Climb back up

It’s amazing how much trying and failing leads to learning and success. I forget this often when I am working, but every time I do it, I learn something new and get better. Even if I fail horribly, I learn something different, and those failures are usually the greatest learning moments. This class was a prime example of that. It’s not that we failed horribly; the work that we had learned before was applied to the best of our ability in the moment, but that doesn’t mean we stop there. Once we have solid images and experiences from streaming, then we get to put the pieces together. Getting to this stage alone was difficult, but here we are. Now we get to keep pushing further. If I stopped at what was my best two years ago, I probably wouldn’t still be acting now. If we keep digging, asking the right questions, investigating what seems interesting to us, we can go where no actor has gone before. Now in streaming, we get to find her.
Really lean into what you do know right now. I may not have 20 years of experience, but I do know a few things. Many actors my age are lazy, but I need to have a curious and problem-solving type of mind. And eventually, I gotta know enough to make it my own.
Mastery of this takes 10,000+ hours of work. On set, keep yourself immersed in the world constantly. Don’t stop working, stay in that place, keep at least one foot in the reality of the life-world. You can only act when you are there in that world.
Streaming starts to inform the physiology, language, focus. Just stay on it and it will permeate everything you need. CDs, directors, producers, etc. gravitate towards people who are grounded in their work.
When we got to Lowrie’s work, she gave us so much to use that I had three pages of notes to start digging into who he is. There was almost too much there to try to dissect and put together in ten minutes that I felt scrambled and just grabbed at anything that jumped out at me. The first thing I thought of was the business card because that should say something about him, so I Googled the area code that turned out to be a number only associated with spam calls. This caused a domino effect for the next ten minutes because we were trying to do our best to make sense of this as quickly as possible. We came up with some interesting ideas in that short amount of time, but through that, we lost focus of why we were doing it. At this stage, we need to be profiling the character, not the story. None of the descriptions made sense at first, so we tried to get the context to make sense, but we didn’t have time to narrow in on who he is after that. The genre and context is important, but we get that in script analysis. This is where we get to find him, get a sense of him. To do this, dig into the interesting things that jump out at you. Look for the things that occur over and over again. Look for strong character symbols. There was all these interesting things about him and on him, but what does that say about him? These things on him can be used and taken literally, and that can take you in interesting directions. But you can also use these as symbols to reflect and use for the character. For example, the manure and mint; there’s nothing fresh about this guy, so what does that say about him? This is a guy who has something to hide; he has all these contradicting elements. Something isn’t right. He doesn’t have a cell phone or a wallet, and has an old bottle opener and Chevy key. He’s living in the past, while in 2013 or later. You have to use HIM first, then project into the story.
Start with the character in streaming. Do I have a feeling for him? Use these symbols as clues – derive anything you can. Look at these clues as metaphors. The juxtaposition of the two things before means there is complexity; he’s not what he appears. There is something going on with him.
Keep rising above where the traps are. The only way we can learn them is by falling into them first. Then climb back out and do it again. Don’t get married to the genre in the stream. Keep the character open to possibilities. There’s nothing in here that’s wasted. Never stop exploring, discovering.

Your posts create an excellent window into the Process. It’s like reading a novel.