Voinitsky: “Akh, if only you could see your face right now. And the way you move. The laziness! You could care less…”
Yelena: “Fine, fine, I’m lazy and I’m boring…That’s why we’re friends, Ivan Petrovich. We’re both tedious, boring people.” – Act One of Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (Adaptation by Annie Baker)
If you’re portraying a character who at one or multiple points in the play exclaims “I’m bored” or other characters describe you that way or even critical reviews of past productions do so, etc…BEWARE. That’s a huge trap. Don’t fall for it by playing bored. If you do, you will most assuredly be boring to watch.
Just like in real life, no one ever wants to be bored. They fight desperately to feel alive again.
That fight, even it largely burns internal, will be riveting to watch and fun for you to play each and every night.
“Expectation is the root of all heartache.” -Shakespeare
“We listen with expectation, insight and point of view.” – Howard Fine
“Our actions are the result of immediate needs and expectations…In rehearsals we must discover and test the actions that are needed from moment to moment in conjunction with what we expect from them…My passion for acting returned, never to desert me again, once I had understood how to suspend knowledge of what was to come by unearthing the character’s expectations.” -Uta Hagen, book A Challenge For The Actor
Expectations are awesome for your acting. For when inevitably the other characters fail to live up to them, it creates conflict, which then leads to great drama. You can’t have too many of them. Expect away!
But be cautious with your expectations of others in real life. Have as little as possible.
And the next time you find yourself upset because someone failed to live up to one or more of your expectations, ask yourself two questions:
One…Are your expectations of that person fair? If the roles were reversed, could you live up to these?
Two…Have you clearly communicated your expectations to that person?
If the answer to either or both of these questions is no, it might be best to drop said expectations. Or at least go back to the drawing board and further refine and communicate them.
It will save you and the other person a whole lot of unnecessary grief, heartache and pain.
“Concentration was as much a capacity as it was a state to Stanislavski, and, as Orthodox mystics and yogis agreed, it could be trained through exercises. Take a coin and put it on a table. This is your object of attention. Eventually, these objects will not need to be tangible. Anything you focus on, real or imagined, literal or conceptual, is an object. But back to the coin. Sit, relax, breathe. Explore the coin. What year was it minted? Is there dirt on it? Little imperfections? See where it has been worn smooth, where the green of zinc or oxidized metal becomes visible. Explore the coin so closely that you could describe it down to the tiniest detail from memory.” – book, The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler
As first detailed by Stanislavski and then later developed and expanded into more exercises by teachers such as Strasberg, Adler and Meisner, there are three big tools the actor can and should be working on at all times…
Relaxation.
Imagination.
Concentration.
So simple in concept, yet so difficult to do. Especially as adults.
But the more you develop and hone these tools, the more your acting will look effortless. Which should always be the goal.
“I’ve been thinking about the difference between the resume virtues and the eulogy virtues. The resume virtues are the ones you list on your resume, the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. They’re the virtues that get talked about at your funeral, the ones that exist at the core of your being — whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful; what kind of relationships you formed.
Most of us would say that the eulogy virtues are more important than the resume virtues, but I confess that for long stretches of my life I’ve spent more time thinking about the latter than the former. Our education system is certainly oriented around the resume virtues more than the eulogy ones. Public conversation is, too — the self-help tips in magazines, the nonfiction bestsellers. Most of us have clearer strategies for how to achieve career success than we do for how to develop a profound character.” -David Brooks, book The Road To Character
In all you do, aim for eulogy virtues over resume virtues.
Doing so will be the best decision you ever made in your life.
If you’re seeking advice or feedback from someone, especially if it’s a trusted friend who knows specifically what you’re trying for, then one way to cut to the chase is to just point blank ask them…
“If you were me right now, what would you do?”
The response, even if it’s unexpected or seems out of left field, is usually the right course of action.
“You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness. We pardon to the extent that we love. Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be lonely again. & great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. Loved for ourselves. & even loved in spite of ourselves.” -Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
Misery does indeed love company.
But instead of permanently being sucked down into the muck of misery…What if instead, you resolve to do everything you possibly can to not only get yourself out of the muck…But also, to then reach down and pull up your companions with you.
One by one. Working together. Helping each other through it.
Soon enough, there will be no one left. And misery will be all alone, by itself, where it belongs.
“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” – Wayne Dyer
“I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” -Richard Feynman
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” –Hamlet
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” -Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
“One of the biggest mistakes that I observed in the first year of my son Jack’s life or year or two of Jack’s life that I observed with parents is that they have this language around weather; weather being good or bad. Whenever it was raining, they’d be like, it’s bad weather. You’d hear moms, babysitters, dads talk about if it’s bad weather, we can’t go out or if it’s good weather, we can go out. So that means that somehow we’re externally reliant on conditions being perfect in order to be able to go out and have a good time. So Jack and I never missed a single storm. Every rain storm. I don’t think we’ve missed one storm, other than one maybe when he was sick. But I don’t think we’ve missed a single storm, rain or snow, going outside and romping in it. We developed this language around how beautiful it was.
So now whenever there’s a rainy day, Jack says, ‘Look, Da-Da. It’s such a beautiful rainy day.’ And we go out and we play in it. I wanted him to have this internal locus of control. To not be reliant on external conditions being just so.” -Josh Waitzkin, Chess champion, Muay-Thai champion, author, The Art Of Learning
What you believe directly affects your outcome.
How so?
Take two people. Each has their own distinct set of beliefs or worldviews.
The exact same event happens to both of them.
The outcome they ascribe to the event stems from the meaning they give it. The meaning they give it stems directly from their beliefs.
Or for you equation fans out there…
Outcome = Specific Event * Meaning
Meaning = Any Event * Belief
A story that perfectly encapsulates this point…
When Thomas Edison’s factory burned to the ground in 1914, destroying one-of-a-kind prototypes and causing countless millions in damage, Edison’s response was “Thank goodness all our mistakes were burned up. Now we can start fresh again.”
As I’ve repeatedly stated throughout this blog, when it comes to producing your passion project, don’t be afraid to ask for what you want or need.
If you’re not willing to take the emotional risk to ask, why should anyone help you? If it’s worth it, you’ll put yourself out there.
That being said, ask without expectation. Don’t be offended if people you thought would help, people you thought would say yes, don’t get back to you.
Assuming positive intent as well as having empathy for others and what they might be going through at the time, will allow you to not take their “No” or ghosting personally.
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