Entering the Space: Crossing the Threshold

The way we enter into a space is often defined by the nature of the space, and the nature of a space is often defined by how we enter it. These are complementary concepts. The great actor and teacher, Michael Chekhov, often used the word “atmosphere” to discuss how a space affects us and our actions. Consider the difference in experiences between entering your own home after a long day at work and entering a bustling cafe for a first date, or between approaching a beach as the sun begins to set on a tropical island and between stepping outside a small cabin in the Alaskan wilderness in winter. Our attitudes towards these places and the events which will occur in them are just as strongly determined by their objective natures as well as by our expectations of what will happen. It is necessary for the actor to cultivate a sensitivity to the atmospheres of spaces both real and imagined, and it is necessary for us to make sure our dojo is a space that encourages the individual and the ensemble towards discovery and creation. How do we do this?

Many martial arts dojos require you to bow in a particular direction, sometimes towards a shrine, as you enter and exit the practice space, and to begin and end practice sessions with formal bowing. I won’t attempt to unpack all the layers of meaning in this bowing practice here, but I will note that it provides a moment to recognize the separation between where you were and where you are going. The bow recognizes the liminal moment and honors yourself, your fellow practitioners, your teachers, the entire lineage that precedes and will succeed you. I find this to be very similar to another idea/exercise I’ve encountered through Michael Chekhov training, “crossing the threshold.”

The exercise itself is simple. Assume a position of readiness. For me, this means standing up straight, feet below me about the same width apart as my shoulders, my head balanced lightly atop my neck, with the crown of my head directed towards the ceiling. Your joints should be soft, knees unlocked, try to allow your shoulders to release and make no more effort than is necessary to stay standing. My hands are held lightly at my sides, thumbs facing forward, as if I am ready to raise them gently and shake hands with someone or receive a gift. Let’s call this position “a state of readiness.” There is no tension in a state of readiness, but it is also not a state for rest or for zoning out. We will talk more about states of readiness later. You may take this position, enter this state of readiness whether you are standing or if you are in a chair. Hypothetically I would argue you could do it even if you are laying down. “The readiness is all,” to steal from Hamlet. It is important to understand that whatever your physical abilities are you are always able to enter this state of readiness. If you use a device to assist with mobility it does not in any way affect your ability to enter a state of readiness. This is a psycho-physical state, meaning, to a degree, that what our psychology at the moment is affects our physical experiences and what our physical experiences are affect our psychology. There is no difference between my body and my brain, these are just tokens we slap onto ourselves to try and speak of specific things at different times, when the reality is we are our bodies and our bodies are we. I will discuss the idea of “psycho-physical” and understanding ourselves in a non-dualistic state further at another time. What is key is to understand that we can use our own psychology to experience our body differently and vice versa, so that if we are experiencing sensations such as muscle tension in our shoulders which are intruding on our feeling of being capable to enter a state of readiness then we can try and center our mind, our psychology, and the body will follow. The reverse is true, and will be more useful to us as we continue to work. If you have a body, regardless of how you are experiencing it, you can act, and if you do not have a body then I am most curious how you are reading this and perhaps we can discuss it later!

Back to the exercise, crossing the threshold. Enter a state of readiness and let your vision go soft. Imagine that you are at a threshold, a doorway or something similar. One step or measure of movement forward and you will cross the threshold into a new space. Where you are in your state of readiness at this moment, this side of the threshold, is a mundane space. It is the day to day space, the space where you work and where you have a snack, where you think about your bills and your favorite sports teams. Allow yourself a moment, a pause, to experience this mundane world in a mindful way. Usually we are not mindful as we move through our mundane lives. Often we are barely paying attention to our immediate surroundings, much less the more simple workings of ambulation. It is important at this moment to pause, a pause is a rich and essential thing, and simply accept this moment in this mundane world of ours and all that attends to it. You do not need to make an inventory of worries or thoughts, I used to take time to this and have determined it is counter-intuitive. You simply need to spend a moment, paused, experiencing the mundane reality of the moment. When you are ready, and only when you truly feel ready, move forward across the threshold, leaving the mundane world and entering a richer realm of possibility. As you move across the threshold, allow your senses to sharpen their focus, take a refreshing, deep breath in and allow it to release. You may wish to make a happy sigh aloud as you do so. You have moved into fresh air, pleasant water, from a realm of gravity and physics into one where flight and miracles are possible. Maybe you wish to smile, maybe you wish to go directly to action. You should be aware of all your classmates or ensemble members, your teachers, everyone who is in the space with you, and acknowledge their presence. I don’t mean to make eye contact and nod at everyone individually or anything, simply notice who you are in the space with and notice that they have inherent dignity and artistry. You have crossed the threshold. You have, by consent, made our dojo an encouraging space of discovery and creation.

You have left the mundane.

You have entered the honored, or the sacred, the beautiful...the sublime. The space of acting. You have undertaken a consequential journey, and yet you are in the same place, practically, as you were before.

Beginner's Mind and Acting

“Beginner’s Mind” is one concept I have learned in my zen practice which has proved perhaps the most utilitarian in my work as an actor. The Japanese word for this is shoshin. There are many ways of translating and understanding this idea, but as I am not a linguist and this is not a work on Buddhist philosophy, I think it will suffice to simply talk about “beginner’s mind.” The idea should become relatively obvious even to the most inexperienced actor. Shunryu Suzuki Roshi says, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.” (Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, 1970.)

When you act through the lens of beginner’s mind, acting either in the mundane, day to day sense, as well as in the sense of the performing arts, then you are acting without preconceived notions or expectations, acting as if it was the first time you had ever encountered this moment. A beginner’s mind experiences wonder, awe, possibility, a potential for limitless variety, an embrace of all possibilities. If you have ever watched a baby discover their toes or a child encountering the sea shore or snow for the very first time, then you have seen something very much like pure beginner’s mind. If you have experienced a jolt of inspiration the first time you have performed a scene or read it aloud in rehearsal, if the lines are a new discovery on every syllable, then you have experienced beginner’s mind as an actor. It is wonderful to encounter something for the very first time. The trick of life, of course, is that we only encounter something for the first time once, and thereafter we tend to have expectations. We attach strongly to the desire to have that first experience again, and by doing so we close ourselves off from our beginner’s mind, we block ourselves from that experience. This is a very common frustration we actors face. 

Once I was working on a scene from Shakespeare’s King John in a classroom with a well known director. I was playing Louis the French Dauphin, and it was the scene where Cardinal Pandolph tries to persuade me to cease my attack on England. “Your grace shall pardon me, I will not back,” etc. A fine speech from an uneven play. The director arrayed many of my classmates around me to play the various nobles, French and English, whom I am leading, and instructed them to cheer or otherwise respond as I went through the speech when they were feeling inspired and persuaded by me. The exercise should seem familiar to anyone who has taken a few acting courses, it is a useful one. My objective was not to change anything about Cardinal Pandolph really, it was to solidify and unify the soldiers under my command, to make them follow me and not obey The Church. No small thing for a noble in the Middle Ages! At one point they cheered me after a line where I was not expecting a response. I cannot remember which line and what I did that elicited their response, which is fine because it’s beside the point. Their cheers launched me into a brand new action on my next line and it felt exhilarating for us all. The director paused the scene, we reflected on what had happened, and then had me launch back into the speech from the same line, then stopped me immediately and had me start the line again, then stopped me and had me start the line again. He did this several times and then had me go back to the top and launch into the whole speech anew. The reasoning, he said, was that once we’ve made that new discovery then we’re going to try and replicate it immediately, and we will fail because we’re expecting to have the same experience, the same result. It will no longer be “fresh.” So make the discovery, enjoy it, then repeat the beat a bunch of times until you’re not expecting it so much, and you are more likely to keep the moment “fresh” or “alive.” This was good advice, a good practice. Without using the phrasing of “beginner’s mind,” he was still expressly trying to get me (and all of us students) to understand and incorporate beginner’s mind in our work. 

I reflected on this moment in my journal after the class, and in the process came to recall many similar exercises I’d experienced over many years in both classroom and rehearsal hall with many different directors and teachers. Often these lessons or exercises are presented to us as a sort of trick, something to keep in our actor’s bag of tricks, so to speak, like a magician’s valise we can draw from in moments of difficulty in our craft. You also hear these described as tools, new tools for our actor’s toolbox, which we can pull out as needed. The right tool for the right job. I’ve used this kind of phrasing often while teaching. I’ve come to believe that this phrasing, in fact this entire framing of the actor’s work, is as likely to compound the core problem as it is to solve the momentary difficulty. 

If acting is this thing we are doing, striving to behave truthfully in imaginary circumstances, and our problems come when we cannot behave truthfully in a moment, then our difficulty is not that we are lacking the correct tool for the task, it is simply that we are not acting. Frequently it is because we have stopped behaving and have, instead, started performing, and I think the language we use to address this is important, especially since so much of the actor’s art is a matter of using language. To employ a trick or to deploy a tool is suggestive of working to alter our performance, and eventually we will encumber ourselves with so many tricks, so many tools, that we cannot conceive of our behavior (in imaginary circumstances) without them. Ask an experienced actor how many times they’ve been called out for falling back on their usual bag of tricks and you are likely to hear, “A lot!” Our attachment to tricks, to tools, to notions of something exterior to and separate from ourselves is one source of this problem of performance. I suggest we strip away this language, we strip away this notion of acting as something exterior to our regular selves, and instead consider training ourselves to maintain, among many things, a beginner’s mind. 

“How do I get a beginner’s mind in the midst of rehearsal? What’s the trick to it?” Aha, see? That’s already a mental framework that will let you down. You already have everything you need. Your mind is a beginner’s mind. It does require effort to remember this truth, however. It will not be enough to simply try and deploy the tool of mindfulness when you are in rehearsal, or when you are preparing for a performance using whatever warm up routine you find most satisfying. You cannot succeed if you have an acting mind, and a mundane mind. Your mind is your acting mind. You must always have your acting mind. It must always be your own mind. It must be beginner’s mind. We are encountering the usual problem with writing about these things: they can be described, they can be theorized, but they cannot be understood without doing. This is another reason why having an Acting Dojo would be of great value. 

Recently, I began trying to teach myself how to play guitar. I do not have any particularly strong or inherent musical talent, but I thought it would be fun, perhaps even therapeutic in dealing with the stresses of the current historical moment. You may think it naive of me, but I was surprised to find that I had to tune the guitar every time I sat down to practice with it. The laws of physics describe why this is necessary, entropy and all of that, and while I expected to have to tune the instrument at times I didn’t realize it was necessary to tune it every time I sat down to play. I suppose it is not necessary, and out of tune guitar can be happily strummed as well as an in tune one, but if I want the music to sound just so then it is better if the guitar is tuned. People are the same way. There are many ways in which we keep ourselves in tune. A guitar that is in tune is like a mind that is empty of illusions and expectations. Tuning a guitar puts it in a state of readiness. Sitting zazen, performing walking meditation, and so returns us to our beginner’s mind and puts us in a state of readiness. We tune the guitar before we play music with it. 

The best actors are in constant practice of self understanding, and of non-self understanding...of understanding the self-non-self-universe. English is a bad language for these ideas, but I hope you are finding some small bits of sense here. Every behavior we do is acting, whether it is brushing our teeth in the morning, playing Hamlet, or having a drink with our comrades after the performance. We should not reserve our own tuning for only one of those actions. Then we have separated ourselves from ourselves, from our work. Acting has been set over here, and David has been set over there. It will always be a struggle to put them in the same spot. In an Acting Dojo, David learns that he and Acting are not separate. We train ourselves with practices that keep us awake to our beginner’s mind and whether we are brushing our teeth or killing Claudius we are not confused. 

It is best in as much as it is most likely to be a disciplined, repeating practice to have a dojo where you can train and understand your beginner’s mind, but there is nothing stopping you from starting to do it right now. There are many ways to learn and practice at home, or on the train, or in the park. I started by reading the book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. I also have enjoyed the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, particularly his Miracle of Mindfulness. These are excellent texts that can help you start. There are also podcasts, videos, etc online. But you don’t need to buy or acquire anything to start experiencing your beginner’s mind. Simply sit down, try to keep your back up straight as if a light string was supporting you from the ceiling and attached at the crown of your head, soften your gaze so that you are seeing things around you but not looking at them particularly, and let gravity hold you in your place. When you feel the impulse to breathe in, inhale through your nose and feel your lungs and chest fill, then when your inhalation is done allow yourself to slowly exhale through your mouth. You do not need to inhale and exhale for certain amounts of time. You’ve been breathing your entire life, you know what to do if you listen. Then simply breathe and allow all things to be as they are. If a thought enters your head, do not try and banish it. Accept it and let it go. I sometimes think of my thoughts as the same as the cats that live in my home with me. Sometimes they come to me, and sometimes they go. Often they are about their own business. There is little point trying to make a cat do a thing. Don’t try and make your thoughts do. Just sit. Just breathe. You are doing all you need to do. There is nothing else to do. 

Try it for two minutes at first. It will be enough. 

Note: there are people who find it very difficult or frustrating to sit zazen because the executive function of their minds works in a certain way, such as people with ADHD. Do not do anything that causes yourself to suffer, that causes you to misjudge yourself. You have everything you need to be yourself, to be an actor, to act. If something I discuss causes you suffering then there is no point in doing it, because you know better than I do! Don’t listen to me! Except when I say to be kind and patient with yourself. Listen to that, but nothing else.

The Acting Dojo

The Japanese word “dojo” can be roughly translated as “place of the way, route, or road.” Do comes from the Chinese tao or dao, which carries both the mundane meanings relating to avenues of travel and also a philosophical or spiritual meaning referring to a holistic understanding of existence (e.g. Taoism) and jo refers to a unit of measurement the size of a standard tatami mat, the mats made of woven grass and rushes used as flooring material. One way of understanding or defining the term “dojo” would thus be, “the place where journeying is done,” or “on this spot, in this place, we undertake a practice both mundane and holistic.” A dojo may be a place to study and practice traditional martial arts, and it may also be a place to practice disciplined meditation, such as zazen, and often it is both. 

It is important to understand that there should not be a dualism involved in your notion of “practice” with regard to either martial arts or meditation. That is, you do not engage in a logos centered curriculum, studying from books and considering the lectures of experts, dwelling primarily in an intellectual realm of ideas, and then go off to another place and try to put these ideas into some sort of praxis, embodying in action the lessons learned intellectually. The praxis is the lesson. The praxis is the wisdom. I can spend months trying to explain the zen concept of “no self” to you, or we can spend fifteen minutes in zazen, sitting meditation, and you may experience it first hand. The reality is that the only true way to understand anything about the fundamental reality of our existence is to experience it first hand. I can describe heat, the pleasure of exiting a dark, cool season and into the first day of spring in detailed prose, perhaps even powerful metaphor, but it cannot replicate and replace the full body and spirit (that is, holistic) understanding which immediately comes from feeling the sun on your face for the first time in months. 

In essence, the dojo is the place where we understand by doing. Only the nature of the doing needs more definition. In a Zen Buddhist dojo, sometimes called a zen-do, the doing entails a variety of sitting and walking meditation practices. In an Aikido dojo, the doing is the martial art of aikido. And so on. We engage with, we touch an understanding and experience of something including ourselves but also greater than our individual self, through a specific praxis. Anyone can swing a wooden sword repeatedly anywhere, building strength, coordination, muscle memory, and precision. But if you are swinging the wooden sword in order to understand yourself, the world, the nature of your existence, and so on, then where you are doing that is a dojo. It is useful to have a specific, physical location set aside and made precious to the practitioners of a way where they can practice it. The world is full of distractions. I go to the shore of Lake Michigan in my Chicago neighborhood to practice aikido with a wooden staff sometimes, and if I work very hard and am diligent I can turn that patch of sand into a dojo. It is much, much easier for me to go to my aikido dojo with my peers and practice there. I will not be likely to get distracted by a gull or squirrel, or by someone’s friendly dog trying to play with me, or by the music and scents of a nearby cookout. Sometimes it is necessary to make a space like that your dojo, it allows you to engage in rigorous training of your psychological and physical elements, but it is not always ideal and rarely so for beginners. 

“That’s all great,” you may now be saying, “but what has that got to do with acting?”

If you can have an enlightenment experience by training in sword arts, meditative arts, and the like, then it follows that you can do the same by studying performing arts. Enlightenment experiences are not inherently mystical or otherworldly. In my opinion, enlightenment experiences can simply be “Aha!” moments, where you have a flash of insight into your role in the universe. Art is meant to bind humans to each other through embraces of empathy, imagination, and inspiration. The role of the artist in the world is to create communion experiences between human beings, and between human beings and the greater world. You should not become an actor in order to win fame and fortune. There are simpler ways to worldly success. You are an actor because you cannot help but perform, and you are a good actor if your performances contribute something to those around you. You are a great actor if they contribute something to your own development as well. It is fine if you are studying acting simply because you think it will be fun to perform with your friends. It is a beautiful thing! It is fine if you are studying acting because you have some natural talent at expression and wish to make a career out of it. It is a beautiful thing, though it will be a struggle to make ends meet! It is best, I think, if you are studying acting as a way of deeper understanding of self, of humanity, of all of creation. Then it does not matter if you will be making a living, or practicing for free with friends, or acting in some other fashion. You are acting, you are an actor. You act. That is all that matters. 

After over twenty years of serious study, practice, and teaching in acting and theatre arts I have come to the conclusion that for many people it is the best way to study and train. Acting by definition is praxis, effecting a change in yourself, others, and the environment around you by taking specific actions. “Acting is doing,” you will often hear it said. “Acting is behaving truthfully in imaginary circumstances.” “Behavior” is what we call the response to stimuli. You wink at me, I blush. You strike at me, I cower.

I walk into a forest clearing and see a bear, my heartbeat races, my muscles tighten, my brain produces chemicals, etc, all before I consciously choose an action to take. If I am a Park Ranger and am used to encountering bears, I may already begin engaging in an appropriate action before I realize it consciously, one meant to protect both my own and the bear’s wellbeing. If I’ve never seen a bear before in my life, I may become overwhelmed, lose control of my actions, and make things very bad for both the bear and myself. Audiences can be like bears. So can your fellow actors. It is good to have training to help control how you will behave when meeting them, how you will act. It is better to have a practice that elevates both your own, your fellow actors, and the audience's well being. It is best to have a practice that allows you to freely, openly, immediately behave in the most beautiful way possible regardless of how often you may or may not encounter bears. In order to have such a practice you must have a place to practice. Hence, an actor’s dojo.

The "Do" of Acting

Like many of you, I’ve spent the pandemic thus far with too much time on my hands and not enough work. On the plus side, this has given me plenty of time to consider ideas and start scribbling them down, ideas which I hope to eventually be able to put into a book or some useful format for other actors and teachers.

In addition to theatre, I’ve long held an interest in philosophy and religion. My own day to day living is deeply informed by my Jewish heritage and traditions, and by Buddhist philosophy and practices, particularly those of the Soto Zen tradition (though I’m an enthusiastic sampler and dabbler wherever I find a flash of insight.) I’ve also become an enthusiastic amateur aikikai (a student of aikido.) My personal philosophy of acting, my pedagogy as a teacher, and my day to day living have emerged from this stone soup of interests in form that is not quite at home in any of the more strictly defined schools or techniques of acting. I’ve come to think of acting as another “do”, a practice through which you experience deeper understanding of existence. Just as aikido is not simply a “way of throwing people about,” to “do” of acting is not simply a “way of pretending to be other people.” You cannot pretend to be other people if you are not able to be yourself, to understand in your best capacity at your present moment who you are, what you are, the world in which you exist and are an inextricable participant. This doesn’t mean I think you need to become some sort of holy sage or enlightened buddha before you can play Guard Number 2 in some history or other.

I mean simply that your acting will be best, whether it is as Guard Number 2 or as Cleopatra, if you’re acting isn’t about trying to become something else. It is best if your acting is about understanding yourself, your fellow human beings, and this interconnected, interdependent world we share. Then it doesn’t matter if you are playing Guard Number 2 or Cleopatra, it doesn’t matter if you’re playing for fun or for profit. What matters is the acting you are doing here and now.

I hope to continue expanding on these ideas and how to play with them in subsequent posts. Thank you to any and all reading this for participating in this drafting process!

Going Live

It’s a banner day here at The Meldman’s HQ.

The internet elves are scurrying and the web spiders are spinning, because today we bring this website to the masses.

Look here for future posts concerning work updates, reflections on past shows, and general musings about art and the actor’s life.