Thank you! My name is Susie and I teach a movement class to help actors get out of character. It is something I felt was missing in my industry and felt that it should be added into the training and the professional jobs that actors do.
The other night, during the oscars, you exposed what I have all too well have been seeing. The pain that comes with this job and the mental health issues that need to be addressed.
I know that through that one MOVEMENT the entire world was privy to the pain you both are feeling in your careers. A career that has allowed you to achieve success but also to pay dearly for it.
Working with imagination and humor may be the two most powerful tools in MANIPULATION.
When we activate someone to laugh we then have the ability to shift their beliefs. When we convince people we are not who we are in order to share a story, we also activate the portal of influence in them as well.
Since no one needs to or really is allowed to pretend to be anyone anymore…then lets RESET the INDUSTRY!!!
If we start with love and healing as we embark on our work, then the manipulation is for good and for the audience to feel who THEY are….not who YOU want them to be.
I have done this walk…It is slower and less DRAMA but it is where the industry is going to go because what you shared was the end of an ERA….
I work with memories. New ones, old ones, false ones and forced ones.
As an actor I have come to understand the power of believing a thought.
if something “isn’t working” during rehearsal…it is usually traced back to a belief system that the actor has. Their belief is then tweaked until the actor gives the director the reaction they are looking for. ( pleaser)
I was recently in rehearsal for a HOT and CURRENT and RElATIVE play. I also believed it was a funny play and that I would enjoy the work. I went in with both feet.
As we began rehearsal via zoom and a I started working in the role…researching the role..I came to see that the funny part was for the audience…the role was much darker. I proceeded with caution.
I began brush shoulders with my character, but didn’t want to fully commit to her thought process. I know myself. I get stuck in character easily. I knew that as soon as I sat down with her belief system, my own personal belief system would be adjusted. We I had two months till the play even officially opened. I was cautious because in that that time I would be traveling with my family and I didn’t want this role one my family vacation and not me. THis has happened to me in the past and it wasn’t something i wanted to experience again.
After the director kept saying
“i see the role and then I don’t …you go in and out…”
I informed him of my decision to move slowly and take my time becomign the role. I told him my process, my weakness and why I needed to go in and out during the three hour rehearsals.
For him to speak to me as Susie when we were doing notes in between runs and not as the ROLE.
I said..”when we are in real rehearsal, a week prior to opening, she will be here.”
I felt we were in a good place and I trusted him and hoped he woudl trust me.
But, then he started doing the classic and very effective AS IF techniques..
this is where a director asks you to relate to the story from a aspect of your own story. As if STEVE your husband was the one dying…etc etc. It happens innocently but it is so effective tha tis hard for anyone to resist. Memory is easily manipulated when you believe you are in a trusting space.
I HAVE OFTEN SPOKEN TO MY STUDENT OF THIS.
Do not let someone destroy your healed stories.
Walk into a smokey bar you will get second hand smoke…it is hard to avoid if it is happening..
Do not allow directors to use family dynamics to activate your perspective of pain in order to relate to the character and then project that to the audience. Your pain in limited at best and vengeful and not conscious enough to artfully navigate. Image and be inspired by another’s pain..in order to empathise and create colors and depth…You are not the deepest well of emotions. Your imagination is. Trust it.”
That would be picking at a wound that has healed and has a scar..it is demonstrative to your core sense of self/family and hurtful to you as an artist.
Actors do not need to feed off their own personal pain in order to act
Rehearsal then became in person and eventually was in MY SPACE. That is where the very talented director began to associate my life and my characters. All of a sudden the scabs that were healing begin to be picked at. My healed family relationship I worked years on re-remembering for a kinder brighter present began to quickly unravel and to warp.
Memory is a game and it is easy to remember pain..pain is the easiest emotion to access. Especially of a person one you devoted much time in pertetruatin. It is essentially a HABIT
It was a huge lesson for me to experience…playing the most antithesis person I could. get my head around her story and then having the amazing experience of being in a room with a classic director that uses emotional recall.
I also felt it is almost impossible for a director to trust an actor will get there if they have never worked with them before and this was also part of it.
I tried to express the concept of trust but TRUST in elf is really the important part of this. I watched myself resist his technique. I knew so well but due to my familiarity with it…part of me secumbered. I wanted to please him after all and soon enough my anger for my past perpetuated family stories opened up
I have since had to let go of this role…in order to preserve both my perspective of my family and my respect for my own process of creating character. How an actor builds their story is i-personal. How they get needs to be visceral chosen and understood my the actor in order for them to get THEMSELVES out.
It is like a consciousness hypnosis we do to ourselves. we get in then we can get out…
If you are being told how to remember something…you can early loose your hold on your own version of the story.
This technique and all the issues it has is proved in the work of memory recall and even in police intvetigate. Being in a room long enough with someone who wants you believe something will force you to believe it. Especially if you feel you are safe, that they believe you…that they are not forcing their will on you.
However..most of us are always manipulating people. We are doing it to each other all the time. We believe that if you believe what I believe they we are seen and heard…connected..we exist…
( think first dates)
Memory is able to be manipulated.
So if you want a JOYFUL life…re-remember your past…recreate a loving perspective of your childhood. Search and find the LIGHT..WHY?
WHY NOT?
I don’t think we can ever truly be content with our present …unless we are content with the past.
This is NOT about finding the pain and perpetuating it…vilifying people….holding them accountable..
It is more about challenging yourself to see the light, changing your perspective on your present state in order to SURF in joy, and then grab that RAY of sunshine and view your past through it.
SO- I believe we are free to change who we are by changing what we have been told, sold and belief about our past. This works both ways, often flipping back and forth from pain to peace…Eventually one must win..
Lets choose peace
Therapist need us to remain in pain in order to sustain their business..
I am challenging you to rewrite a past story…
1)own your own ability to perpetrate other people..even and especially by your negative thoughts.
2) Choose joy
3) Release those that have perpetrated you from your negative hold by asking them to forgive you for holding them in a negative role for all these years…limiting their ability to heal.
Ho’oponopono Prayer
X ( name of the person you are holding as villian)
Please forgive me
I am sorry
I love you
Thank you
We are who we are because of the way we have formulated the story.
Science and research has proven that our memory is scattered at best.
Pain, real or imagined, is held in the body
Manipulate yourself to be joyful..release the pain for your own well being.
why not?
WHY THE FUCK NOT.
childhood bliss
THrough my SURF process we learn to trust and channel a foreign version of pain , one that will not hit up right against our recently healed stories and then UNHEAL them.
Last year…love saying that…funny how time allows for distance and yet time is a perception we believe in. Time is nothing…but if enough people agree it links one days and nights on a string…
2018- Thank you… thank you for giving me the strength to remove my fake breast and attempt to live a life that is not based on my false angst sexual energy in a city that values such things.
Thank you for letting me find my truer self beneath them and for giving me a class of loving students that surrounded me with unconditional love throughout the transition. Knowingly or not.
Forgive me for walking away from people and places I couln’t manage anymore…and forgive me for trying to mange anyone. Thinking t was all on me.
I love you for all you have allowed me to learn in my true self…to find a way to create my art through love and kindness…
I’m sorry for all the pain I caused you and those close to me…for my missteps and my residue of anger..for my DEVON who rises within me when I am too tired..I am sorry for not forgiving…for wanting control over my own kids for trying to think i still have that or ever had that.
Thank you for letting me feel what SPACE feels like ..what living without angst feels like…what moving from flow and lightness is like and that is is possible..
Thank you for teaching me what NICE and LIGHT feels like…within me and within others..
Thank you allowing me to battle the BOTOX pull..to love it and leave it and to then be given a role that crushed any idea of what beauty is for me.
Thank you for getting me back to London to forgive my younger self so I can remeet her.
Thank you for inspiring me to FINALLY do my one woman show for finding a theater in Edinburgh for finding a house…there ..for the gift of my family coming with me in AUGUST to be part of my art and for me thinking of that as a possible future..having BOTH worlds.
Thank you for getting that Basel cell out of my head …for opening up my minds eye and removing any limitiation…
Thank you for allowing me to find a loving world of creatives WoRKING in Miami…
Thank you for introducing me to a Writor that outlines a book that I may write after the play at the FRINGe.
Thank you for wanting to get a grant and perhaps for NOT getting it but for hearing my work written out in a way that is understandable to ME
Thank you for allowing me to find my lower tiny abs that were for sure cut and disconnected during the c section and for allowing me to lift my legs up straight into a head stand.
Thank you for giving me a soft relationship to MASON …that he speaks to me about his life and yet doesn’t demand I FIX it and yet I know nothing…
Thank you for giving Jaedon a great school he seems to enjoy and for classes that are challenging him and for allowing us to be CALM about things..he found an IT class that is enjoyable for him
Thank you for giving STEVE and I a connection in PEACE…in SLOW and STEADY and owning our TURTLE NESS…
Thank you for giving me the love of the cast and crew for the piece of Mrs. Wade…my entrance back into the theater and for the new agent I found and for the two films I booked myself on and for all that may come in my acting career.
Thank you for allowing me to be open to the idea that my work can be created FROM love not in search of it or the lack of it…that a role can be built on channeling and then removing any connections you have to that character and NOT relating to THEM in a personal way at all..by truly removing yourself….
Thank you for allowing me to play Mrs. Wade and test my process and have a connection with my community in a REAL way by being a Channel back into time…back into a universe.. a TIME that both does and deosn’t exist…
Thank you for giving me a yoga instructor I trust and is not too invasive…for sending me to movement to sorftness. And away from loud music and aggressive sounds…from lifting weight..with force…
Thank you for allowing me to trust FLOW in my world…for giving me the trust to allow Steve to handle emotional issues with our children…
Thank you for pulling me towards love…for magnetizing those on a frequency that elevate me..
Thank you for connecting me with GLoria at the Xmas eve party about a possible outlet for my class and ideas…
Even though I was hiding…I was repelling from it..thank you for allowing me to not RUN like I have and perhaps trust that this is something of interest to me and the universe
Thank you for allowing me to NOT have a charge on too many people….but to keep myself somewhat connected to my circle…of energy.
And thank you for allowing me to sit here and see my husband and my youngest go for a winter walk and…..talk about anger and pain and how to manage the fire within us..EMOTIONAL walk…
In the past I would push myself to the front line and take all the emotional responsibility and now I am able to allow other people to take the lead…and for me to sit quietly on the side line as I am not the core…but the air…not the force but the vessel…not the fire but the heat and in that I can seperate myself from any feeling of gratitude or entitlement…i am nothing….
Nothingness is a little scary for me..it is a feeling of falling thorugh the holes in the earth…through…the filters….the sifters…and what remains…in grains of sand….singular and similar but in no means connected.
Just unified in a journey of playing with the waves…..
IT is about a week since we closed…7 days
I woke up early and engaged and totally aware of the version of SUSIE that i have developed a functional relationship to.
Mrs. Wade is gone…sweet, exhausted, hamstrung and closeted Mrs. Wade is released and all of SUSIS’S parts that aligned with her…residue of what SUSIE herself/ myself release- have left as well…I declare.
I learn from my characters what I want and don’t want in my next self and what I want is what Mrs. Wade alluded to…I want to become the person I was meant to be…but in truth…I already am…I have created a soft shell around an essence of LOVE and light and I have been able to protect HER every morn….in a slow ritual and awake kindly to another attempt to live truth seeking and kind…
THe one thing I am edging to is a PEACE in Scotland…a play I have anointed myself to that will be my focus…soft focus the next 8 months…. long term stuff.
My creativity is not an ever flowing stream and my TIME emotionally away from my kids has been helpful during this season as I am limited in my ability to deal with family. I don’t pull my husband or kids always from their family as their relationship is totally different then mine and to appoint my relationship as theirs is off.
My desire to be around loving kind beings is what works for me…having certain energy in my house is helpful…and allowing myself to seperate from others that KINK my flow is fine…as I in turn KINK theirs too.
Painful for both.
THis has brought me to a quiet place with my guide I speak with each morning…I don’t demand imspiration or creative highs…I simply dance softly with her and allow her to lead me…guide me…take me where she wants to and show me what I can experience.
Taking away the weight training from my workout has been huge for me…The agressivess that I fall back to in fear of dissolving is not helpful at this time..Yoga and fluid movement and dancing naked in the rain during the winter showers is the direction I am going…
I am not interested in EGO play and play towards a higher person which leads me to the understanding that I may not be a leader.in the way I KNOW it now…..a person others will follow ..or congregate towards but that will be determined this year..as I follow my essence….forward…I trust I will find my FAMILY.
Moving without EGO is gentle and kind and not ANGRY it is going to be a beautiful and slow and essentially boring year for DEVON but dearest Devon…I suspect you have found another HOST to attach yourself to becasue I my loving darling am not going to feed you what you need…
I am following shadows ….scents and whispers and those are my guides…
I am in RECASTING…I am in the place with no name or destiny….and from here is where I will tilt towards my future self…with kindness and forgiveness and understanding….trust that I can created without being in pain…that my own pain is not my creative channel but in fact a KINK in it. How interesting to realize your original inpistaion was bloackinng your entire being…
Where do you feel you are inspired from?
Could that be a KINK your Ego enjoys tightening?
One thing to think about before you remove your implants is HOW MUCH do you love yourself. Becasue Boobs are a buffer…they shield you from your own hate and make you into a pretense….so if you remove them..your shields are down and you have to face everything straight on…you can’t push your chest out and deflect the negativity or perhaps they absorb it for us….from us and to us…and like anything FAKE….it deflects and the reality of our world or our natural state is distorted to the point that the distortion becomes the reality.
sooooooo to be clear…best get your LOVE on before you take those out because I spent four years rebuilding my LIFE before I removed them and I still was brought to my knees at the lack of POWER I had without them…but being truthful- power built on falseness is not power at all but a delusion and thus the crumbling of a delusion is what brought me to my knees but once I rose up..I have hand rails to grab..an acting career to reenter…a marriage to strengthen…and children and loving kind friends to support me…
I set the stage for my entrance and when I finally reentered…I was not alone or living a lie..I was my original self with more scars…
so just prep your emotional life before you do it.
a few questions..
Why did you get them
Does that reason still exist
Are you ok with no having big boobs because socially they are a commodity
are you ok with letting go of a version of yourself
Are you ok with recasting yourself into the itty bitty committee.
Are you OK?
Then just shower yourself in Kindness and find loving hands to do the procedures and take your time and peel the ROLE off…slowly and lovingly for if you do it with a quick hand…as many of these doctors suggest…you will have missed the mourning process and it is in that mourning you set yourself free.
I am an actor and part of how I work is taking on other people’s thoughts, movements and beliefs. It is a fascinating dive into the empathy realm and the playing with the line of reality. What is reality. What is YOUR reality and what is their’s and sometimes that line bleeds…if you are lucky, if I am lucky I am so believing in my role that even I don’t know where Susie starts and this new role ends.
It is the ultimate necessity to be an actor. To have the fearlessness to release yourself and that is what it is all about. Being able to walk up those never ending stairs- movement by movement -or belief by belief or word by word or action by action into another dimension.
This is the scariest thing mostly because you k now somewhere in this journey you are sacrificing parts of your own self and like a diver..how long can you be under water without suffering from vertigo or whatever it is called where you can’t remember which way is up?
Acting…FOR ME….is like that…I get lost…usurped by the role and disappear…I keep a shell of myself and my world and my family and kids and husband represent that but more than that and the entry is harder…so I shed a lot…I let go of comipments and relationships and I disappear…
Maybe not to the naked eye but to any would seeker or evenly worker they’ll see..I am slipping…
One day after I had returned to acting after raising my young children into semi functioning children I was heading home and I remember as I opened the front door….Oh, Yeah…my kids.
It struck me as funny but the idea that I can release my motherhood role was fascinating.. and to do it to such a point that I had to actively remember it…well.it was all a bit MENTAL to say the least.
Then one day after playing a very lovely part who loved to cook but not into sex so much…my husband asked..When in Susie coming home?
IT made me stop chopping my scallions and look up. “Excuse me” I said or she said…who knows…
Steve repeated the question and it slowly sank in….HE KNOWS…he knows I am not quite myself …even in my own kitchen…
I smiled and said…”don’t you like her…she loves to cook…”
She is fine but I miss Susie he said and in that moment the veil of delete that I am perhaps many actors live with was revealed…I was missing…
Give your heart to someone…even another version of your self and it can be tricky to find the door to unbolt and retrieve yourself..
Unless you build a very clear path back to it…to her…. And that is what I have been working on.
Finding first who SUSIE is and then venturing off and trying to return sans too much collateral damage.
What I am about to share with you look me years to articulate but recently I was speaking at the Miami Beach chamber of commerce to their health and wellness committee and they received it…they didn’t;t run to take my class because the idea is still touchy but they got it and I felt in that room…they felt the idea flicker in their mind…
What if THEY TOO were still in character and if they were…what role was it and what would they be without it…
I have wanted a company- this idea of a company since I was standing in a white wooden acting studio ( ah there it is- my image of peace) being asked by one of my teachers where i see myself at 40. I opened my mouth and said I am going to have a company but not a normal acting company.
I had no idea what this meant or who it was within me that said it. I literally shrugged my shoulders in acceptances and looked around the room as everyone nodded. Ok..and it is written..Funny how these truths escape if we just OPEN our mouth.
A company? It was 1995- there was NO cell phone and NO Social Media…there WAS however AOL and a Chat room and emails and I was recently using those to stay connected to Steve while I studied in London.
Webber DOuglass was a house made into a school and I suppose that’s what i am seeking…here in Miami…and why the warmth of a home is always missing when I search for a SPACE…
By I digrace.
I was recently texted by one of my students turned past student turned friend turned ….practice partner turned as i sat across from her yesterday….
My first company member?
She doesn’t know this officially yet and I assume the other girl next to her will be as well- she is just 6 months out of my clasS- A KIND SOUL NEEDS TO SOLIDIFY…
They both texted me and we sat from 11-3:30 talking about how to move forward in our lives with grace
You wouldn’t think this is an “A. Ha” moement but having tried to teach and explain this to dozens of other artists not many have fully bought into moving from forgiveness..NONE actually ….they choose to hold onto their STORY and in that the Pain of the MAternal and in that I am a punching bag…as I am THE MATERNAL….i have learned…
It is exhausting and painful but I am there to show the benefits. A woman- a creative- owning her fault lines and taking responsibility…they have a roadmap if they want it…does and don’t s
And as we sat there I have to remind myself these woman are 20 plus years younger then me…both of them have proven in thier way of living…that they are more interested in killing their ego and moving from love more than anything else…
They are not saints…nor am I …we are powerful Alpha WOman with the ability to destroy…but I have informed them what that looks like over a life time and I give them thoughts on how to avoid holding on to anger too long…
THey ask me to the coffe juice shop and as I sit there and TEACH…I instantly see what I have..the daughters I never did, the company I will eventually build and a philosophy that these two women find valuable in their lives.
I am the Artistic DIrector of The Creative Shelter. We practice the S.U.R.F. Acting method and we wil be appearing throughout MIami this year and launching officially in Edinburgh in August 2019- We share stories of HOW TO LOVE along the maternal fault line…
If you use your painful experiences to help you tap into emotion in your work you are re triggering your past experiences and will have to contend with that trauma after the play/film is done.
If you allow yourself to fully feel the trauma of your character you will also need to deal with that residue after the play is over
If you are aware of your ability to absorb try and get out of character often- in between scenes and when the play is finished each night and when the play closed- take time to RECOVER…maybe you will have less emotional traumas than most.
And a long and lovely career as well as home life.
I also suggest consider NOT marrying an actor. Actos by nature are transient ethereal beings…and one in a relationship is quite enough.
