I was super vocally healthy today!!!! My voice had relatively few issues after my yell, and I even caught a few other moments that hurt my voice and handled them well. Despite this, I feel like my performance was sub-par.
- It was a rainy and dreary day. Perhaps this is why the audience was hardly reactive at all. This was unfortunate, but it wasn’t one of our measures of success. It’s out of my control, so I shouldn’t dwell on it too much
- I fell out of the moment many times in the beginning and the end. I’m very proud of myself for being at a place where my success is based on being in the moment, not whether it was ‘emotional’ or ‘acting’ enough. But, by this measure, I did mediocre at best. Things going awry, the mood being down, all these things may have contributed to this. I wonder if professional actors feel this too?
I caught myself ‘inserting’ emotions in the final scene because I noticed myself leaving the moment. The final scene feels amazing when done well, so when I knew I couldn’t get there I wanted to force it to happen. This is actually major growth. I’m being myself up… for beating myself up. I know that mentality is unhealthy and I’m working to be better. Huzzah! But… I have no idea how to combat this. Why do I fall out of the moment? Donnellan says fear, but some of my experiences today indicate that ‘we were just down today’. I think it’s both.
The fear came in because I wanted to have a great performance (which is always where my fear comes from) but it was harder to be fully present, therefore increasing the work I had to do and the fear that I may fail. That’s precisely what I’ve been working against, so I need to formulate a way around this.
Is it giving myself grace? If I have a hard day, do I accept that my performance may be lackluster? Or do I work as hard as I can to make it amazing? The only thing I have control over is how much I warm up and everything else will arrive in the moment. Aside from that, there’s nothing I can do, so yes, you do have to accept that this performance will be lackluster. The reason is that if I push it to be great, I’ll be demonstrating, not acting. If I allow it to be genuine but ‘okay’ it will, in fact, be truthful and beautiful.