Every day I wake up with a different mood. I cannot really tell how my performance will be until I enter the theater and start my preparation. My preparation is primarily physical. But today was different. Today I did almost no physical preparation except for the 10 min collective mitakara just before the show. My main preparation today was an hour long sleep. And that was what I needed. Yesterday I was feeling exhausted before the performance, and that was how I felt during the performance. I had no energy. So I did the minimum. Result? Well, the most boring, or I can even say “dead” performance for me personally, with no feeling of enjoyment whatsoever, almost zero imagination (even at times I had this thought come to me, “oh I feel like a big failure in this scene, I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t have to”), however a “wonderful” collective performance praised by Iida San and enjoyed by the audience. Now how can I make sense of that? I really can’t (yet :-)). But, I now know that my individual experience of my own performance has nothing to do with the success of the collective performance as perceived by audience. Well, it’s a kind of relieving observation. (I can feel like shit on stage, and still enjoy collective success.)
And when I woke up this morning, I realized I had not slept well. I did not rest in the night’s sleep. And after I woke up from my nap in the theater, I concentrated on mental preparation, using Makoto noru. My main focus was to create a state of curiosity, not-knowing, awe and enchantment for every moment, to open myself up to the magic of flow and the miracles that the natural flow of life brings. For when I am on the stage with such a state of mind, I create a dream-like state for myself, and the stage comes alive. In such a state, everything that happens on the stage feels fresh and new, mysterious, magical, creating awe. This is what happened in today’s performance for me. The characters come alive, I see no more fellow performers on stage, but the characters they create. It is a collective dream that we create together, and we all come in and out of it during these two hours on stage. Once I’m out, I become Engin. Once I’m in, Engin disappears and the character takes over. The emotions felt by the character are also felt by Engin. So they are real. But they are within the dream, and they actually belong to the character. So sometimes it’s a kind of confusing situation. Although my emotions in daily life have communalities with the feelings that arise on stage, I think it is necessary and healthy to acknowledge that the feelings and emotions on stage actually belong to the character in the dream, and not to Engin. That being said, any catharsis that happens on stage actually serves Engin. And that is kind of what happened today for me. It was more in the form of tears, cleansing and opening up space inside me.
I feel that when the dream-state is activated collectively, it becomes strong, something far stronger than what the performers contribute individually, which also captivates the audience and also makes them part of the dream. A strong exchange of energy and content occurs between the stage and the audience, and during this process, the performers have the power to communicate anything directly to the subconscious of the audience, therefore making it possible to have a strong impact in their lives, possibly opening up new doors for change.
Today has been another proof for me showing that my state of mind, mood and attitude create my reality, both on stage and outside of stage. The big question for me here is “How can I manage my mood?”, “How can I create the state of mind I like whenever I like?”. For it looks like my mood is affected by many factors, many of which are beyond my knowledge, awareness or control. I know that my shadow, that is, my thoughts, emotions, desires and energies that I tend to reject and suppress, and how I deal with it has an important effect on my mood. I had such first-hand experience yesterday, where I had to go over all my negative thoughts and emotions to release them before the performance. Makoto noru is surely an effective and maybe indispensable tool I can use. Surprisingly enough, massaging the audience today during the pre-performance was helpful for me to change my mood positively. I am amazed at how unpredictable and changing my mood actually is, worse than the weather of Istanbul. My mood on Wednesday was very negative in the morning, and very positive in the afternoon and during the performance. My mood yesterday was negative with almost zero energy from the moment I entered the theater, and it continued to be so during the performance. Meanwhile, my mood today was not good initially, I felt tired and sleepy. But it changed after I took the nap. I felt really rested and fresh after the nap. Even though I did not feel so positive. Eventually I felt fresh, energetic, relaxed during the performance, which helped me enter the dream state. I was feeling even more relieved and relaxed after the performance.
Iida San says that we can keep our positive makoto noru and imagination during the performance in any scene. So, for example, I can imagine peaceful world while I am in the fighting scene. For me, such idea initially sounds like something contradictory and not really practical to do. If I have a fight scene, I tend to imagine things that make me angry so that I can have the fighting energy for the scene. But today, I kind of managed to keep this joyful awesome/enchanted state in almost all my scenes. It feels like, some part of me is feeling the emotion necessary for the act, and another, maybe a deeper part of me is feeling the joy and awe that is the background on which my acting is being constructed. So yes, if I can do this with my emotion and mood, I can also do it with imagination and makoto noru. And this is how I can actually communicate with the audience on a deeper, maybe subconscious level; what Iida San has been talking about. However, imagination and makoto noru are mental processes that require mental effort, and therefore are challenging for me on stage. But hey, practice makes perfect.
(Engin)
