Trusting the Process
September 1st, 2010 | by Alexis | Published in So Many Mistakes
Writing is such a different process than performing. Near the end of the process you are, of course, even as a writer, put on display. I don’t know any playwrights that don’t feel an intense anxiety during first readings of a new script, that don’t go through periods of doubt and frustration. But as a performer, there is that mid-point in the rehearsal process, when you’re just moving off-book (no longer reading from a script) and things seem to go fantastically awry.
Because I haven’t acted in some time, I didn’t remember that feeling or that part of the process. And so when I crashed into it for the first time, late last week, I was really thrown by it. It’s terrifying, to feel like all the work you’ve done is lost, that you can’t figure out where you are supposed to be and what you’re supposed to be saying. It feels like you’re losing the thread completely, and opening night is feels closer than ever, and it seems impossible that you’ll be able to get from where you are in that moment to anything else.
It was only in talking to the director and a couple of friends who work in theater that I realized those feelings, that frightening off rehearsal, is all part of the process. That you have to trust the work you’ve done, and trust the process. The process is there for a reason and others have gone through it thousands of times before you.
Maybe the most important thing about that moment is that it made me take a step back and try to refocus not only on the character’s larger goals within the show, but also my own goals in taking on this new challenge.
Learning to trust something outside myself doesn’t come naturally. Fingers crossed!
-Alexis
