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.

I am not sure a what point an GAP Acting Atelier became an idea. Perhaps it was after reading Alison Hodge’s “Acting Technique” or perhaps it was watching students use the technique for fast work in a Mocap Vaults class in Montreal? I do know that it struck me enough, in the middle of the night, to force me to get up and write it down so I could free myself to sleep again.