expecting yet another method. Supposedly better than the rest of the others she had already learned.
What she discovered was the opposite of a method. It was about getting back to her roots. So she felt refreshed and nurtured. Excited to get back on her own journey!
Thank you for reading and if you liked it, I invite you to share this post with like minded artists!
See you next week in the next Blog!