Performance Focus

Or that time I went to Starbucks mid scene and forgot all my lines

The past few weeks I’ve been in rehearsal for Little Women. Being back on stage has been a joy, but it’s also brought some reflections to the surface.

I was a worse actor when I left college then when I arrived. Although I took acting classes (I was majoring in Theater after all) and was fortunate enough to be cast in several shows, my ability to lock in and dig deep was blunted. Why? Because I focused less on, What is this scene about? What am I trying to get from the other character(s)? How can I tune in, listen and be impacted by what they say?

Instead, I focused much more on, Who will come see this show? What will this teacher think of my reading of this line? Will a fellow student be impressed by my work?

Obviously: those types of thoughts are the antithesis of giving a good performance on stage. The more you focus on the reaction, what the audience might think or feel or perceive, the less you are living in the moment. You aren’t “being” you are “performing” and that is a surefire to not impress anyone.

A curious fact of performing is the best ones don’t feel like a performance. They feel lived in, natural. Honest. I became so focused on being seen as talented that I got…well…a lot less talented. It has taken me years to get back to the headspace I had as a kid. Just out on stage, having fun, connecting with scene partners, being.

The difference was made sharply clear in our final rehearsals for Little Women. While during most of our run throughs I was able to be present in the scene at hand, the last few days my mind started to wander towards, I wonder who is coming to see the show? What they will think? Will this moment make them laugh? Will they think I’m good at this?

Which did not make for good acting, only an odd sense of things being “off.” Or as I confessed during notes after rehearsal: “I went to Starbucks during that scene.”

I can’t be thinking about whether or not someone will think a joke is funny. If that’s where my focus is, it probably (most definitely) won’t be funny.

Mid rehearsal run for Little Women

We all have moments as performers where we “pop out” and seem to exist outside our bodies or the scene. We may forget a line, get mixed up on blocking, or a thousand other things might throw us off. How can we come back to ourselves? To the present?

Listen. What is being said? How is it being said? How does that impact our emotions?

Breathe deeply. Get the gut involved. Don’t perform from your head, but your heart.

Jeff asked recently if I got tired of running the same show over and over. “Absolutely not!” I said. Once the scripts are down and the scene is blocked, the real work begins. The work of exploring the text, the subtext, the interaction between characters. There are so many layers to explore, grooves to excavate, it’s exhilarating.

But this work only happens if you are paying attention to the scene while you are in the scene. When you are, real magic can happen.

During our final dress rehearsal, there was apparently a lot of knocking sounds. The director and other actors commented on it after the run, while my scene partner and I looked at each other, confused. We never heard anything. We were present and not present. With each other and out of the room.

Acting is such an ephemeral skill. But I wanted to share my experience with noticing that the more you focus on the outside accolades or result, the worse the performance typically is—at least for me! The more I let go of expectations and invest in being present, the better off I am.

I feel there is some larger philosophical lesson to take from this into life.

The perceptions of others are beyond our control. The effort we spend trying to please them or get them to laugh is wasted. If we can let go of that outside conner, that voice which takes us out of our bodies and puts us in a judgmental headspace, the better off we will be.

There are plenty of other lessons I have taken from this experience. Theater continues to teach me so much. The overlap between creative pursuits in my life and running grows clearer by the day. So there is more to be said here! I hope you’ll stay tuned, and share this Substack with someone you know who is intrigued by all things running, storytelling, and life. I appreciate it!