Particular key experiences in my life unexpectedly stopped me in my tracks and created crises of directionality. Certain artistic and personal encounters gave me a glimpse of a utopia or a sneaking suspicion that such a utopia just might be possible in my very own life. These encounters were often in a theater, sometimes with paintings, literature, music, or gestures of grace that arrived at my doorstep in the actions of people around me – teachers, colleagues or master artists. These experiences drenched me with emotion and inspiration. These encounters created in me a hunger to do, to become, to create. I began to practice the art of direction. I entered rooms with people I barely knew and began to try to construct plays for audiences. I fell down and stood up and fell down and stood up and fell down again. The hours and hours of practice became the foundation for a life in the theater. Little by little I learned about the benefits of deep practice. I know now that when I stop practicing I will stop transforming.
Practice, it turns out, changes the actual makeup of the body. Through practice, new neural pathways are forged and a white substance called myelin coats, encircles and insulates these pathways. If the practice is effective and if it is deep practice, the neural pathways that are created will have more of a chance to sustain. Image and emotion is the potent combination that helps to create the kind of sustained energy needed to get through the difficult moments of this particular kind of practice.
Rote practice is not deep practice. Deep practice is a slow and uncomfortable interaction with something that is just out of your grasp and just beyond your capabilities. To practice deeply is to live deliberately in a space that is uncomfortable but with the sense that progress can happen. Hope, determination and inspiration are the fuel that can sustain the necessary sweat and frustration of deep practice.
To locate the terrain of deep practice requires motivation and energy enough to sustain the many, many necessary hours of engagement. An image of what might result from such action combined with the emotion that you felt when initially encountering this image or inspiration is what generates the necessary sustaining heat. The image is found in your own experience, in your life. This picture of what just might be possible becomes a model. Your original motivation, the ignition for your own personal heat, might be a particular quality of orchestral sound or a person whose talent and abilities inspire and set your imagination on fire. This image is matched by the power of the emotion that you experienced during this encounter. And then the work, the sweat, the repetition and the construction of new neural pathways begin.
The playwright Edward Albee insists that only when he wrote 50 plays did his 51st become what he considers his first one. It just took him that long and that much practice writing to produce an original work. Two recent best-selling books, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code, are popularizing neuroscience’s hot discovery that only after 10,000 hours of practice is real progress and innovation possible.
Practice is action. Every skill developed is a form of memory constructed with practice. You are building reliable circuits. You are paying attention to errors and fixing them. You are breaking down a skill into component parts and repeating each action involved in that skill. The systemic firing of signals that happen when you practice deeply build the high-speed circuits that you need in the creative moment.
Find the sweet spot. Don’t rush. Slow down and live in the space of your own ineptitude. Every skill is a form of memory. Expertise is the insulation, the myelin that wraps neural circuits and grows in relation to certain signals. Change will happen. New circuits will be constructed. Work on technique. Seek out constant critical feedback. Focus ruthlessly on shoring up your weaknesses. Spend your time right and over time the effort will alter your neural pathways and the open up the possibilities for who knows what.
Comments
Coni says:
This is wonderful. Interestingly enough, since I have been doing Sahaja yoga meditation (a transmutational practice of rising kundalini), I have thought that there must a connection to my work in the theatre.
November 4, 2009 at 7:31 AM | Permalink
Ben says:
I am so glad to see this post - and Ciongoli-Koepfinger's comment only makes it even sweeter. After decades of seperation, it seems that theatre in the "western" world is finally reconnecting with the deep pools of embodied practice. Of course, theatre is connected to literature and painting and cinema... but it is also connected to yoga, martial arts, traditions of folk and religious song...
PRACTICE. I suspect that theatre's rediscovery of practice is part of a larger cultural project that could have broad significance in the twenty-first century. SITI is part of this change.
I invite readers of this blog to visit a new forum in development:
Creative Practice forum
www.creativepracticeforum.net/cpf
Thank you, Anne!
Ben Spatz
www.urbanresearchtheater.com
November 5, 2009 at 7:39 AM | Permalink
Melissa says:
I'm thinking about my husband, my students, and myself, with regard to practice...consistant suzuki and viewpoints training is a beautiful answer to the actor's dilemna, " what do I practice?" My husband is a musician, a drummer, and practices 2-4 hours a day, every day that I have known him. He brought drum sticks and a practice pad on our honeymoon. Dancers practice daily - it's a non-negotiable given of the art form. But actors - we have an inherent sense of entitlement - a belief that we can get by with this body, this voice, these pedestrian emotions, without practice. This is particularly true on the west coast where I live, and teach, and make work. it is not easy to find places to practice regularly. Training alone is even harder than training with others and requires even more self discipline. But this treatise on the importance of practice, with it's scientific data about myelin coats encircling neural pathways inspires me to continue to seek fellow practicioners. leapinthedark23@yahoo.com
November 5, 2009 at 12:04 PM | Permalink
Erynn says:
I have always appreciated the way the SITI company emphasizes ongoing training, or practice.
Personally, I barely "practice" theater any longer... it is an art that has been so important to me in the past, but in recent years has been less a part of my life and the way I express myself.
None the less, I am still drawn to the Viewpoints work and continue to practice it when I can... why? I think it has a lot to do with the connections being made in the above comments of theater to yoga. In fact, I find that practicing the Viewpoints work brings me the same things that my friends who are committed to yoga. And what's funny is these things cannot be explained so well through words, but rather through the practice of the things themselves.
Thanks,
Erynn
www.parabola.org
November 5, 2009 at 5:07 PM | Permalink
Edward says:
Hello Ms. Bogart,
I could not find your email address, but I came across this blog and had a chance to read some of your thoughts and ideas about theatre education.
I must tell you that they are very much consonant to mine although my own theatre education I've received in Russia. I believe in hard work and that is what I demand from my students here in the US for the past 30 years.
I would like to discuss many topics with you and one day I will.
For starter, I would be very interested to have your opinion on my brand new project that I just posted on my website www.stagemovement.com. It is the first attempt to teach a practical course over the Internet.
I am a Stage Movement expert, although I first graduated as a stage director.
It would be nice to hear from you.
All the best,
Edward Rozinsky
November 28, 2009 at 9:14 PM | Permalink
Hillary says:
The past two months this has been my inner monologue. Slow down, bird by bird. I have for some reason had a major change within myself. I have found myself searching and finding that artistically there is so so so much I want it feels overwhelming. I started doing yoga my freshmen year and only now 8 years later have I found the connection between yoga and theater. It's an epic feeling when my practice on the mat continues with me into life and myself as an artist.
Once again Ann, you have hit home for me. "Deep practice is a slow and uncomfortable interaction with something that is just out of your grasp and just beyond your capabilities." This will be my daily reminder. Thank you
January 29, 2010 at 10:50 AM | Permalink