The Magic Is In The Work
Magic is all around us all the time, we only need to play.
My mother used to say to me when I was choking on my woes and immobilized by self-criticism, “You have to play life!”
Why not play? Like a child. Have fun. Follow that instinct, that spark, that fire... the elation of experiencing.
Answers naturally arise when we play because it relaxes and releases our creative expression. When we play, an inspired intelligence awakens, and information that was blocked is suddenly seen (talk about magic!). The joy of play burns through those blocks.
Even the life-long self-criticisms begin to melt away—simply because there is no room for them. And when that happens the fun begins, not only in acting but in all aspects of your life.
Are you divining the magic or are you disecting it?
But, let’s not analyze magic… instead let’s re-read Uta Hagen’s simple but essential point, “Acting is doing.”
Acting is the art of doing… not talking about doing, not thinking about doing—those are dead-end preoccupations.
So what’s in your way?
Is actively engaging just too much fun?! Have you been taught that to be an adult you have to get over that childish impulse and lock yourself in?
My father had a powerful sense of play and fun. He also worked hard. For his never-ending projects he regularly had piles of sand dumped in the driveway. For us kids it was a bottomless gift… all that dirt!
My brothers would dive in transforming it into roads and bridges, pools and structures, blowing things up and reconstructing them… I loved to be in the dirt with the ‘boys’ lost in the doing, the making, the creating...
Having fun is hard work.
Get dirty. You have to get into the acting dirt to start creating.
Scold yourself when you stop playing, when you fall into an abyss of self-demeaning critique, heavy metal analysis, justifications of how woeful your life is--what you missed, how time has fooled you—you must find the switch (it’s right there) and flip it into play mode.
As actors we transform dirt into life. Through our intensive digging, we create new lands.
Why not make magic your life’s work?
How does that magician fool me again and again and make it look so easy?
That magician has practiced and fallen many, many times but pursues perfection because the magician believes in magic.
Be this kind of actor... love the magic in your eyes, the magic of someone’s eyes on you (no words).
Magic is honest, it can’t be contrived… just as you recognize when art isn’t contrived.
An actor must learn how to jump into the sand pile, into the dirt and step-by-step build something new.
If you live it, you give it, in a seamless turn-a-around.
Learn to overcome the idea that your life should not be filled with magic—continually. Magic is life unfolding, surprising. She is beautiful, sensual, and tender. Acting is entering into her fold.
Join us in the magic.