Finding areas of learning

 

Hi all! I've been working on trying to suss out my areas of learning and it is difficult! Mostly because there are so many potential things to talk about and explore. I thought I would share some of my ramblings with you and see what you think? 

One of the things I think I've cottoned on to in recent years is paying more attention to being true to myself professionally. We are all so different in our outlooks, our aspirations, our backgrounds, interests and our core values. Just looking back at the people I trained with in musical theatre, I realise how very different we all were. There was a lawyer, mature students who'd already had long careers but wanted to learn something new, people who have since become pure dancers or singers and people who've changed direction entirely. We were all on the same course and left with the same qualifications but have acted so differently. The same goes for every job I've done, director I've worked with or teacher I've had. And that's wonderful! The trick though, is to not get caught up in other people's way of doing things if it goes against what you stand for as a professional. For example, vocal (or physical) warm ups. In every job I've done, people have contrasting views on warming up. There are some people who treat it with great importance and do it religiously before performing. But in my experience, most people believe it's something that can be left at the drama school door. It isn't seen as "cool". Personally, I believe they are crucial for a solid performance and are now part of my professional practice always. But I've learned the hard way! In my first professional job, I gave in to pressure from the other actors on my team. I began the job warming up fully every morning. But I quickly caught on to the looks and comments, the eye rolls! I'm ashamed to say I let it get to me! I was going to be working for this company for eight months so I gave in and just had a black coffee as my warm up. The result? Carrying lozenges in my makeup bag became the norm and sure enough I eventually lost my voice. As someone who is interested in a long career, and would like to avoid nodules (ah!), I now stick to doing what works for me, no matter who I work with or the attitudes around me. 

Another area I'm looking at is the role of fear in my practice. I started by thinking about shyness and perfectionism in my practice as I thought these were barriers for me. But when I got down into it, I don't think I'm actually a shy person, I just get self conscious. And when I debate about posting a video or recording on social media, it's really fear of being judged that stops me. Fear shows up in my practice regularly and in many different forms. It can be nerves at an audition, fear of failure, fear of hitting a high note, procrastination. It tries to motivate big decisions. It's there and I think it's part of human nature but what matters is whether you are ruled by it or not. I'm lucky that nine times out of ten, I'm able to push myself to go and do the things that scare me. For instance, I got a phone call asking about a potential job and was asked if I could do an old school cockney accent. Panic! I knew I could do it deep down but it had been a LONG time and I was going to be working with much more experienced actors but my gut knew to say 'yes' as it was a great opportunity. Cut to me frantically sending cockney voice notes to a friend who's terrific at accents. But I arrived on the day and once we were all in character together I was able to jump straight in no problem! I ended up being so glad that I trusted my instinct because it paid off. I remember one of my old acting teachers gave us a challenge for the week. We had to do one thing that scared us, pushed us out of our comfort zone. We talked about it at the end of the week and he said that we should strive to always keep pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone.(Challenge accepted!)

I think fear and resilience kind of tie in together. I briefly mentioned resilience in my last post, that I realised that I'm quite good at bouncing back no matter what hard situations come up. I think this is such an important part of being a performer. I know I personally struggle with the fear of failure, of doing a terrible audition, of not being good enough or the best, of not "making it". And running alongside these are the realities of the industry we are in. I was listening to a podcast called 'The Amarillo Podcast' yesterday and the actress being interviewed pointed out that rejection is inevitable. Unemployment is inevitable. It's a fickle, tough, ever changing industry but we need to learn to develop a protective bubble around ourselves and not take rejection to heart. That's easier said than done and I'm still working hard on this but I think I've learned better mentalities to have when facing different situations. And again I've learned these through experience and from listening to others.

Those are just some of the areas I'm looking at but I'll probably be back soon with more! I'm still looking at staying creative to hold onto drive, my relationship with Web 2.0 and social media with my practice, networking, collaborating with others and professionalism in general. Lots to do! I'd love to know people's thoughts on the above! x 

References: 

Noblezada E. (2020) The Amarillo Project [podcast] 21 October. Available at : https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-amarillo-project/id1526395362