Growing up, acting was the only activity that sustained my existence.\u00a0 Mother recounts that at ten I told her rehearsals were the only events\u00a0I looked forward to in life.\u00a0 Even as a kid, I remember feeling that performing was one of the few times I felt truly alive, powerful and free, when I felt like all my quirks and odd humor and out of control look-at-me-cross-eyed-and-I\u2019ll-burst-into-tears kind of sensitivity were assets rather than detriments.\u00a0 And as a slothful child, content to skate along with as little effort as possible in most of my endeavors, theater was the only activity that I would work at with arduous, single-pointed discipline.\u00a0
\nPrimarily a theater creator now, I only act in other shows when it works out with other projects and I think it\u2019ll be worthwhile.\u00a0 However I also pretty regularly perform in my own work and in the past year I\u2019ve been writing solo performances, or, as I like to call them, artistic satisfaction bonanzas.\u00a0 I make it and say it all without having to interact with anyone else (mo people mo problems) and I get all of the glory every single last drop all for me me me me me.\u00a0
\nMegalomania aside, I wasn\u2019t able to attend the Hardcore Dharma class\u2019s in-class exam because I was performing a segment of a solo show at Catch!, a Brooklyn performance series.\u00a0 But don\u2019t think I wasn\u2019t hardcore dharma-ing it.\u00a0 Because as every actor who’s ever cracked a dharma book knows, performing is sooooooooo ridiculously Buddhist.
\nLet\u2019s look at the jargon.\u00a0 What\u2019s the number one goal of any actor at any time?\u00a0 Being in the moment.\u00a0 Resting and reacting in the present moment even though your conceptual mind knows the staging, the story, the lines, your character externals and the outcomes.\u00a0 How do you do this?\u00a0 Taking the attention OFF of your self.\u00a0 Getting inside the experience.\u00a0 Focusing on the outside person, on communicating to your audience, on LETTING GO. Having no expectations.\u00a0 Staying concentrated.\u00a0 Breathing.\u00a0 All the while staying extremely mindful of exactly what your voice and body are doing at every moment.\u00a0 The Buddha tells you to have a mind that\u2019s not too tight and not too loose, David Mamet tells you to invent nothing and deny nothing.\u00a0 Dr. Reggie Ray\u2019s body meditations sound almost word for word like the warm-up visualizations we did in our Meisner class.\u00a0 Viewpoints, a popular method taught to actors, teaches performers to break down their stage presence into time, space, story, emotion, shape and movement – that is mindfully dissecting your performance into malleable non-self interdependent factors.
\nAfter the honeymoon period with Buddhism and meditation (that lovestruck time when you\u2019re so abhidharma you can break down visual experiences to the atom and watch each thought unfurl like time-lapse orchids) ends, sometimes it can be a challenge to see the real effects of meditation in your waking life.\u00a0 But the one thing I know for sure that Buddhism has helped me with is in that walking, speaking, joking, crying, hamming meditation called performing.
\nAnd while I don\u2019t know if I would have been receptive to it, I wish that meditation and mindfulness were taught in my BFA program alongside script analysis.\u00a0 Because until I started meditating, I did not know I could discipline my mind to get into the present on cue.\u00a0 Yes I generally could find the present moment, but I tended to think it came out of an unpredictable combination of my confidence level, what I ate for breakfast, adrenal vs. serotonin balance and air pressure.\u00a0 It was elusive and non-controllable.\u00a0 It came from talent not effort.\u00a0 So of course there were times when, psyching myself out, I simply couldn\u2019t find that present moment and I felt there was nothing I could do about it.\u00a0 Since I\u2019ve developed a mindfulness and meditation practice, I\u2019ve found that while I might veer off from the present for a moment or two, I have the mental reigns to pull that old horse back on the path.
\nAnd that points back to meditation and mindfulness practice in itself.\u00a0 Sometimes I sit down to meditate and I simply do not want to stay with my breath.\u00a0 It seems absolutely impossible.\u00a0 It feels like wrestling with the slipperiest fish ere to have spawned.\u00a0 Likewise in life, sometimes I simply do not want to let an anxious thought go, and I let it tie me and bind me into a tangled slinky of obsession.\u00a0 Yet when I perform, it feels like no matter the circumstances, I\u2019m able to focus my mind.\u00a0 What\u2019s that about?\u00a0 Well, this weekend I decided it\u2019s about stakes.
\nSometimes when I sit down to meditate I\u2019m not taking it seriously enough.\u00a0 The stakes are not high enough for me to settle my mind.\u00a0 There\u2019s doubt or desire or laziness.\u00a0 Meanwhile my investment in performance is great enough that I can always rouse my mindfulness and apply it exactly as needed.\u00a0 So why can\u2019t I do this on the cushion, or, kind of more distressingly, in my relationships?\u00a0 How do we get the stakes high enough to stay mindful when we\u2019re speaking to our mother, father, lover or friend?\u00a0 How can we drill\u00a0the impermanence of all conditioned phenomena\u00a0into our stubborn brains enough to realize, as the popular theater geek tee-shirt espouses, that life is NOT a dress rehearsal?
\nMy connection to performance is surely very similar to a type of connection that most people have in their life; skiing or dancing or waitressing or cooking or teaching, any activity that gets you in \u201cthe zone.\u201d\u00a0 Last night I spoke to a man with no knowledge of Buddhism who told me he rides a motorcycle because when he parks and dismounts, the world seems more precious.\u00a0 It\u2019s kind of human intuition that \u201cforgetting ourselves\u201d is relaxing and enriching.\u00a0 The challenge for the practitioner, who has some skillful means to make awareness manifest, is making life a big enough deal to want to make that effort again and again and again.\u00a0 Day to day mindfulness may not be as instantly gratifying as applause, but I imagine the results of a committed mindfulness practice might provide their own unique brand of happiness and satisfaction.\u00a0 In the words of De La Soul, stakes is high.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Growing up, acting was the only activity that sustained my existence.\u00a0 Mother recounts that at ten I told her rehearsals were the only events\u00a0I looked forward to in life.\u00a0 Even as a kid, I remember feeling that performing was one of the few times I felt truly alive, powerful and free, when I felt like…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-media"],"yoast_head":"\n