DO YOU WANT TO CRY ON CUE REDUX

Are you still worried about whether or not you can hit a mark and cry?

This fear, hands-down is the most sabotaging challenge any actor can have when working professionally. Across media, from self tapes, particularly to hitting a mark in an episodic, even to Audiobook long form narration, the fear of not being able to deliver is the main problem that most actors face. It's the "fear of the fake!"

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a Zoom session with an acting/life coach who used that as the title. The lovely woman who ran the Zoom is a well-experienced actor, particularly in episodic work, and has become known for the ability to "cry on cue." One of the first things that was said was that it's totally kosher to get one of those cry-sticks on Amazon.

Interesting! This was something that I have never done in my very long career. I do not think there's any shame in it. I ordered one which came to me directly from China, and come to think of it, I'm not sure I will use it again because the Regulations for chemicals are not as stringent in the People's Republic of China as they are in Europe and the United States and Canada! I did try it. I might order another one from a better-regulated source just for stare-and-compare purposes, but it did work ...sort of.

The difficulty I had with using it on myself was that I did nothing else, just put it in, so I was not in any imaginary circumstances or in any particular script in my head when I tried it...and it did make my eyes glisten and even a little bit of a tear, but it would not have been sufficient to have tears dropping down my face. And that is usually what most actors want. We want the tears to well up and then spill over the lower blephora and fall down the cheeks. We feel like failures, like bad actors, insufficient, then frustrated....

Most of us have an internal label of what "sadness" is and what we "should feel like" and "look like” from the outside. If the script says, "She burst into tears," or "He breaks down completely." (Aargh! Will script writers stop telling us how to act!! It is entirely unhelpful.)

Directors also have an internal idea of what that "looks like". So the situation we have is that:

The Actor has an internal idea---very rigid frequently---about how sadness ought to feel and how it ought to look.

The Director has a different internal vision of how to be sad in the narrative that is being directed.

And the Screenwriter/Playwright has yet another internal fantasy of what the actor looks like in the scene in this particular script.

This causes a perfect neurological storm of difficulty for the Actor because nobody internally is on the same page.

Because we actors are deeply sensitive internally to those competing filmic or stage goals, we feel what is often an extreme combination of anxiety and drive. As one of my students very wisely observed, "

"It scares it away! It's not ''safe''!!"

That is accurate. She is so right. It's because the parasympathetic nervous system knows that you're not safe, and no amount of brain gymnastics is going to make you feel safe, because, emotionally speaking, the ancient primitive limbic system of your brain KNOWS it is not safe.

So what is our fix?

Your body is your tool, to state the obvious, as actors, we have to get to know ourselves.

At Alba Technique, it has been my mission for a dozen years to help you do what I can do: that is, that you know your own body so well that you can immerse yourself in ANY STORY, tell it within your character with absolute reality within that storyline. To be genuinely authentic. Truly In-The-Moment. Over and over and over if need be.

I know, you want a quick fix. You want to be able to "Just Do It," like a Nike ad. And I promise you, you will be able to do so. But WHEN?

Now that I've been teaching for a while, I know it's gonna take you a year to 18 months of working with me. Why so long? Because, as the good Dr Van der Kolk, MD, psychiatrist tells us in his book, "The body keeps the score." Every one of your past "large T" and "small t" traumas is encoded in the cells of your body. It is, in its way, wonderful and makes you uniquely you, but in order to be able to cry when you need to in a script, you need to get to know yourself and not just expect yourself to get rid of the "scare" automatically.

What you will get quite rapidly in our work together is more self-confidence as you begin to be able to WORK WITH (and not against), YOUR own BODY/MIND. You will gain a particular type of CONFIDENCE in yourself and in your craft that is always observed in really good actors. It creates a level of body experience that is unplaceable so that you can stride into a room, meet whoever is in that room or on that location; you are "in yourself" "as yourself" and then morph into the character ... and cry if you need to in that story. It's all about a craft and a story.

I promise you I can get you there, but it is not going to be in one weekend or one intensive; you're gonna have to commit to it---sorry about that ---but what you gain is Beyond Price ---you'll feel yourself SAFE in your craft and as an added bonus in your life-world.

Let's do it 🤗