A space for Actor's wisdom

Coralie Renée

Since my childhood I have absolutely loved watching actors talking about their craft. I knew who they were and I could recognize them in a second even when they were shapeshifting their bodies and or voices. Truth be told those that I loved the most were never French...

I tried to explore that route for myself (yes I did!). But with each experience that I had (however small), it didn't feel right!

My first one was in the Cours Florent in France. I absolutely hated the mentalised reciting and cold boring text. I didn't feel any emotional connection to it at all. And the pretentiousness and pure elitism from the teachers just made me run away.

After my departure from France and after 3 years living in Ireland speaking in English I tried again when I lived for 5 years in Sydney (Australia). There were no text there but from the beginning, the teacher wanted to record and videotape us while we were in the center of the room with all eyes on us while we were doing the exercises (which I can't remember). The goal was to comment on what we did and then give each other feedback.

While I feel this is a great exercise to do I felt so uncomfortable with myself that watching me on a tape and even listening to my own voice felt cringing and to be honest still feel this way to this day. That's why, even though I am being encouraged to do videos, podcasts and interviews and boy I have ideas about what I'd love to do, well it is still not being acted upon...

The last straw was when I tried to do improv when I returned to France. I just froze and felt self-conscious...

Anyway, after those experiences, I very quickly felt that it wasn't about me being in the limelight or doing acting at all. I kept watching shows, programs and interviews though. And still felt somehow attracted by something in there. And with my ex who loves movies and the art of telling stories, we did have many fun conversations...

I still don't know specifically what it is that is so compelling for me. But I have to follow my own wisdom about that:
I often say that if one keeps on coming back to what seems to be an obsessive interest for something (what we are attracted to ), it is because there are within us resources that need to be seen and used. And that our work consist in sorting out our resources to clarify and reveal our own "tapestry"...

Between imagining me helping actors understand their role's character, being enthralled by conversations about understanding one's motives, psychology and being able to see if someone is aligned or not with whom they are and absolutely loving shows like "The Actor's Studio" (an old US program who was a masterclass for acting students with James Lipton with Actors who were invited to talk about their lives and their point of view on their craft...), but also through the work that I developed being able to demonstrate physically the emotional tensions and voice that through feedbacks to my clients (I didn't notice that I was doing that for a long time but my clients' testimonies that I got gave me a bit more courage in owning those skills)... I'm still unsure about what will emerge from all that but for now what's coming up is to hold a space within my blog to explore those.

So, for now I have created a category called #actorswisdom. In some posts, you will find inspirational quotes, thoughts and ways of approaching life from actors that inspire me as well as my own thoughts and actions I may take to explore further my own path.