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| photo by nicolas guionnet |
You know you have talent, you feel you belong on stage, but a voice inside says; "you can't do it"... Who is it? What is this block?
Read this excerpt of A BALANCING ACT:
"Acting is the act of transforming oneself into a work of art, and in that process the entire bioenergetic system of the person will undoubtedly be affected. As the delicate interconnected nervous, emotional, physical and energetic system embodies someone else, imagining different surrounding circum-stances, suddenly, its blueprint changes and gets challenged. Sir Anthony Hopkins appropriately says it in his interview with Oprah, the body doesn’t know that it is fiction. With this transformation comes an immense amount of normal anxiety and stress. Whether it is acknowledged or not, the entire nervous and energetic systems are put under tremendous pressure, and the subconscious usually reacts by trying to protect you and pull you back. This often results in a huge block preventing you from performing the role freely. This block appears in a myriad of questions, smoke screens and hidden fears that the subconscious launches to stop you from going further in the transformation. Questions like: What is the director going to think? Am I good enough? Am I trying the right thing? Am I guessing what the director wants? What will my parents think? And my teachers? My partners? The reviewers? Can I still love myself if I play this villain? Do I look good? Is my voice okay? Can my wife still love me if I play this loser? Is my pain painful enough and readable for an audience? And for the director? Do I have enough energy? Can I come back to be myself again after this role? What if I couldn’t get back? Why didn’t I get the lead role? And so on, and so on. Often, the lower sub-personalities, the Shadow sides of the Archetypes, also called Disowned Selves, are the ones putting up the roadblocks. They do their best to protect your psychological integrity, sensing danger in the transformation required by the role. Their intent is just to protect you, to keep you safe. But the actor self cannot do his best job. "
The key to stop these voices in your head, is to really spend the time to listen to them... Strange?
Well not really. If you ignore them, they'll shout louder! If you spend the time to dialogue with them and listen to them and their opposite, then you can achieve balance... To get more information on this voice dialogue technique, contact me.
More info is also available in the book, a great gift for your actor friends, this holiday season.
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This is an excerpt of the book A BALANCING ACT. page 242. Want to read more? Click here
Emmanuelle Chaulet is an artist's coach and Lecturer in Theatre at the University of Southern Maine. Her technique ENERGIZE uses combinations of Michael Chekhov, Lee Strasberg, Voice Dialogue and Energy work.
She works in the USA during the year and in France during the summer months. She coaches performers privately in person, and via video conference Skype throughout the whole year.
