The Actor Gets Ready: Blog 44

Good morning!

I have been on a bit of a roll here over the past few days, looking at routes of emotion and how to access the actor's palette. So today I am thinking about the move to deepening character, and finding a truthful imaginative reference point that absorbs the creative mind in bringing a fictitious character to life.

I was chatting to a colleague about the relative time spent on the different aspects of creating character in a rehearsal process. How much time to spend on developing the 'back story' and how much on repeating and refining the dialogue!

Its a fine art actually, and there are no simple answers. In my process however there are some absolutes in terms of territory to be covered, and in this there are no short cuts. Once upon a time, about 15 years ago in another land I used to get 5-6 weeks of rehearsal on a show! Imagine that. Indeed I believed that it was impossible to make a good piece of drama in anything less. After all I grew up in the shadow of the stories of my great heroes, like Peter Brook who could secret himself and his actors for months on end. And then dear old Mike Leigh! Total immersion being the only answer. And of course the results were usually great. How could they not be? 

2013 is a different country indeed. Thanks to the squeeze on money, we, like many other industries have had to work faster, smarter as they say, be more productive, dare I even say cut corners? can these economic rules really apply to making art to? Surely not? 

Well like it or not, and in spite of our precious sensibilities, the answer is 'do or die'. Its uncomfortable and distasteful maybe, as we are mostly purists perhaps. But of course the converse is also true. 

I love the story of the plumber and repeat it often. You call her out because you have a blocked pipe. She arrives, taps the pipe and knows exactly where the block is and unblocks it. It all takes precisely 3 minutes. She wacks a bill for £90 in your hand and leaves. You reluctantly pay up and then stand there looking at the bill with your mouth open, she was only here for three minutes! How can that be worth £90?

In my book its actually about the recipe and the ingredients, and less about the exact apportionment of time to each area of concern. Basically these are the elements that I include in my process and believe are essential. You can take a week on each one, or an hour, but you need them all to make your character. 

The Actor Gets Ready! (Nod here to the Great Master Stanislavski whose book An Actor Prepares is a key text)

1. Familiarity with text: Do your homework before rehearsals. An absolute MUST
2. Research the territory. Go on a little 'look see' on the internet, amongst friends, anywhere, to locate a model of your character, ie; someone who you have a hunch may carry some of the characteristics.
3. Prepare your body, mind and imagination and emotional tools ready to work.
4. Let go of resistances, or at the very least make them conscious so you can work with them.

The work of the Director and Actors in Rehearsal

1. Emotional and physical mapping
2. Storytelling - the character's history
3. Physical landscapes, the character's territory (literal environment) excursions.
4. Archetypes - the collective access to character, decision making.
5. The physical dimension  - body changing.
6. Character and relationship web
7. Voice and tone, the language in the mouth and in the body.
8. Metaphor
9. Carving the energy.
10. Sharing the space and tolerating dissonance
11. Making the dynamics work
12. Defining and setting.
13. Repeat, repeat, repeat!
14. Share and criticise.
15. Present. And watch the audience for feedback.

A little cryptic I acknowledge, and each point is full of many others, exercises, conversations and questions. But I guarantee if you go through all of these in a process you will almost certainly unlock character and dynamic in response to the narrative arc of the piece you are making. You could spend ten years going through each stage  or a week if you like me are now constrained by time! There's nothing like a deadline to focus the mind.

Finally to return to my colleague's comment about rehearsal process. If you stay in the 'back story' part of it for too long, you will end up with egg on your face as the actors won't know their lines, their motivations in practice in a scene, and it will all look like a load of self indulgent twaddle! So make sure that the greatest amount of time is spent in shaping, reviewing and repeating for goodness sake!

Have a great weekend.

Frozen Poland 1981 Part 3: Getting Locked in Auschwitz: Blog 43

Good morning,


Following on from yesterday's blog about accessing emotions and methods to unlock them for actors, I found myself in conversation with a colleague who is a musician and counsellor. She rightly said that music is of course possibly the most powerful way into emotion, and I missed that entry point technique in my list yesterday. Of course its a number one gateway!

I was very recently introduced by some friends to a song cycle by William Finn called Elegies which are small musical stories about death, told through the specific testimonies of people's lives. I am thrilled that they shared them.

These are an eclectic and soul searing collection of songs about people touched by 9/11, Aids and cancer. Sounds like a barrel of laughs doesn't it? Well they are indeed a joyous call of the soul, and they make you cry and roar simultaneously, at least they did me! 

I was very grateful for the gift of this introduction, because it struck me also that each of these tiny elegies although often no more than a minute long captures a huge life, saturated with love, pain, absurdity. They are sung poems really - with lyrics that defy any neat well made song structure. They are fiercely alive, rebellious and defiant, and therefore deeply authentic. As a director I would want to use them as exercises with young actors to cut straight through the emotional flab to the heart of the person, the narrative. These songs take you into the collective unconscious of emotional life and sharply and simply expose the sheer pain and beauty of being human.

Which brings me back to the biographical entry point for emotion. In my conversation with my friend yesterday I was thinking about my own framework of emotional reference. We were talking about keeping diaries. I told her that  I have done so since I was 6, and these are like my emotional sketch books, where I can record experiences which I will inevitably call upon in my work at some later point. She was sharing her stories about music with me and in the exchange I found myself  taken back again to my trip with Triple Action Theatre to Poland in 1981, on which I have written two previous blogs. 

During a rare day off that early spring, the company had decided to drive the couple of hours from Wroclaw to Krakow, and to Auschwitz concentration camp. It was 1981 and it was well before the camp had become a museum and destination for pilgrimage which it has rightly become over the past 20 years. 

Then it was pretty much as it had been when it was liberated in 1945. It had been tidied up by a few survivors who wanted to ensure people would know how it was for them and how human beings can do unspeakable things to each other. With little financial support they had begun the early stages of making it into a museum. But it wasn't a tourist venue in any shape or form. 

On arrival in the early afternoon, we parked in a pretty run down concrete car park with weeds sprouting up everywhere. There was mixed enthusiasm amongst our team of actors and technician about this venture, some feeling it was voyeuristic and ghoulish, some going along for the ride, and a couple wanting to witness the space in which such atrocities had happened. I admit to being in the latter group, but I was also painfully aware of the dangers of indulgence and questioned my motives to be sure. 

We were the only visitors that afternoon. We were greeted by an elderly man, who it turned out had been an inmate. He waved us unceremoniously to go in. There were no guides or maps, and what we saw in front of us were rows and rows of single storey barrack blocks, and a couple of larger brick buildings with maybe three or four floors. There were five of us on the walk around, we had left two to sleep in the van. 

To begin with, we stayed close and walked around in silence. It was a beautiful sunny day, and I could not help but look up at the cloudless blue sky, and then at the silent buildings that were saturated with brutality and notice the absurdity of their contrast. 

After a while our pace changed and the others moved ahead quickly. Being able to speak german, I wanted to move more slowly through each block and read some of the papers on display, scraps of stories and glimpses of other lives. The blocks did not indicate what you would find in them on entering. But things were organised well. In one a great glass wall separated the viewer from a sea of human hair, a nondescript mousey colour. I remember standing looking at it for ages. And then another block with shoes, and another with cases and another with glasses and gold teeth. I will not attempt to give language to the feelings stirred in me. You can do that for yourselves, and probably have many times.


I was now on my own walking. I entered a door into a larger building and found myself in a cavernous concrete room. I paused for a moment and only when I raised my eyes to the ceiling did I see the holes. I then realised that these were the entry points for the Cyclone B gas. I stood there for about 20 minutes. The place riven with absence so thick you could almost touch it. 

I walked out and on further into the camp. There is a place where emotion is non-emotion, where it becomes clear that it is in fact a luxury. There is beyond emotion. Walking along the cobblestones my imagination played tricks on me and I could swear that I could hear the sound of boots against the stone.  

Now there was no one in sight anymore, and it was getting a little darker as it approached sunset. I found myself in Block 13, where there are some standing cells. People would be locked for days on end forced to stand in the tiniest space with no room to move, sit or lie down. In each of these there were small candles alight. A couple had tiny barred windows.

I didn't stay there too long. I went out to the courtyard where prisoners were routinely shot against the wall of the yard. Its called the Execution wall. There was no one there. I walked to the wall and stood up against it, facing in the direction of what would have been the firing squad. Again my eyes were drawn upwards to the sky, which was still calm, blue and still. I could see the bare trees like skeletons towering above the wall. 

Leaving the Execution yard, I decided it was time to go.There was a slight chill in the breeze now and it would be dark soon. I walked back towards the gates, increasing my pace as I started to feel a little uneasy. As I arrived almost running, I saw that the gates were locked and the old man was nowhere to be seen. Now I really did start to feel scared. I urgently looked round the back of a couple of small buildings, tried the gate but couldn't budge it. Then a bit of me tried laughing at myself  - only you could get locked in Auschwitz! but the thought didn't comfort me for long.

I started running, and eventually found a small gardener's shed with spades and forks propped up beside it. Pushing my way round it, I saw that there was in fact a small gate leading out from it. The gate opened easily, and there I was outside the camp again, with the carpark within sight about 500 yards away. 

I got back into the van quietly. I didn't tell the others I had been locked in. 

This experience has been a lifetime touchstone for me. 


Have a good day.

Back Online: Finding The E - Motion: Blog 42

Namaste! 

Well its been five days since my blog closed for business for the half-term holiday. It coincided with the onset of a nasty lergy - which was hovering on the edge of pneumonia I discovered yesterday! Thanks to the care of a dear friend who is a consultant paediatrician with whom I have been staying, I have recognised that it wasn't getting any better so have the anti-biotics in hand now!

I have missed writing the blog - and ended up jotting down the odd note here and there to remind me of a theme or idea I want to write about here. So resist it no longer can I. 

A few blogs ago I wrote about the actor's work to excavate emotion, to call upon and tune their own emotional instrument and then to understand the techniques required to reproduce an expression of these emotions in performance. I have continued thinking about this, particularly in a week when there has been so much emotion  played out in the public arena with the Oscar Pistorius case. Well, the truth is there is not a second when human pain and joy is not playing itself out in any of our lives of course. After all emotion is an in-built compass in all of us. 

The emotion is the fundamental mechanism that all the living beings possess to be guided in their struggle for survival.  - Wukmir (1967)

Now likening the emotional palette to a colour swatch or to a musical scale might seem reductionist, but for the actor/technician we have to do this. Emotions in our lives are so overwhelming and powerful that  they have the ability to obliterate in a moment any semblance of rationality. We honour them, and indeed sometimes think that their very existence gives us the right to act them out in any context. 

We are so driven by them that we will make decisions in a moment that may change the course of our life for the better or which we may later regret. And we are making tiny ones moment by moment too, which coffee do we fancy today, what colour shall we wear?  And emotions are exquisite too of course. Falling in love, the birth of a child, the wonder of a magnificent view can all move us to a state of grace. So we all live within this rich world of emotion, much of the time working hard to keep what we are feeling hidden and under wraps, because without some control - just imagine!

And so to the emotional technician, the actor. I was in discussion yesterday with a colleague about young actors and their access to producing/re-creating emotion for performance. Generally by 21 most of us have had at least a passing experience of most emotions, we need them for our working knowledge of relationships and to keep ourselves safe. There will be some extreme ones that we may not have experienced yet, profound grief for example may be something we don't experience until much later in our lives.

So beginning work with the actor on finding emotion must bring together a working knowledge of their own emotional palette, an ability to observe and discern a range of emotions in others, a level of imagination that can elicit empathy even when the experience is alien. And most importantly the physiology. The emotions are expressed and live in the body - hence phrases such as "My heart is breaking", "I am falling apart", "My heart is bursting", "I have butterflies in my stomach", and many more. So the clue for the actor here is that we can approach accessing an emotion physically, imaginatively and biographically. Indeed being able to call on all three resources is a great help. Some actors will find one way in easier than another. 

Take for example the student who has great voice and physical skills, but cannot seem to touch an emotional depth or find a truth that connects intuitively and will make her audience cry. With her I would begin with the physical. If grief were the emotion we were exploring, I would begin with the breath. The alteration to the pattern of breathing will immediately send a signal to the brain and the emotion will be accessed. So we might start with a study of a piece of film of a moment of grief and then simply take on the physicality and breathing, and repeat it until the grief emerges. Once the actor has located it, its then very easy to refind it at will. Its a key. Always but always both the actor and the director know when the authentic emotion has been unlocked, and its always a fabulous moment. 

Let me give you another example of something I use often with actors. If I am looking for an emotion of fear for example, I will ask the actor to go outside the studio door and run on the spot for ten minutes. They usually start by pretending to run, not running really. I will shout at them hard to keep going, until I see in their face that they are actually running out of breath and their physiology is shifting. I will then ask them to come into the space and the scene and play it straightaway. This erratic breathlessness gives life and meaning to the fear they need for that scene. And once unlocked they can anchor it in their body so that it can be accessed at will at any moment. 

The reluctant e-moter must learn to play her instrument if she is to be any more than simply an imitator. Of course the imaginative and biographical routes into emotion are equally powerful and in turn create the changes in the physical body. There is an intrinsic bio-feedback here. 

I believe all young actors should have a go at a solo performance. Its a great teacher in learning to play the emotional instrument, making the shift from joy to sadness for example in a matter of a few seconds, and hitting the mark every time.  

That's it for today - I will come back to this subject many more times as its the route of the actor's work! 

Have a good day.

Half Term Blog Holiday!

Hi all

Just to let you know I will be taking a blog holiday break now for the next week. 

If you are on a half-term break with your children - have a lovely week.

See you when I'm back.

The Importance of Early Work with Text: Blog 41

Good morning

A number of blogs ago I wrote about the value of learning poetry by heart and the impact it had on me as a child. Its quite a loaded subject in educational terms. It certainly went out of fashion in the seventies, on the premise I imagine that it was too restrictive a practice and stemmed freedom and creative imagination. 

Its virtually unheard of now for a student to be encouraged to learn a poem or a piece of prose for the pleasure of the repetition, the feel and sound of the words in the mouth or the emotions revealed. Sadly its a clear case of having thrown the baby out with the bath water. So it was that I was encouraged yesterday in chatting to a friend to hear that he had been watching a drama lesson run by another colleague in which the students were working on a piece of text from The Importance of being earnest, interrogating it, fitting it on for size and at the same time learning about plosive consonants. Sounds more like it. I bang on about it all the time, but we are failing our young performers if we do not give them the technical acting skills they need alongside the ability to analyse and understand motivation and action in a text.

I remember as a child listening to my mother in times of sorrow or tenderness, lovingly recite entire poems and passages from books she studied at school.

We all know that practice makes perfect, but for some reason perfection is not one of the goals of learning in most schools. In today's classrooms, students practise a lot, but are not required to retain knowledge perfectly.

The M Word

Somewhere along the way, rote learning got a bad rap. Memorisation (there, I said the M word) became anathema to learning. How this came to be, I am uncertain, but what I am certain about is that this shift away from memorisation has undermined the effectiveness of the teaching and learning process.

The total emphasis on critical thinking has it wrong: Before students can think critically, they need to have something to think about in their brains. It is true that knowledge without comprehension is of little use, but comprehension requires knowledge and it takes time and effort to acquire.

Bloom's Taxonomy maintains that the highest order of thinking occurs at the evaluating and creating levels which infer that the thinkers must have knowledge, facts, data, or information in their brains to combine into something new, or with which to judge relative importance or value. Therefore, effective knowledge acquisition has to come first.Students deserve to know how to learn and teachers do them a disservice when they do not teach them useful learning skills. Here are some underlying concepts that need to be accepted before we can continue:

The brain is a learning tool. This might seem obvious, but the brain is not a passive sponge. It requires active effort to retain information in short-term memory and even more effort to get it into long-term memory.

Learners need to know that the longer an idea can be kept in short-term memory, the more chance it can be pushed into long-term memory. This is where practice makes perfect makes sense.

The body is another learning tool -- another often-ignored concept. The body is connected to the brain and if you engage the body, you are engaging the brain too.

Learners feel an addictive sense of accomplishment when something has been memorised completely.

With these concepts in mind, I would like to share some of the memorisation learning methods that make it effective and enjoyable:

Learning Aloud

Just as we use our mouths to repeat a phone number over and over to retain it in short term memory, other things can be learned in the same way. One key point here to remember is that the cycle of repetition must be short and quick and no less than three times..
Using Rhythm and Breath

Learning text is done quickly, but since the order of learning the words is important there are some effective ways to chain them together. Learn the passage in breath groups, or what can be comfortably stated in one breath. Students using their mouths, because it is part of the body and a learning tool, repeat the breath group until it is firmly in short-term memory, then go on to the next breath group and do the same. When that is done, put both groups together and repeat them.

This is best taught to students using choral repetition. The key here is to be enthusiastic and energetic, praising the students as they practise. Printing the first letter of each word in the breath group can help students remember the words as they learn them.

Jigsaw Strategies

A creative teacher can have groups of students learn different parts of the passage and then switch parts, or stand up as they say their passage, or even move to a different part of the room with each phrase. Since the body is connected to the brain, it is effective to have students do a hand signal or body movement to symbolise the content of the breath group as they say it.

Sometimes it is helpful to start at the end and add phrases in reverse order known as reverse chaining. Its also effective to have the students perform the action of the words they are trying to learn as they told a story. 

Memorisation is not a bad thing. Students have to memorise the alphabet, sight words, vocabulary, times tables, and many other things and have fun doing it.

There's countless ways to help students learn how to memorise quickly, efficiently, and enjoyably. You can use music, song, dance, rhythms, patterns, competitions, and games. Once they know how to learn, or memorise, then students can acquire knowledge about anything they want to learn, which is in direction opposition to what critics say about rote memorisation.

The other great thing about learning a poem or piece of prose by heart is that inevitably there are new words to learn and understand, so vocabulary extends almost without effort. And such words are often imbued with the meanings and feelings felt by the reader as they become acquainted with the text and thus carry extra power. There is also a wonderful confidence that comes with the certainty of the learnt text. 

I am reminded of our Youth Theatre who did a great production of A Midsummer Night's Dream a few years ago under the excellent direction of Natalie Smith and Andy Rogers.  It was interesting to watch the group of 30 or so young people balk at the idea of Shakespeare and to recognise their fear of speaking this 'funny' language that they said they did not understand. And then gradually over a period of about 3 months to see their confidence rise as they learnt their scripts, and by inhabiting them physically gained a greater understanding of meaning. The final performance was very special. It was great to hear the text flow out with ease and clarity of meaning and connection. Here we had 30 young people from Barking and Dagenham who had not only learnt the text, but through the process had come to understand and love it and by the end were able to say honestly that they thought Shakespeare was writing about them! And of course he was.

On Paulo Coehlo's Alchemist: Blog 40

I am back into reading an eclectic mix of books too, fiction and non-fiction in easy searching.The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is one such book. I hadn't read it for about five years but it fell off the shelf the other day, so seeing this as an omen I re-read it for the fifth time, and I plan to re-read it every year for a long time to come. This little book about a shepherd traveling to Egypt to find his treasure is so full of wisdom that I learn something every time.

These questions about where and what next were on my mind, and by thinking them over I make myself ready for answers. 

An old Chinese proverb says “When the student is ready, a teacher will appear.” 

The Alchemist, or Paulo Coelho if you like, has been a teacher for me.

Here are seven lessons from The Alchemist, that have the power to inspire new ideas and to change  life for the better.

1. Dreams get the creative juices flowing

It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.

It’s not the dream coming true that makes life interesting, it’s the possibility of it happening. The journey is as important as the destination. However without a destination (your dream) the journey is without direction and loses its meaning. So dream that dream, and pursue it.

2. You knew what you wanted when you were young

It (destiny) is what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their destiny is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realise this destiny.

Think about what you wanted to be as a kid, what was your dream?

3. Pursue your dreams, the universe will help

Whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission. And when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

There are a lot of names and explanations for this phenomenon, but they main thing is that it’s so true. If you have a dream and really want to achieve it, look at the world with an open mind and you will recognise all the signs and all the people that will help you along the way. You can call it the Law of Attraction, or destiny, or the power of visualisation, or synchronicity, or whatever. Share your dream with people and focus on realising it, and you will get help.

4. Pursue your dreams, don’t fear failure

Only one thing makes a dream impossible: the fear of failure.

People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them.

A couple of quotes from the Alchemist I particularly like are:

Don’t fear failure, expect success. Fearing failure will do two things:

It will prevent you from taking action, and without action you’re not moving

It will increase the likelihood of failure happening (as you so actively visualise it)

Reframing failure also works for me. I like this saying  “It’s not falling that we call failure, it’s neglecting to get up again.”

5. Make decisions and learn from the journey

Making a decision is only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, they are really diving into a strong current that will carry them to places they had never dreamed of when they first made the decision.

'There is only one way to learn,' the alchemist answered. 'It’s through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.'

Making a decision and committing to action are not results, they are the start of something powerful. They set forth a chain of events, a strong current, that takes you further on your journey. Enjoy that journey as it will take you to places you did not expect, and provide you with the lessons you need to realise your dream.

6. Love makes us better

When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.

Love never keeps someone from pursuing their destiny.

Love will not get in the way of realising your dream. If you let love be the reason for giving up on your dreams, you will blame love for it later in your life. You’ll look at the one you love with an underlying feeling of remorse, which in turn will sabotage your love. If we love we strive to be become better than we are, better as a partner,as a parent or as a person. The love will only deepen when we allow ourselves and others to pursue their dreams and love them for the journey they take.

7. You never lose control

“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised. “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

This one is so important. You never lose control! There are always decisions to make, always actions to take. There may be stages in our journey in life that will be difficult and that need perseverance. Stay in touch with that dream, and never ever give in to the feeling that you can’t do it. You are in in your own driving seat!

The Actor as Image Conjurer and Nothing Is As It Seems: Blog 39

 Morning!

The lergy is still very much present this morning, but must be a little on the wane as I am up for writing anyway.

I imagine that most people have come across the images I have copied here at one time or another. They are often used on training courses to illustrate that everything we look at and believe to be concrete and true, ie 'we have seen in with our own eyes' is of course at best illusory. 

These drawings are wonderfully useful in demonstrating the idea that the brain's wiring will give one immediate translation, and only if prompted by a trainer to work at seeing an alternative image does the 'Ahha' moment arrive. And then we are really proud of ourselves for having the intelligence to see both images. I'd put money on the fact that we then all play a 'switching' game to see if we can move effortlessly between the two different images. Of course we can, but it takes application and of course you have to know that there are two images there in the first place before you embark on the exercise.

Which brings me to my point. If this is true of these simple images, could it also be true of virtually everything we experience visually? The essential organising principle is perhaps also the key to prejudice and fixed positions, the swearing blind that something is 'so'.

Courts and lawyers make their money out of this. They painstakingly write down every detail of their client's account of events, to enable them to fight their corner and then they go into battle to determine this truth beyond reasonable doubt. They believe their own construction which of course gives them the conviction to persuade, influence and ultimately achieve their objective.

And so it is with the alchemy of theatre. Moment by moment the actor presents you the audience with an 'impression' or an image that is embued with meaning and feeling, and then in an instant he grabs that image and transforms it into the next.

Often when I am working with actors I talk about what I call the 75/25 rule. ie; the actor is present creating the momentum and drive of the dramatic narrative, but the key to its success is whether they have fully engaged the imaginations of the audience. So 75% of the performance is indeed what the actors bring to the text through expression of a feeling, and idea, a conflict, a relationship, but the critical 25% belongs to each unique audience member. This is their contribution to the act of drama. The simplicity of the actor's image enables the audience to fill in the missing bits and to create their own gestalt built on their personal biography and subjective narrative.  This is what in my view makes the performance whole. Once achieved the actor may then skilfully dismantle the image through conjuring of one kind of another. Its as simple as transforming in full view a piece of cloth from being a blanket to a much desired lover for example. Its all in the attention and intention and then the execution. 

Its a critical actor's skill to be able to shift mecurially from image to image, and she needs to be vigilant in remembering this to avoid absolute truth answers in the portrayal of a character. Holding the duality of a conflict for example requires a flexibility of mind and body to carve the ambivalence and contradictions inherent within the text, or life for that matter.

So a little glimpse into gestalt theory this morning. All grist to the mill.

Have a good one!