Turn Your Body Into a Lightning Rod, Part 1: Imagination, Eyes, and Tongue

Introduction

Very occasionally throughout my career I have taken small roles to attempt to stay in touch with the task of acting, and found it utterly confounding and deeply, deeply difficult to relax into.

As a man with scoliosis, I know body tension. If I even mention a certain stressful teacher I had in high school and then reach for a high shelf, blam, there’s an icepick in my back. When I teach or direct actors, I can often see with the naked eye that there are imbalances in tension all over their bodies. It’s as if the transverse muscle, in the pit of the gut, is where all the emotion comes from and it’s got to get past three check points on its way out: the stomach, the shoulders and the jaw. And if an actor is clenching one of those (like I do) for reasons beyond his control or awareness, perhaps in a very understandable attempt to remain civilized and control the emotions trying to blast their way out of him, you can bet he’s got an energy leak somewhere else, like blinking too much, or shifting his weight, or over-endowing props. Which then leads to unwanted, undirected energy belying his performance.

On the witnessing side, as human beings, and as audience members, there are a million languages of the face we don’t realize we already speak. When an actor blinks too much, or blinks not in a way that the character would blink given his dialogue, something bugs us, and we decide we don’t believe them. When an actor acts like he’s listening, rather than truly picturing the imagery of what is being said to him, we see his face tense into handsome listening face, and we stop rooting for him. And finally, given that (I believe) we think in images, not words, if an actor has not connected deeply with the images within his own dialogue, and is not using his tongue as a paintbrush to paint these images onto the mind-canvas of the listener, we hydroplane along with him, over his moments, unaffected.

To combat this, I have devised, over the years, the above handy-dandy diagram of the human body while acting. A treacherous landscape of tension-moguls forming and releasing. Blocking the path of the emotional truth as it emerges from its home in the pit of the gut, where our weakest muscles are, that are only deployed when we cry. Beginning with the imagination, and working counter-clockwise, I will attempt to double-click on the human body, that it might be deployed in its entirety to our artistic ends.

Read the full post »

The Conundrum of Directing

I’m the Pollyanna and it kills me. In 2004, I was in my third year of grad school, studying theatre directing. My thesis production was of an Irish play about two warring brothers and the priest who tries to reconcile them. In a certain way, it amounted to a very expensive diary entry. I watched from the back row on closing night. The jokes were popping, the audience was laughing, it should have been a dream moment in my career. The four actors I had grown to deeply adore in the two months of rehearsals demanded I join them for the curtain call, which I was thrilled to do, despite the very appropriate school-wide ribbing it earned me. What could possibly be better?

But the nagging hollowness I experienced that night was the beginning of the realization that I had directed so many plays, run two theatre companies and even attended an incredibly expensive graduate school, in a desperate and juvenile attempt to prove I was talented. Every instinct in the rehearsal hall, every design whimsy, every adjustment of timing was all done with the audience’s estimation of me in mind. I’m embarrassed to even type it.

My choice of thesis material was proof: Irish, sarcastic, a priest father figure (see other entries of this blog), deeply buried sorrow, it had every ingredient of the conversation I was having with myself, yet didn’t recognize. I was drunk on self-mythology. I was trapped in the story I was telling myself about me.

I was thus subject to delusions of grandeur about contributions to the art form, while deeply invested in all of my collaborators’ enjoyment of the process. But the more I leaned into making feisty collaborators happy, the less I got results I was looking for. And the more lofty I made my language in directing, i.e. the more I used German words like gestalt, zeitgeist, and verfremdung (or my favorite weltschmerz), the looser my grip on the details and nitty gritty we all needed to work on.

Sometimes your collaborators are mixing cement, sometimes they’re building a cathedral. And both actions look exactly the same. The trick is to know which action to address.

Read the full post »

Oaxaca changes a man…

IMG_1457

Oaxaca changes a man ...

IMG_1519

Despite the fortitude of the stonework in every direction, one gets the sense that Oaxaca is always changing, as if solids behave more like liquids in extreme slow motion.

IMG_1521
IMG_1523
IMG_1391

Monte Alban dates back to 750 B.C. and is built according to the 14 degree tilt of the Earth. The corner of one building points to sunset on the equinox. Note the size of the people below. The acoustics here are ridiculous. You could whisper to someone on the opposite pyramid.

IMG_1428

I wandered into the opera house and found many people inside looking at the image of another opera house. The meta-insanity of this philosophical hall of mirrors is the sort of existential conundrum Oaxacans eat for breakfast.

IMG_1526

Emily and I must have walked about 75 miles over 10 days. Combing the city in every direction from our hotel. We walked so much, I pulled a walk muscle behind my bottom right ribs.

IMG_1423
IMG_1451
IMG_1482

The streets feel very deliciously non-United States-y. Cobble stone becomes paved road becomes staircase becomes aquaduct becomes motorcycle.

IMG_1372

The hills surrounding the city are where things get really interesting.

IMG_1472

If you like corrugated metal as much as Emily and I do, then climb as high into the hills as there are houses.

IMG_1475
IMG_1476

Some of this wall is made from the oops rack of unstamped bottle cap sheets.

IMG_1481

In their enthusiasm for their job, this printer ran Coors and Budweiser plates at the same time.

IMG_1538

One such jaunt led to Emily finding the perfect tortilla (she obsessed all week about these Oaxacan morsels, which are thinner and chewier than their L.A. counterparts). Standing in front of one of Oaxaca's many murals, she cradled this warm bundle in a way that could be described as "eerily affectionate."

IMG_1412

And speaking of Oaxaca's murals, I've never seen such delicious whimsy. Oaxaca is to art as Copenhagen is to the atomic bomb. At 9pm on Sunday night, we saw 20 little easels in the middle of the park with children furiously creating away at each one. This town takes its art more seriously than Stringer Bell takes his business classes.

IMG_1415
IMG_1456
IMG_1416
IMG_1417
IMG_1418
IMG_1419
IMG_1455
IMG_1485
IMG_1486
IMG_1484
IMG_1487
IMG_1533
IMG_1537
IMG_1491

This is the Santo Domingo, in the center of town. Every square inch of this building was loved over by brilliant artisans. At first I thought, "what a strangely ostentatious display of wealth in a city and country not otherwise known for it," but then I thought, "this overwhelmingly communicates the level of loving detail that awaits those who believe in heaven, and might be less out of reach—on a cosmic plane—for those without, than I had realized."

IMG_1448

Oaxaca has a staggering number of old Beetles. They are the most popular car in town. It seems odd, but for the fact that everyone in town is an aesthete.

IMG_1488
IMG_1420
IMG_1425
IMG_1499

Emily spent the week obsessed with the woman on this corner who made quesadillas at night.

IMG_1498

After ten days of eating the most delicious restaurant food all over town we found out that the best restaurant is in fact a collection of plastic stools, a round stone slab, and furious florescent light.

IMG_1383

Our hotel had a terrace on the roof where we thought they'd hung chinese lanterns, but in fact, they'd rigged old colanders with light bulbs inside.

IMG_1542

As common a sight as the VW Beetle: couples talking close in parks and doorways. Know this my friends, Oaxaca is for lovers.

IMG_1553

Emily and I spent the plane ride home wondering how the U.S. would have turned out if it were as mountainous as Mexico.

IMG_1366

My good friend Tony Kahn, who grew up in Mexico because his father had been blacklisted by the H.U.A.C., once told me, "People either get Mexico, or they don't." I'd love to believe I know what he means.

 

 

¡Hola! ¿Qué tal, Mexico City?

A long layover afforded us a constitutional in the neighborhood surrounding Benito Juarez Airport. Benito Juarez was the first full-blooded indigenous president of Mexico. There has yet to be a full-blooded indigenous president of the United States. Advantage: Mexico.

It is here that I discovered not only do my shoes match the buildings and trucks, but the donuts are the best in the world.

Photos: Emily Topper née Topper.

 

The Human Slouch Towards Narrative

Spending the week at the American Film Market, and watching $800 million worth of narrative morsels whiz around the beaches of Santa Monica, can make you think many cynical things about what makes a movie popular. It reminded me of this old graph I created five or six years ago to try to encapsulate all human consciousness on one piece of paper.

It seems like we all start within the A ring, the story you tell yourself about you, or, The Ring of the Narcissist: your mirror face, your hopes for the future, circumstances that you assure yourself are not your fault, your memories, and the impact you notice yourself having on a room.

Then we enter the B ringthe story you tell the world about you, or, The Ring of the Braggadocio — your photo face, what you choose what to wear, the angle you hold your spine, your behavior in traffic, how long you take to answer questions, and how many stories you tell in which you are the hero or the victim.

The C ringthe story the world tells you about you, or, The Ring of the Consumer — is all advertising, movies, magazines, and media. You are the center of the universe, it all tells us, and you are going to need equipment. Like toothpaste.

The D ringthe story the world tells itself about you, or, The Ring of the Paranoiac — feels like a cage if you focus on it too long: your credit score, gossip about you, photography of you that you don’t like, your nation.

The D ring feels so much like a cage in fact, that very few people venture past it to the glorious E ringthe story you tell the world about the world, or, The Ring of the Participant — the art you make, your carbon footprint, how you will participate in the world, and what you give away.

It’s all about where you put most of your preoccupations. When I put on clothes in the morning, are they to assure myself I’m okay looking? To assure others I’m successful? To sport the latest brands? To give the finger? To not get fired? Or to keep me warm while I tend my planet?

The truth is, I think, if you focus on the story you tell the world about the world, it will influence all the others, and your life will inevitably improve. But if you get trapped in the psycho-emotional rat’s nest of the inner circles of self-consciousness, and spend all of your time pursuing sensations (e.g. the sensation of being famous, or being correct, or mighty), you will have missed out on incredible opportunities to contribute a verse to the great human experiment.

When I get caught up in the movie of my life—and start to dwell on what people might think—I try to remember…

No one is watching. The cinema is empty. And it is such a relief.

Oh, and the oomphalos (Greek for navel) is the unknowable belly button of existence. That’s the one in the middle. The actual you enshrouded by all this narrative tomfoolery. The you anyone would fall in love with, if only they could see it.

My Occupy Wall Street home protest kit…

Purpose

When you begin to seek a purpose in life, you face this question: do you protect the past from the inevitability of the future? Or do you protect the future from the inevitability of the past?

Eventually, some realize the past is safe. It already happened. And we begin to protect the future from the dooming ignorance that surrounds us.

Protectors of the past: the only constant is change, and if you spend too much of your time trying to prevent it, you will eventually feel like a fool.

Protect the future. Protect it from the closed-loop notions of the past. Protect it from institutions that prioritize their own survival over their purported missions. Protect it from cavalier ignorance of the dire consequences of our consumption. Protect it from the primitive human instinct of power-grabs and exclusion.

Eradicate certainty.

Embrace change.