The things I learned in college

I was always a good student, but I'm discovering as I get older that I thought I understood things intellectually long before I actually understood them intuitively. And it's fun to have these tools lying dormant in the back of my mind years later, when suddenly I feel something and recognize immediately the true meaning of what I learned a long, long time ago... but never really "got it."

Studying acting was hard for me, but I was stubborn. When I was 19, one acting teacher said to me: "You're an excellent student, a very intellectual person. But people with your kind of intellect don't usually become actors." I pressed him, demanding to know whether he was advising me to quit. "No," he said cautiously, "you also have a kind of quiet determination that not very many students have. It's going to be a lot harder for you than for others, but you'll do it if that's what you want to do." And I did. So I worked hard. I mastered all the tools in my classes to the point of near academic perfection. But there still wasn't often a "there" there.

If we were not cast in a particular show we auditioned for, they encouraged us to speak to the directors and get feedback that we could use for future auditions. Throughout my four years at college, I did a handful of student-directed productions, but I never appeared in a mainstage show (the ones directed by faculty). So my last semester when I felt tremendously improved but still didn't even get a mainstage callback, I went to the office of a professor I trusted, who also happened to be directing the show I wanted most to be in. I asked her point blank, "What's wrong with me?" At first she began explaining that there just weren't any roles that were right for me, but I pushed harder. I found it difficult to believe that in a smallish program where all roles went to students (including roles that were decades too old for them, etc.), there had never been a role I was right to even be called back for in four years. My professor looked a bit pained, but she finally told me simply, "I've never seen you do anything that I completely believed." That hurt, but I'd asked for it. I felt a little defensive and a little defeated, too. I just kept working harder. All these years later, every time I step on stage, I know that was the fairest assessment I could have received. It was true. I only understood things intellectually. I wasn't in the moment, I didn't really feel them. I didn't realize the difference, of course, until something changed in me.

Only by getting a little older (not much), getting some life experiences and relaxing did I actually become a better actor. I needed all those tools in my arsenal, but I didn't really use them to their fullest until I was way out of school. In the past few years, my acting has matured considerably because I finally learned (by not trying to learn anything, but just doing) how to stop thinking so dang hard and just start listening and being present.

Upon discovering this, I wanted to go back and see what else I could glean from things I "learned" years ago. So, recently I have been revisiting a lot of my college curriculum. I rented a Tai Chi workout video that recreates a lot of the routine we used to do in daily movement classes. Suddenly, when the instructor told me to "feel the energy between my hands" or "center myself over one leg" or not to "throw the energy away, keep it contained and fluid," my body instinctively understood those instructions. My movement professor in college must have said similar words to me a thousand times, and I performed my best interpretation of them at the time. But now without trying so hard, I feel them. And now what was once just a memorized series of movements has become a true centering, exercise-worthy practice, and I love doing it. I have been rereading texts about speech and movement that helped me take great strides through hard work years ago, but now reading them again, I get even more than that. They make intuitive sense to me now, and I feel like I'm really getting the full value experience almost a decade after first reading them.

I'm far from perfect. I still have lots to learn and hope to keep making these discoveries my entire career. But it's invigorating to feel the impact of what I have learned, and it's confidence-inspiring. And I think I'm a much better actor for it... after all these years. It's kind of amazing sometimes how such smart people can be such slow learners.