So now that I’m deep into rehearsals for my next project, I find I’m having to remind myself that rehearsal is a place to fail – it’s where you find out what works, mostly by trying out everything that doesn’t. I know this as an actor, but I’m having to learn it all over again as a director. It’s a way of working that sort of runs counter to the way most other people operate. Most people go to work every day and try to SUCCEED – although, as Seth Godin recently pointed out on his blog, failure (and knowing how to do it better) is worth pursuing sometimes, even for people in non-artistic fields.
Even in our personal lives, we try to succeed at being our better selves, our more perfect selves – with yoga, self-help, gurus, Oprah, weight-loss, etc. Carina Chocano had a great “riff” on this current cultural obsession a few weeks back in the NY Times Magazine:
…this is the vision of perfection we’ve signed up for: That you must outsmart, outwork, outrival and outdream everybody else or consign yourself to a life of frustrated obscurity or worse. Perfection has always held a kind of promise, but this conception of it sounds less like a promise than a threat.
I’m with Chocano, and also with Randall Munroe of xkcd: this idea of perfection scares me sometimes, as do the people who promote it – some of them appear to be more excited about success itself than about doing the thing that they want to be successful at! It’s like that stereotypical 12-stepper who’s so into the 12 steps that they’ve basically just replaced one addiction (drugs or alcohol) with another (self-help & 12-step-programs), without addressing the underlying problem that’s creating their addictive behavior. Not to denigrate 12-steppers – I’ve met some pretty inspired (and inspiring) people who happen to be in “the program”. But I tend to think it’s because they’ve used the 12 steps as a tool to realize their true, amazing selves, not because the 12 steps are themselves necessarily true or amazing. However you get to the top of the mountain, I guess…
As it happens, there is a great case study of 12-steppers on Broadway right now, in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Motherfucker with the Hat, which I’m pretty sure is only ON Broadway because of its big-name star, Chris Rock, given that the rest of Guirgis’ work has mostly been seen in Off- and Off-Off-Broadway houses. As well it should: this play seemed out of place in a big snazzy Broadway production, as if someone tried to put a comfy La-Z-Boy in the middle of a sleek corporate lobby. Rock seemed out of place as well – he’s a stand-up comedian and a film actor, not a stage actor. Normally this wouldn’t be too much of a hindrance – I’ve seen lots of film and TV actors do just fine on Broadway – but Rock is forced to share the stage with a real live stage actor, the immensely talented Bobby Cannavale, who actually inhabits his character with life, spirit, and moment-to-moment presence, making Chris Rock look like a wise-cracking, indicating amateur by comparison…
On a somewhat unrelated note, a group called The Orange Hats “archived” the audience response to a project I was working on earlier this year, a production of The Changing Room at T Schreiber Studio, and I think it’s cool: see for yourself.
Greetings from sunny California, where Santa (wearing huaraches and board shorts) has come and gone, which means it’s time for new year’s resolutions! This year, I’ve decided to be more me: I’m going to let my authentic self shine through more in my career, craft, and personal life. That’s why I’m calling it “2012: The Olivia-en-ing!” (it’s even got its own theme song) – what’s your theme for 2012?
