Staying Vulnerable

Here is the brilliance of taking classes/workshops.  It takes you down a notch or a peg, you get knocked down the stairs.  Yet, you don't have to go through this in front of an audience. 

To be an artist means you must be moving forward, take on new challenges.  My contention, if you don't put yourself at risk of failure, you are not an artist.  

Picasso, would challenge himself to explore newer forms of art.  Art is plenty hard to create, he dumped what he knew, to push his own boundaries.  

I took a physical comedy workshop yesterday.  I had way more experience than just about everyone there.  Many had been taking similar courses for a long time, they were better at certain exercises.  

I didn't do well on one exercise, I consider it a fail for what I saw in myself.  

I try to stay very present as a performer, in this case I didn't and couldn't.  I was caught using my clown tricks.  Using tricks does not make me a better performer. 

It's very hard not to create a little shell around you doing what I do for a living.  I have so many tricks to get people laughing, I have so many tricks to create clowning.  But they are only tricks, I'm not vulnerable and present.  That's a boring or stagnant performer. 

When you watch a movie or a TV show, if the acting isn't very good or you watch a comedian that isn't working for you or a singer that is just not quite there, it's because they aren't present and vulnerable.  They are using tricks, we, the audience, sense it.  

You can have a million tricks but they are just tricks, they keep you separate from your character, separate from your audience.  

This is why you take classes, there will always be an exercise you can't do or need to work on.  It feels crappy but you know you can always get better.  

It comes down to be more and more present.  If you rely on critiquing your own work, you'll end up thinking you're pretty wonderful.  To become more present, you need to fail every once and a while.  

The path to greatness is to continually challenge yourself.  Keep taking classes, take a risk.