The very last assignment that I gave my Acting Company was to create an “event” entitled the Authentic Celebration. The goal here was to pull together the year’s worth of self exploration as an artist, utilize all of the tools that we developed from the various acting styles, and essentially create a performance art piece. This piece is designed to unashamedly celebrate the individual performer in bright, creative, unapologetic ways.
Too often I have found the students using all of the minimizing words such as “kind of” “like” “sort of” “just” and many, many others. Even in the final days of the class, some remain reluctant to claim their word and claim their place in the space. I have been working on this all year. If you cannot own who you are and the moment, then you have zero chance of fooling the audience that you are living out the life of a fictional character.
I have my fingers crossed. I hope that they can recreate the sensation that most of us have known when we are standing in the shower – in our birthday suit – singing as loud as possible and oh so sure that there is a recording contract in the mail. Easy? No. Crying is easy. But smiling and celebrating yourself without fear? That’s tough! That’s NOT for sissies!
One comment on “That Singing in the Shower Kinda Thing”
That is SO true.
I think it’s easier for us to feel negativity in any form than it is to celebrate who we are.
As if we’re somehow apologetic or embarrassed. Maybe it’s something to do with self-worth. We humans aren’t always so great with healthy self-esteem levels.
Acting, to me anyway, sounds so challenging. It’s because it’s obviously all-encompassing. How can we play the role of someone else if we can’t master our own roles? To feel and experience the totality of us?
I hope you were able to find at least a few who were able to achieve this. If you did, I’d bet it was interesting to witness.