My last fortnight has been spent in normally unfamiliar circumstances: working and performing with people not usually connected with theatre at all. The project was to get employees of a company to perform a play for an internal event. When I got the call for the assignment, I geared up for two weeks of mind numbing toil …or so I thought.
Working with non-actors turned out to be an incredibly rewarding experience. There were no pre-conceived “I know how to do this” hang ups. In fact quite the contrary, they were incredibly receptive and generous. Nothing was too outrageous or undoable. And the two weeks that I thought would pass at a snail’s pace, actually flew by. Each morning I awoke refreshed and eager to dive into another 8-hour rehearsal day. It’s amazing how a “willing cast” motivates the director. It also put into further perspective the relationship between commitment and talent. The most skilled actor can still be found wanting if s/he is not committed to the project. But a limited actor can overcome any deficiency in talent by drive and commitment.
By and large, awareness about theatre has increased in the last few years. Thanks to the burgeoning theatre scene and also the influx of theatre actors into the cinema industry who still continue to dabble in theatre, many more people are now aware of the art form. The increasing popularity and fame have made many of us try to mystify the discipline of acting by giving it a reverential place. There is no doubt that there is craft and finesse involved, but often we forget that it is about “play-acting”. The word “play” has great importance, because it is exactly that — a game that we play. As artists, we take ourselves and our art form incredibly seriously; often forgetting that actually it is something that we are meant to enjoy — whether it is rehearsal or performance. We get to use our imaginations and play different people, and imagine ourselves in scenarios unlike those of our actual lives, just like when we were kids. My recent experiences with non-actors served as a reminder of this.
Recently at a workshop for employees in a coastal industrial town, the enthusiasm for the exercises was far stronger than that of “professional actors” who claim “I am passionate about acting”. It unleashes the child in all of us — to escape the boring mundane routine of our everyday existence and become something else, albeit for a short time.
Working with people who aren’t usually exposed to the Arts, put the relationship between Arts and Life under the microscope. I began to understand how the Arts make us look at life in detail. Since most Arts are drawn from life experiences, people have to draw on their own experiences in order to convey emotions and characters convincingly. This is not a process without peril.
Any kind of introspection often reveals one’s own bigotry and insecurities. But when playing a character you have to embrace the bigotry/ insecurity/ largesse/ generosity/ liberalism etc. of the character you have been assigned. Not an easy thing to come to terms with. Yet it is a process that, although doesn’t necessarily breed better actors, it definitely creates better human beings.
And since we can’t be kids again, we might as well be artists!