The exercise revealed something common amongst actors and increasingly common in everyday life: a short tolerance for psychological discomfort.

Sitting in discomfort is a skill that appears to be increasingly avoided. Whether that be emotional or physical pain, or even the discomfort of being challenged, wrong or just different. Perhaps it’s social media and the increasingly divided world we live in?

The main thing to share with these bold actors was that we must hold on to the idea that we are in a process. That even if we show our work to an invited audience in April, it will be showing something that is in process. Marketing and Audiences must be reassured they will have a finished product - as finished as possible. To my mind that isn’t helpful - as when it comes to acting you are always in a process of iteration and discovery - at least that it a better aim. Even when it comes to TV and film, maintaining that sense of live discovery, even within all the constraints, makes for a living performance.

…not only is acting of equal merit to any other artistic expression, it is the only fully corporeal artform that can affect personal, emotional and social growth in the real world. I argue that an actor can aspire to be “In the world but not of it” - at least to the degree that it allows them to bring both objective and subjective wisdom to any character they play. As such acting should rank as a craft and artform of primary importance both the social and personal realm.

Listening. Actors are pretty bad at it. So focused are we on speaking, that listening is often neglected both as a practice and as a tool to understand and embody character… what kind of words or responses are you listening for and why? How and why are you listening for what’s unsaid. Is how you listen consistent with character in the context of the scene and the story?

Let’s be honest for a moment, here. Most of the acting that takes place in the great life-stealer of popular entertainment is forgettably average... How often… do you see a truly bone shaking, goose-pimple inducing performance, you will remember and revisit for years to come? Just like any creative act in today’s world, AI will deliver “Good enough” at a fraction of the cost of employing a human. Just like the AI generated image I used for this blog!