Today Is Monday

By freddielaraThoughts

Today Is Monday

Today is Monday, and let me tell you I have been through such a shakedown the 
last two weeks that nothing in my horizon looks at all like what it did just 14 
days ago. There is an unsettled quality about circumstances in my life that I 
could very quickly let them wash me away with the tide. My home, my work, my 
friendships all look very different than a mere fortnight ago.

So I have a choice right now, do I do all that I can to run or do I sit still 
with what is happening right now and sit with it until it shifts yet again?

I know that this conversation happens over and over in my blog, but it is the 
essence not only of the Meisner technique but of Buddhism, and metaphysics and 
life. What am I to do with what is on my plate ,  with what has been handed to 
me right now? 

"And acceptance is the key to all my problems" but it is also the key to good 
acting. Am I taking the moment handed to me as it comes, Letting it course 
through me, with the ever present reactive feelings pointing me toward my next 
response? Or am I running from the tiny fragment of time by giving you a bottled 
up , preplanned response that I imagined was correct or appropriate when I was 
reading the script. That is the challenge. 

We practice something in my class I term defenselessness. The idea that one only 
defends against an attack one perceives to be real. The idea that I believe you 
can really hurt me with your words or with your actions. When I figure out that 
you can only push buttons that belong to me already (parents are very good at 
pushing our buttons-remember they helped install them),  When I figure out that 
u can't "make me mad or hurt" unless I let you then I am on my way to 
understanding this concept of defenselessness. Then I can stay still while you 
pour forth in your scene the most vile and hateful words, Whether  it contains 
the deepest sadness the world has ever seen. I know I am capable of allowing it 
to flow through me and eventually past me, with only the response I have chosen 
to allow it to create in me. The response I have chosen through the point of 
view of the character I'm playing, or even in my every day life. Nothing hurts 
me, or angers me unless I let it or choose to let it. We become the container of 
whatever we allow. We create our responses by taking responsibility for our 
response.

And then we become that person that others trust with all their pain, onstage or 
in life because they know we are a mirror and a sounding board to all they are 
entrusting us with. Then, like the universe which created us we are that eternal 
mirror and a master of surviving the shifting landscape we call life. And that, 
is a beautiful thing to behold. For in that is every single human experience  
that ever was, and we can see that we are not alone. In fact we can see the 
one-ness of all life reflected right back to us. For there is only one 
reflection. And that is what I call theatre, and that is what I call acting..so 
beautiful.