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We Teach What We Need to Learn
How to use a mirror and lens to guide your journey
Two decades ago, I was an aspiring actress at a top drama school in London. I was a small fish in a sea of talented Brits. The kind that didn’t need to overcompensate for their craft with jazz hands. They were the real deal. Spawns of Dame Judi Dench and Sir Anthony Hopkins. Okay, maybe not their next of kin, but they could play in their league.
I was an overweight, insecure, ‘merican, who had some starring roles in high school plays and a short stint as a DJ in college. I could produce iambic pentameter for Marullus’s “Wherefore rejoice” on command, but that’s where my frolicking with Shakespeare’s prose ended. I wasn’t sure how I got into this Top 10 school in the first place, but I was determined to prove myself worthy of acceptance.
Interestingly, our teachers were less concerned about the race to the top. Rather than teach us to chase bright lights and leading parts, they took us on a path of self-discovery. It was a subtle process and sometimes seemed painfully slow. And boring. Like the time I was asked to watch my peers get in and out of a chair. Repeatedly. For months.
When anyone showed interest in this class, called the Alexander Technique, I thought they were mad. Not the angry kind, but the British kind — which meant…
