Had another Acting Class at the NVT tonight, which went well, and got a lot of good responses. However, all I could focus on was the faces of those that appeared not to be getting a kick out of it.
It's the same as when I'm doing stand up, or the GhostWalk. It doesn't matter if everyone's having a good time, my attention is drawn, briar patch like, to the individual who seems not to be having quite as good a time as everyone else. It's a stupid logic, of course: it's not possible for everyone to be enjoying it all at the same level as everyone else. But the perfectionist performer (or tutor) in me refuses to accept this logic. From conversations with other performers, and reading memoirs and the like, I know it's an universal problem: that one person who has cracked less smiles than everyone else becomes both your target and your albatross.
In a way, what made it complicated tonight was a lack of complication: in tonight's workshop we were looking at moments of 'nothing's'. It's all too easy for many actors to fill up their time on stage with lots of 'business', for instance huffing and puffing and constantly looking at their watch to signal to the audience that they're waiting for someone or something that's late, in a way that they simply wouldn't do in real life. Of course, we feel the need to communicate something to a watching audience, but we don't often have the courage to do 'nothing': but the problem challenges those who aren't even on stage - even as audience members, it seems we need instant gratification, to have our stories told to us, almost spoonfed, without making too much effort ourselves. This shouldn't be the case: audiences are not passive, they become part of the piece. They themselves have to engage, whatever is on stage, we bring our own experience and baggage to it, and write our own stories on the scene, until dialogue and action tells us otherwise.
Of course, I'm talking about all of this reacting to just a couple of members of the class who seemed not to be having as good a time as I thought they should have had. It's the same sort of pep talk any performer has to give themselves when a gig hasn't gone as perfectly as s/he feels that it should've.
But here's something that I honestly think is worth considering: the possibly that those couple of people might be entirely correct. You're an extraordinarily complacent performer or workshop leader if you think that your way is the best way. If someone disagrees, their opinion is worthy of merit, even if they are indeed only one.
Of course, you can tie yourself up on knots trying to please all of the people all of the time: it's a fools errand. Ignoring the fact that I've just managed to crowbar three cliches into two sentences, it's my job to do the best again, while always acknowledging that the job could be done even better.
At the end of my workshops, I end with a line which I picked up when I first starred learning improv, at drop-in classes with The Maydays. The idea is that if, during the class, you witnessed something that you liked or enjoyed, then you go up to the person involved, and you tell them so. That's not the important bit, though. The important bit is for whoever you're delivering your compliment to. It's vitally important that when someone takes the time to tell you how much they liked what you did, that you accept what they're saying at face value: you don't attempt to qualify or quantify what you did, or refer to the twenty other things you did tht weren't quite as good, or admit that the great thing your flatterer is referring to was actually a mistake ... You simply breath in, accept the compliment, and say nothing other than, 'thank you'.
Well, you'd be proud. As the class ended, and I fretted about those people I hadn't really been able to communicate my ideas to, as I morosely wondered if this weeks workshop had worked as well as last weeks, I had a few of the people come up to me, thanking me for the workshop, saying that they'd enjoyed it, and that they'd be back next week. It wasn't easy, but I did it: I breathed in. I accepted the compliment, and I said thank you.
Thank you.
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