Don't Write the Script

As actors, and singing/actors, is the absolute privilege of excavating a script, a song, a character and getting it into our bodies, our breath, our voices.

That process is probably my favorite.

The hardest thing is, after rehearsing, and performing night and night, not to anticipate what is coming. The character does not know. YOU know but the character does not. To stay present in the moment to allow the story to unfold moment to moment is then our challenge, and our charge.

We must hold our character, the story telling, and then the audience to the present moment. Anticipating the next moment does not serve us, nor the story telling, nor the audience.

And so, what of this idea in our lives right now? As artists, as creatives, as human beings?

Art and life. Life and art.

As soon as the anxiety rises: don’t write the script.

As soon as the “yeah but…” echoes: don’t write the script.

As soon as it’s too much: don’t write the script.

I have often shared this with artists in my studio, as the irony is remarkable: Let’s create a business where we, as artists, don’t have much say or control in when we work, if we work, and then let’s put a whole bunch of Type A personalities in that business and see how it goes.

Well, here we are.

All of us.

Don’t write the script. Stay in the moment. Breathe into that moment.

Innovative. Create. Step, ball, pivot change. In the moment.

The script is being written as we breathe. That we can be sure of. What we are allowing to be present is what we can control. How we take that into our bodies we can control. What we do with it is what we can control.

How we mold it into something useful, something true, something pivotal, something precious, something worthy, something honorable, something authentic - is what we can control.

Artists define the times we are in. Present tense. Now. This moment.

Define the moment and don’t write the script.

with fondness and fierceness,

Susan