Student Blog: Commit To The Bit

Three days a week at 8am, I wake up and prepare myself for my 9am movement class. I take off my shoes and stand in a line across the floor with my other classmates. I put one foot in front of the other and slowly push myself across the room. I lift my arms into an outreached position, open, yearning, eager, a position individual from those of my classmates beside me. I laser my eyes on the emptiness before me, in the space between focusing on one point and nothing at all. Until I reach the other side of the room and halt my movement, waiting for the rest of my classmates to complete their journeys and stand alongside me. We are engaging in an exercise called a "slow ten", we are engaging our skills of discipline, focus, and stamina, utilizing our body's articulation and expressiveness, exploring our imaginative impulses. But I can't get past the fact that I'm just waving my arms and walking across the room.

I am lucky enough to attend a revered acting program and I try my best to remain devoted to all of the preachings of my professors. Nevertheless, I can't stop that little voice in the back of my mind from asking the question: how much can walking across a room, or anything else we do in movement class for that matter really help us become better actors? I look around me and see my classmates able to fully immerse themselves in this theory, hanging on our professor's every word, adding insightful comments about their own personal growth and how much the work has helped them and I experience a seemingly endless bout of imposter syndrome. I put in the work and dedicate myself even in the times when what I'm doing seems pointless, but I'm a skeptic, I question everything and I struggle to buy into some of the more experimental and artistic approaches to my training. I feel guilty and ashamed for this as if somehow it makes me less of an actor to hold a firmer grip on reality.

This all leads me to wonder can I truly gain much out of my training if I do not hold complete faith in it? Or does dedication and commitment regardless of my personal questioning outweigh my inability to suspend disbelief? These are questions I continue to seek the answers to as I continue into my training. Maybe one day I will see the light and in reflection realize the worth of everything I doubted, maybe I'll find that my doubt was the very thing that allowed me to grow, maybe I'll come to the realization that a different route of training is what's best suited for me. For now, all I can do is remain curious, wake up every morning and commit to the bit.