Back back, forth and forth

"The Fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore" - Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh sold one painting in his lifetime before he walked into a field and took his own life. He never got to know what it meant to the World that he had given himself so completely. He never knew that all the days spent working on ideas even he didn't fully understand meant something. He never knew that his life meant something. He will never know that. 

Whilst on holiday, on the first day in fact, I broke a toe. 

Before my holiday I had started and was enjoying an exercise programme called 30 days of change. It featured exercise every day and was a way to kick start some weight loss and a fitness campaign. Lately my body feels less and less like my own and more like a strangers when I look at it in the mirror. It was time to take some control back. One of the more obvious symptoms of my depression and my last breakdown has been the steady weight gain it inspired. 


So this was the fight back. 


Then I broke my toe. 

The holiday passed by really pleasantly despite the pain and inconvenience and my inability to walk properly. But the feeling of helplessness and set back feels as if it has been mirrored in my pursuit of an acting career. And it has got me reflecting on the past ten years and my own frustrations of growing up and finding out who I am, more still, accepting who I am.


I am currently reading the letters of Van Gogh. My fascination with the man and the artist started during my first year at Lecoq. In groups we had to chose an artist to study, then we were expected to recreate, at first, the entire body of their work (the general style of the artist) and then one painting in more detail, through movement alone. 


For the non-actors and some of the actors reading, I am aware this sounds utterly bizarre. It is, of course, when out of its wider context. Less bizarre than when I had to play a glass of champagne, or the audition for Lamda where I, as jelly, had to walk a pretend street, meet and greet someone else who was playing a syrup sponge and then walk back to the other corner of the room. 


I'm less sure of the point of that than I am the paint studies. Surely an audition should be used as an opportunity to show every actor to their strength. It is in our individuality that we are in fact interesting to watch, which is also true in life. So I definitely don't understand the exercise in an audition context.  

At Lecoq, before we had looked at painters we had studied colours using our bodies, also the elements and I think shapes. For example the colour red and fire might behave similarly. 

Have you ever watched a flame? It has a particular movement. Very jerky, aggressive and impulsive. A flame can dart in all directions and throw sparks. It could be compared to rage, the gradual build and the flashes that extinguish quickly. So taking the physical shape and action of a flame can inspire an emotion. It can make you feel angry. It's a way into an emotion or the internal working of a character who lives with a deep, barely contained rage towards the world and the people around them. Angry people have a tension one can find in a flame before it crackles. So to play a suppressed anger, one needs to find the physical tension of that. 

Body language, is after all a huge part of the way in which we communicate. It's why, in today's world of emails and text messages it can be much harder to interpret the motivation and intention behind the words being said. A curt email from a boss could easily be construed as passive aggressive, or that you might actually be in trouble. In reality, the words said might be said with the hurried demeanour of someone who is stressed and working to a deadline. Or it might be said with a roll of the eyes and a smile to indicate they are exasperated by the task they are asking of you. 

So studying the textures of the World around us, we can find a way to a character or another means of interpreting a story. 

Being forced to convey everything within a piece of art merely with our bodies, means we must consider our entire bodies. We have to find a new way to express something, a new way of telling a story without relying on words, without relying on an elaborate stage set. With our bodies, we must convey everything within the art, the colour, the mood change, the texture. It's extremely abstract and within that, one can find a door to ideas. A new way of thinking when writing a brand new story or bringing a story to life. We're not expected to do the exercise literally for an audience but to see what it awakens within our body and minds and our stories as we begin to write them for an audience. To consider all the elements. 

In studying Van Gogh this way, I discovered something of the man, a sense, a feeling that this was someone I wanted to know more. 


As we went on with the exercise, I began writing a series of short stories in which I imagined the artist himself giving our work critique. They were called 'Conversations with Van Gogh'(they can be found in the archives of this blog but are a very basic expression of a thought, idea and not at all finished). They were written very much in my own voice as I had no idea of his at that time. They expressed and mirrored my struggle to understand the exercise being asked of us and to understand his work. With all art, music, film, every day life, I spend my time looking for character and emotion. I was interested far more in who the man was than what the paintings portrayed. Of course, they are the same thing but I was being expected just to look at the work, the brush strokes, the building of colours etc. not the meaning or to understand what was behind the work.

A common theme and issue I experienced at school was this inability to think in the way I was being asked. I cannot separate character, emotion and meaning from action. (I also cannot do that in life) Often we were asked to act, and find within the action, a character and emotion or a meaning. I couldn't do it that way, I've never been able to. I cannot dive off the cliff to performance until I am sure of why I'm doing it, who I'm performing and why the story should be told.  At my heart I am an introvert. I have a deep interest in the inner workings of the soul and the motivation of individuals to behave the way they do. I am not really interested in performing as anything other than a means of exploring the World around me. I've often thought that if I hadn't been an actor or a writer I would be a therapist. 

This was also why I found the acrobatics part of the school so testing and difficult but I shall write of that in another post at a later date. 

I felt broken through much of my training. I couldn't do all the things the other students could. I couldn't comprehend through simply doing something, anything. I had to carefully consider before I got up and acted anything. It was deeply frustrating to be on the outside looking in. It was as if I spoke a different language to everyone. The more they could just do it the more I wanted to run from doing any of it. 

And so I would sit and watch as they all got up in class and I would analyse and fight myself, and fear and procrastinate and promise myself I would go next. Then I would hesitate long enough for someone to go before me. I'll go next. 

My teachers would look at me with frustration, my fellow students would scramble to be in a group with anyone but doubting Hannah. 


The whole basis of the training is to do and through action discover. It's why we didn't work with script, we were given improvisations to do, scenarios to act out. We were to find our bodies and the way we could use them to convince an audience of what we were doing inside our heads. In film, with a camera up close, a flicker of an emotion can be seen. On stage, you cannot expect even the front row to see you if you do not explain your emotions and inner most thoughts with your whole body. It's an exaggerated version of ourselves. 

I must add as an aside to any actors considering the school, it's also really useful training for film because thinking on your feet is exactly what is expected of you on set. There is rarely rehearsal time, and if you have a bad director (which is unfortunately quite common), you will be given very little advice. They cast you on your audition but they expect everything to have evolved from that by the time you arrive on set. You are expected to arrive with a fully formed character and ideas to throw out at will. Often this will be a character that is barely written, especially as you start out and do short films for free. You might have only one line but they want more than you gave the last time they saw you...often they don't even know what they want but they expect you to. 

So as I sat on my sun lounger and lamented the full stop to my exercise before the routine had established itself, I reflected back on what I have learnt over the last ten years. As I continue to read the letters of Van Gogh I find a man searching and searching and searching for answers to a question he hasn't quite discovered. I am reminded of the years of back and forth and back, back, forth and forth (to quote Aaliyah) that I used to reprimand myself for. Why aren't I where they are? Why has it taken me so long to establish what I should do? To find a journey, a path, a place? Why did I not walk confidently towards the thing I have always known I am, would do, will be? 

Because art, like life is not simple. It might be a broken toe, it might be a lack of finances, it might be a lack of confidence, it might be a mind that works by analysing first and doing later, it might be because your ideas form in the quiet, when you have no idea your mind is awake behind the scenes, when you are telling yourself off for being lazy and not doing enough, and to get up from the TV and start doing something, anything. 


It has taken me a long, long time to accept that I work in fits and starts, much like a dancing flame. The Sparks can be quick and furious and fleeting but they happen and they only happen by allowing the heat to build, to calm, to grow. They happen in the stillness, they happen when I least expect them to. They happen to be almost fully formed, they are full of all the fuel I've been drinking in. The TV show, the man on the tube, the improvisations I couldn't bring myself to do. They are full of my history, my childhood, the years when I had to stop because I couldn't take rejection whilst trying to accept myself, my artistic process and needs, what it is that makes me even feel whole and human and alive. 

The toe is broken, the career has taken longer to start than I hoped, I've had to work jobs I didn't want to, I've had to hold onto jobs I don't enjoy for longer than I wanted to, I've had to stop and assess, I've had to sit at the back of the class trying to find the courage to do what others could so easily do, I've had to seemingly start again, and again, and again. But in reality, it's all just one big part of my story. I haven't started again, I've never stopped. My brain keeps looking forward, keeps searching for ideas, for understanding, at the world and the people around and finally, finally, at myself. And you know what? It's alright, I'm alright. I'm right, bang, exactly where I need to be. And so are you. 

You are exactly where you are supposed to be. This is your journey, try, try and try again to accept it and to enjoy it. You don't need a boyfriend, a new job, a better home, an idea, the same experience of those around you. You are where you are supposed to be. 

Except of course, if you are homeless, addicted, fleeing a war or uncertainty, standing at a border and asking for help, discriminated for your race, your gender, your religion. You're not supposed to be there, no one is. But you are there and you will find a way through to the other side and if you cannot do that in your life time, you'll have done it for someone else. 

You'll have spent years struggling to find your way but you'll have left your mark.  A life to be discovered by someone after you, even if just for a brief moment, or as a voice amongst many that changed the World for those who come after you. You will have impacted the World, the universe. You might not know it in your lifetime, you might not make it through to see it but history tells us, you will be seen. 

Back, Back, forth and forth we all go. Forth and Forth.