Update: How I've Progressed So Far This Semester

Looking back at the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the semester, I think I've made big strides in what I want to accomplish. In terms of my first goal, listening actively, I have practiced a new type of listening: listening with an animal brain. This is different from human listening because, well, first of all, when we are acting our animals we don't use language. So listening becomes something different, a more sensual experience that involves not just my ears, but my eyes and my touch. If I listen with just my ears, I will miss out on a lot of listening that can be done with my eyes and my touch. So listening has become for me less of a passive action and more of an aggressive, explorative action. I say explorative because that's really what I enjoyed doing the most as the blue heron, especially in exercises like Watering Hole - exploring the room and what/who was in it. I loved walking into Studio A for Watering Hole and seeing the room arrangement and having the sudden thought that I was allowed to explore every new aspect of the room as my heron. The exploration became my listening.

Listening actively as Jackson was also different than normal listening. Although we began using English, and communicating as human beings, the physical listening of the heron did not end. When I met people, I listened to them speak, but what told me more was the way they physically approached and communicated with me, because everyone was doing such specific and varied movements. There is a lot to be learned in listening physically, and I think I am just starting to explore that as an actor and the tools it can give me in a scene.

In terms of engaging my body and being specific, I think the first is quite obvious. The animal projects were all about engaging my body and how a physical animal can create a human character. I would also say that I have gotten better at being specific, but not because of any physical change with me - it has more to do with the specificity that I am now able to pull out in what I see. Starting with observing Taylor at the beginning of the year, then the guy on the street, then the blue heron, I have had much experience in observing people and animals and their movements. When I look at them through the lens of "their movements are specific and deliberate" as opposed to the lens of "their movements are general and random," I am able to really see how they move, how they communicate physically, and then it's not difficult to imitate this. It just takes a certain eye for seeing specificity that I have developed over the course of this semester so far, and will continue to develop as my acting training moves forward.