Life Experience

Taking things from life to use in your work is one of the major foundations of my acting education. Finding the experiences to pull upon to relate to what is happening in the text is critical to finding truth in your work.

Basically that translates to everything that happens, everything that's said to me, everything I see and hear and feel is all fair game to be used someday internally to create something external.

Major life experiences happen without warning, and you know you're dedicated to your art when one of the first coherent thoughts you can form afterwards is how wonderful it is that you've now got lots more to feel and to use.

I go to school in a city where tough shit can go down, where ghetto means ghetto and street means street, and little ginger, white, suburban pseudo-hipster girl me didn't realize exactly what that can mean until I saw it first hand this afternoon. I'm fine, but that stuff makes a serious impact on your mental well being, and so part of my coping mechanism is detaching myself and figuring out where to stash it in the filing cabinets of feelings.

It'll be excellent to draw on later, but for now it's a little fresh in my head. But this is a log of everything I learn about this craft, so here it is. Take everything you can get. Don't go looking for it, life finds you. A relaxing walk with a friend can turn into sprinting down a street with your heart in your throat and your mind white with shock and fear. But it's all good. It's all going to be fine.