An Actor Begins: Blog 4

Leonardo Da Vinci

Good morning!

I began life as an actor. It was how it was from the beginning, although I didn't know or understand it for many years. Its always easy with the benefit of hindsight to chart one's childhood and early days for signs of what has made us uniquely ourselves. How often do family members say "Oh it was clear since he was five that he was going to be a pilot!". Often things only make sense retrospectively. With a little distance we can begin to see the patterns and shapes of our own biographies. How often have you heard a parent or a grandparent say "Oh She's been here before!".

Yesterday I talked about imagination, and I imagine that I will again often in this new blog. And when better to learn and explore our imagination than when we are children. In fact of course its not a choice. Its a given that children imagine. Without it they would not grow into healthy adults. 

As parents we encourage and enjoy our children's imaginations. We marvel at the things our under-fives come up with. We often cannot believe that they could know the things they suddenly say or do. We think we have a little genius on our hands. And we do. As adults we often observe with our rational minds these tiny moments of imagination. Perhaps we also struggle sometimes to remember a time in our own lives when we just knew that an imaginary friend was as real as the girl next door. Of course if we continued to believe this as adults we would be locked up!

Intuitively we also know that we need to make space for this magical thinking. We enter their world as best we can, knowing that play is how children learn. But there comes a point, usually when a child goes to secondary school, that we think we must encourage them to stop playing and get down to real work.How often do we say "Stop dreaming". 

I know that this transition into adolescence is quite traumatic for some. The primary emphasis on learning becomes one of gathering knowledge, formulating and organising it and recycling it for exams and qualifications.

Don't get me wrong, of course this is an essential part of child development and all children need a good all round education that prepares them for life. But the sad thing I find repeatedly is that the imagination ceases to be something that is truly valued, except perhaps in an art or drama lesson. And even then it is about giving permission to be creative appropriately. The easy ebb and flow of the young child's imagination becomes stemmed by the need to pack their brains as quickly as possible with information. I know that teaching practice has moved on a long way from the days when the objective was to fill the empty vessel. Now we encourage active enquiry, inviting children to research and find out the answers to a question themselves. The internet as well as the teacher has become a primary source for this of course. And its brilliant. We all use it to google what we need to find out about.

But most often the learning is about finding your way to the already known answer. Which is of course important and yes you are likely to remember better that which you have discovered yourself. And the imagination certainly plays a part in that. Although its also easy with the internet for the child to simply act as a conduit for information, barely stopping to digest anything on the way. Hence the rise in websites offering students essays for sale. What a dreadful thing that is!

But the imagination is rich and fertile, and curiosity a gift to be cherished. The questions young children ask are profound ones. Why is the sky blue? Where do I come from? Why is my guinea pig crying? And so on. I am sure you can remember more and better questions, especially if you still have young children. 

I remember my early childhood very well. I lived like most children in my imagination. I had imaginary friends, they were called Giss and Doors. I thought I was actually a fairy and went everywhere on tiptoe until I was seven. I went to magic school every night. Nothing particularly unusual about any of that.

What was different was that this continued into adolescence as my primary way of being in the world (well I did drop the fairy bit and Giss and Doors!)  And really from eleven onwards I found I was under pressure to give it up. And I didn't want to.

The critical nurturing of the imagination through this change is not to encourage the child to stay in an infantile place, but to ensure that they are encouraged to integrate it with all the knowledge, skills and practical know how they will need.

And so to the young actor. If that desire to interpret the world through character and performance is present in a child, then our responsibility is to encourage and create space for them to do so. Performance is the imagination embodied. But of course the next step must be to train the instrument, just as a young musician must learn and practise their instrument or a young dancer must train and discipline their bodies to be able to achieve difficult and sometimes painful steps.

I believe its the same for the young actor and their instrument - their body, imagination and emotions. If the desire is there to express themselves through imaginative character and performance then we as parents and teachers have to be ready with all the scaffolding of technique and skills to teach them.

So the imagination and its sister emotion are the starting points without which no amount of training will deliver more than technical accomplishment.

I know from my own fortunate experience that just at the moment when my imagination might have gone underground that my parents spotted it in time to help me. In this transition they increased my lessons with my excellent drama teacher,Jenny Evans who created a special space for me to naturally bring together my imagination and the hard acting skills I needed to learn.

Having just worked with a group of sixteen very talented children on the pantomime, I can see how this training and discipline is really the case for singing and dancing but much less so for acting. Thus, the difference in standard between all three is abundantly evident. 

Something needs to be done about this, and I know that there are some great acting teachers out there, but sadly the scales are weighted in favour of self expression with the repetitive and often boring supporting skills left sorely missing. And indeed a liberal mistrust of a drama that requires training rather than experiencing as if the two are mutually exclusive! (we don't seem to have this problem with sport!)

This is an enormous subject and I imagine of more interest to parents whose children have a talent and propensity for the performing arts. But I hope it has also a more general application for parents in not asking our children to "put away childish things" because without that rich source of imagination it sets them back in their creative development in my view.

Enough for now I think!

Have a good one.

Director's  Suggested Exercise of the day:

The old favourite. Twenty uses for a ping-pong ball.

Get everyone in a circle and then give them a prop. Could be anything to hand, a hat, a book a scarf. The more ordinary the better. And then one at at time get them to stand in the middle of the circle and without thinking come up with twenty uses for the object. If they hesitate for more than a second, someone else steps in. You will need to act as the "counter' or ask someone else to do so. This must be done in an encouraging way, as fun and with a "Yes, And" approach.So get everyone on board to help each person as they do it. Its vital that no-one is criticised in this type of exercise! That can come later with different skills tasks!