Big 'Ol Sensual Pussycat

I had a realization today as I was teaching. Of course it wasn’t a new realization, it was one I’ve had many times before, the only thing that’s different today is that I’m writing about it and articulating my thoughts.

I am repeatedly stunned and amazed at how disconnected this generation of young actors are from their bodies.

I have to be clear and forthcoming in saying that I believe everything is connected (acting, movement, and voice) and that most things start with the body.

This point was driven home to me today in Meisner class. (At UAlbany I am teaching a section of Acting Two, which is Mesiner based.)

Two very lovely young people were working on a scene (yes, it’s final scene time) where they are playing two lovers who have never consummated their relationship. They are in relationships with other people, one of them is very religious and here they are, after three years of sneaking around, finally in a hotel room ready to consummate their affair.

The two lovely actors were like robots. They were in the scene, but behaving like an Amish couple in church.

They didn’t touch each other the whole time.

They also were on a bed they refused to use.

I love beds on stage. I kneel on them, lay on them, roll around on them, and hang off the edge of them. They are my favorite set piece/prop.

These two actors were talking heads of repression.

So I cleared them of the bed and proceeded to roll around on it. I had the actress feed me her lines while he stood beside the bed. I asked the male actor if I could touch him, he consented and then I held his hand. He held mine. Then I asked if I could put my head on his chest, he said yes and he did a speech with my head on his chest. He opened up. The speech lit up. He went places and connected in a way he hadn’t before.

I turned to the class and asked,  “Was there anything we did that was sexual in any way?”

The class, “No.”

“What was it then?”

Silence mixed with looks of confusion on their faces.

“It was sensual.”

I could see light bulbs going off and realizations happening.

“Sensuality and sexuality are two different things. While it certainly helps if they go hand in hand they are not mutually exclusive. Being sensual means being tactile and connected to one’s partner and environment. It means being present in a larger way and being open. It means following impulses and being in your body.”

As I looked around the room at them, I felt sorry for them.

For the most part (and this is a gross generalization) they are a generation that is afraid to touch. Where everything can be construed as something else, everything can be misinterpreted. They are a generation  where everything is litigious and they fear being uncomfortable and they are detached from their bodies. They are a generation of file complaints and ask for it to be easier rather than problem solve and invent. They are a generation where empathy has been replaced by the tweet and they live a life connected to their devices instead of to each other.

So what am I going to do about it? I’m going to give them more assignments in their journals where they have to connect. (And yes I have them do their journals digitally online.)

I’m going to force them to interact with each other and with art. (They had very mixed responses when I had them go to the free art museum on campus and respond to a piece of art that “struck them.”)

In Acting One (which I teach every semester), I am going to do more old school improvisation work and force them to interact physically. I’m going to make sure that every warm-up forces them to be PHYSICAL and IN CONTACT with each other.

We will see how this experiment pans out. At UAlbany we don’t have movement or voice classes. In the show I directed I did voice warm-ups with them. I’m also teaching Acting Three which is in essence a movement class since it is the outside-in, physical theatre class.

But these students don’t have the opportunity to roll around on the floor like a pepper grinder, tumble, paint the wall with their voices, or roll around on the floor with each other like big ‘ol sensual pussycats.

Perhaps in Acting One I will do a round of open scenes where I will set criteria such as, you have to touch each other at three different points in the opens scene in some fashion. We will see if it will make a difference. All I can do is keep chugging along and help them anyway I can.

I frequently say to me students, "It is the artists job to illuminate the humanity of life." I'm going to start following that line up with, "So let's go light up the sky."

Some thoughts on teaching acting . . .

Teaching at a university whose MFA program that is focused on pedagogy raises lots of interesting questions.

Without a doubt it makes me a better teacher as I have to constantly and consistently answer “why” and “how” in relation to every conversation I have with my graduate students.

Every day is a new examination of the actor training process.

I realize there are three kinds of programs:

1.) Those that teach a technique, adhere to that technique and live in the philosophical world of that technique.

2.) Then there are those programs that teach outcomes. After semester X you will be able to do Y. They don’t care how you get there as a teacher, simply that you get the students there.

3.) And lastly, we have what I call “patchwork” or “hodgepodge.” They teach a bunch of different techniques and approaches and the connective tissue is the performance opportunities and the faculty.

After having been educated in or taught in all three kinds I’m not sure which I prefer.

There are pros and cons to all three.

I will say that having a “technique” allows one the safety of working inside a philosophy or values system that one can always go back to when in doubt about a situation. It shapes an aesthetic. It shapes the artist not only as a student but also as a teacher.

When I was younger I refused to adhere to the aesthetic or philosophy of my teachers and over time I now cling to it. After a decade and a half as a theatre practitioner I have found myself coming back to my roots, embracing the amazing master teachers I have worked with and I have fully realized my value system as an actor and educator.

I was listening to Anne Bogart speak the other night and she said something that stuck with me.  “Actor training in this country has become too easy. It needs to be hard, it needs to take work. It doesn’t matter what you study as long you study it in depth, takes effort to learn it and is hard.”

I couldn’t agree with her more.

That thought should be applied to all of higher education, not simply theatre or actor training. We must stop inflating grades and hold them to a measure of perfection or success. And we must stand by that measure, stand our ground and know that we are serving them.

It’s why I talk to my students about “being excellent.” Excellence is a habit that must be cultivated like love, kindness or compassion. It takes effort to be excellent and it must be practiced.

I challenge them with the idea that why would one choose to be mediocre? Who aims for that? Who wants to simply get by? Why would one choose to be an artist and then aim for enough, aim for passable? That makes no sense to me. I want my students to aspire to be brilliant, to be hungry for it and to never be satisfied with just ok.

An Awfully Big Adventure

As many of you may know I am currently teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University.

While I don't wish to bore you all with discussions of teaching acting and this technique versus that technique or the drama that happens behind the closed doors of our ivory towers of education . . . I do want to share with you all something.

This semester I get to to do something really cool.

I'm teaching a new class  - Creating and Producing Webisodes & New Media. Essentially I'm getting together with students from Mass Comm, Comm Arts, English, Film & Photography, Theatre, Kinetic Imaging and Advertising and we are making a scripted web series.

Pretty cool huh?

While I'm still amazed that Christina Lindholm in the Dean's Office said yes to my crazy idea, it's probably one of the coolest things I've done.

I thought I would document the process here. I hope others may find it useful, especially if you teach young people who are interested in New Media or finding new ways to tell their stories.

Don't tell my students, but I think I'm learning more than they are.

To let you know how it's working, I decided to call it online as VCUarts New Media Project. This semester of the class is going to be known as Season One. If this course happens a second time that will be Season Two, etc.

We will have to see how it all goes.

You can follow their work through Twitter, @VCUartsNewMedia

If you are curious to see how it goes, stay tuned  . . .