I was originally going to title this blog performing vs teaching but I think it's broader than that.
When I first started teaching I was working with really young kids so my number 1 priority was keeping their attention. So I performed. I prided myself in the giggles and the eyes glued to me each lesson.
But I was also hungry to help. I knew because I had seen great teachers that teaching was about having a plan that you help children DO something in order to LEARN something. I also quickly learned that the plan took backseat sometimes and I had to be ADAPTABLE to the mood in the room.
This fluidity between knowing and presenting a concept and understanding and reworking that concept for the current room was fascinating to me. We will call this listening.
Interestingly it is the same thing I've been learning in my acting class. You have an idea of what your character is all about and the story and then you get into a room with another actor and just take in and respond to what that actor is giving you. It's so simple and so profound.
When I describe this kind of working my actor friends' main concern has been, "but what if you're working with a really bad actor." My acting class is full of people who are just beginning the journey in acting. What makes the method of listening exciting is that even the worst actor can give you such a gift of just being present with you. It may change the scene a little but your responses to an actor without a clue will actually MAKE the scene. Giving up and choosing not to listen is doing yourself a disservice and it will derail your scene.
Performing is more exhausting. What I've noticed in teaching and in acting is that performing is actually more work. It takes far more energy to control a situation than it does to accept it. Though I tried performing in teaching and acting it actually burned me out. By the time the end of the hour hit I was done. I could not exert energy to finish the lesson at times.
I think this is because listening is not approval based, while performing is. In a one on one scene, neither you nor the other person judges the others' genuine experience of you. You take in and you accept the other person and THEN you respond. It's generous because it means that you give up control of where you are both going. You honor each other's impulses.
Here's what I've discovered though: performing can be good if it's part of your true self. Again, what I'm learning in my class is acceptance. I don't deny my performance instincts because they are a genuine part of who I am. I remember taking an on camera acting class and the teacher telling me with judgment in her voice (or perceived judgment) that because I'm a musical theater actress I'm too "big" (meaning not subtle enough). I took the note all wrong and decided that being "big" was an additive and not a part of my essential being. In reality I grew up a goofball and years of being told not to perform have locked up part of my true self.
So if listening is truly a better way to work as an artist/teacher, why don't I do it more? What gets in the way? I would say 3 things: Judgments, fear, and control. They are all interconnected. You judge yourself or pre-judge your scene or scene partner (student). Then you are afraid of failure and you seek to control the situation. You can't fully accept the what the other would put on you so you block, defend, manipulate.
As a Christian, my life and art reflect what I believe. It's crazy to me that there are such strong kingdom parallels. Our relationship with God was never meant to be about God doing stuff for us. We are partakers of the kingdom not just takers. To put it another way, the government of Heaven actually hinges on prayer. God does not do it for us. It's about partnership. Maturity in faith is recognition of this partnership. We move from acceptance that we can't do it without him into asking for him to fill us continually THEN into acting out of that filling.
So how do we combat these things that push us into performing without listening? How do we strengthen that listening muscle? We talk a lot in my acting class about acceptance and surrender. We do an exercise called "thoughts out loud" where we absorb the other person's line and then instantly respond with our gut reaction, whatever that is! It's scary because it's vulnerable and it may have nothing to do with the actual scene. But we are actually strengthening that muscle. We are learning to first accept our partner's impulses and our own reactions to those impulses. Then we are learning to surrender to the moment and not seek to manipulate our words or actions. As we do this the moment transforms.
Let me give you another example. This one gets personal as it recently translated into my everyday life (as most important things to us do). As I said before, I am used to performing. I used to try and create lesson plans out of my life. I would go from having an experience to what I should be feeling instantly, instead of accepting my current state of emotions I was in fixing them mode. (God is teaching me how to be gentler on myself!) I recognized this recently when someone did something that hurt me and was hard for me to handle. I was ready to move on but emotions from the experience still lingered and I wasn't allowing myself the time I needed to accept, surrender, and heal. I needed to listen to myself.
I think because I've been fascinated with performing and listening for so many years, it will be the constant theme of my life. Everything is about finding the perfect balance. I really want to do art that engages people on a deep level, that doesn't just pander to their pocket books. I'm interested in art that listens. On the other hand, I love performing. Singing in front of people is still so precious to me. As you can see, the tension of listening and performing is still there on even a grander scale in the very nature of my purpose on this planet! If there's one thing I've learned from all this it's what I learned when I watched a teacher teaching a class full of four-year-olds. It looked like mass chaos. If you looked closer though you would see how intricately she had adapted her concept to the room. She was an incredible listener.
