tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8124234.post-64378596037225373452008-06-01T22:45:00.004-04:002008-06-01T23:16:30.729-04:00<div>I haven't posted on the acting side in a while.</div><br /><div> </div>I've had good reason.<br /><br />Here's the MP3 -- and remember, this is my "Ramblings" blog ...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.adamcreighton.com/podcast/The-Other-Side-of-Something-Horrible.mp3">The-Other-Side-of-Something-Horrible.mp3</a><br /><br /><!-- <div> </div><br /><div>And while I work to keep my acting and private life separately, they both inform each other, so to not come clean about my absence would be more than a little ingenuous.</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>More than just than just a cathartic blurb (a little), this post is about recent happenings, and how they've woken me up to acting parallels.</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>Again, I try to keep my personal and professional acting life separate (I learned early in my career that of a paparazzo knows no bounds), so you only get the barest of details.</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>I'm married. I had a baby. That's what you get on the personal front.</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>The Something Horrible is that, a week after the baby was born and the day we moved into a new house, my young wife had a heart attack.</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>I nearly lost her. A week in the hospital, twenty-four-seven taking care of her and my week-old baby, wondering what had happened and if I was going to a widower single dad, in the blink of an eye.</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>It was horrible. It was surreal. It was a fog of fear and desperation and fighting for some of the most important things in my life. and thinking I was losing them.</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>Here's where the parallels to acting came in, some seen during, some seen in retrospect. Things that recognized at the time may have been a defense mechanism to keep my head from exploding in the madness, or things seen during or after that may just speak to how in line my choice in acting process matches who I am as a person.</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>It may seem cheap and trivial to link something so major to "acting", but make no mistake - <a href="http://www.adamcreighton.com/blogs/ramblings/2007/05/i-have-arrived.html">For me, acting is a solemn</a> <a href="http://www.adamcreighton.com/blogs/ramblings/2006/04/class-was-hard-last-night.html">vocation</a> - a way to figure out who I am, deconstruct my core, throw out the useless bits, and fire me up after the important ones.</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>So, since I subscribe to a "living truthfuly under imaginary circumstances", recent events have shed light on or impacted the acting living side of my life.</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div><strong><u>Activities:</u></strong></div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>The Meisner process has this concept of "The Door" and "<a href="http://www.adamcreighton.com/blogs/ramblings/2007/02/rough-night-in-class-last-night.html">The Activity</a>". Not to belabor the concept, but one person stands in a doorway, and is desperately trying to connect with a person in a room to get invited in, and the person in the room is desperately trying to finish a task uninterrupted. (And if you're not Meisner trained and don't know about it, don't go look it up, and don't take anything I write for substitution for doing the training and doing the work.)</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>When I do an activity in Meisner, I'm <em>bought in</em> to completing it; I'm <em>desperate</em> to get it done.</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>The parallel here is we were in the emergency room all night - me, my wife, and my week-old baby. </div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>Emergency rooms are dangerous, horrible places. Disease and death ridden. Ridden with potentially deadly hospital-borne illnesses that can end the life of a newborn.</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>So, from 10 a.m. to 6 a.m., I was desperately trying to keep my newborn off the ground. For eight hours, while at the same time in a panic trying to find out what happened to my wife and taking care of her, I was keeping my daughter in her car carrier and her diaper bag off of the floor. That was my goal, failing that meant putting her at more risk than having her there in the first place.</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>Do you know how heavy a car seat gets after 45 minutes? Let alone eight hours. This gave me a whole new appreciation for activity urgency.</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div><strong><u>The First Rule of Improv:</u></strong></div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>The first rule of improv is "yes and" - or Listening and loving</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>Making myself heard </div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>Working through emotion</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>Fear</div><br /><div>Not using stuff.</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div>Fearlessness</div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />-->Adamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00818870159415064833noreply@blogger.com