StoryTeamGo — Principle 2: Everyone is Your Partner
As in life, our work as actors is dependent upon others.
Even monologues or soliloquies require partners with whom we interact (yes, the audience is your partner, too). When we work on objectives and obstacles and tactics within a scene and a story, those fundamental touchstones all start with another person.
Also as in life, others are the source of conflict, and conflict is at the heart of solid storytelling.
So, in order to tell good stories, we must be deeply engaged with others. That’s what Meisner’s repetition exercise is all about, why we spend time analyzing what our character wants (from others), what’s or who’s in their way, how they’re going to get what they want. It’s why we spend time developing the most important skill of all: Listening.
Uta Hagen wrote about how compelling her cat was to watch because animals don’t suffer from self-awareness the way humans do. They’re pure instinct: action and reaction every moment of every day, unencumbered by questioning their own behavior or how they appear to others. They are listening to their world with every muscle in their bodies. (Incidentally, this is the very reason old school movie stars adhered to the old saw of never working with children or animals — not, as is commonly believed, that they’re difficult — but that they’re consistently much more interesting to watch than humans).
When an actor is deeply listening and engaged in their story, we — as audience members, as witnesses to the moment — become the third person in that story. We live it with the storytellers, in a community of story that includes our personal experience. This is the power of our craft. The ability to tell a story fueled by our personal expression and experience that connects so deeply with others that their experience is unlocked and they become emotionally connected to the same world. It’s a unique kind of sharing that art of any kind elicits when it is working well, but acting in particular delivers in the most intimate and immediate of ways.
All actors understand the thrill of performing in front of an audience, be it a theater of thousands or a dinner party of 6. We’re in partnership, then, too, whether we’re performing or not, aware that each other’s anecdotes, introductions and curiosities are the heartbeat of communal life, life in society.
Of course, this thinking extends beyond the internal work of storytelling to our external work of living and the people with whom we work and live. Our colleagues, our collaborators, our gatekeepers.
The more we listen to one another — truly listen, actively listen, intentionally listen for the purpose of understanding — the more we win in life. The more we’re supported in what we do and who we are. The more clearly we communicate. The more all of us get what we want.
And our story comes to a satisfying conclusion before we move on to the next one.
