Doing something that feels foreign to you can be an incredibly scary notion. It is so easy to live in the comfortable stasis of day-to-day life. What a safe choice! What stability! But what if complacency creeps in, building to boredom or discontent? A person in that position has two options: live in denial, coping with the mediocre, and trudging forward with blind hope for something better to fall in your lap. Or, do something about it! Take a risk. Try something new. Push yourself outside of the limits as you know them. I have been thinking a lot recently about proactivity and the benefits that come from that kind of behavior. As described before, proactive behavior involves acting in advance of a future situation, rather than just reacting. It means taking control and making things happen rather than just adjusting to a situation or waiting for something to happen. In acting training my classmates and I spent plenty of time focusing on listening and reacting in scene work. But characters in plays are also incredibly proactive - their circumstances force them into the mindset of Now or Never. As Emily likes to say in improv, Today is the Day. Today is the day I quit my job, Today is the day I tell my mom I'm dropping out of college, Today is the day I sell all of my belongings and tour the world with just a knapsack on my back, Today is the Day. This proactivity is what pushes the lives of the characters forward. It opens the door for new discoveries. It sets the stage for a new improvements and enlightenment. I now teach this concept to students in acting classes and have made an effort to integrate proactivity into my own lifestyle as a result. I would feel rather hypocritical if I encouraged everyone else to try an acting or improv class or writing a play if I refused to try that as well. So this has been the year of doing theatrical things where I lack confidence. I jumped into improv, a skill that always terrified me. I wrote a play during a very beneficial workshop at ACTF. The workshop also gave me plenty of tools to drop the mental blocks and get writing on a regular basis. I have made it a goal of the summer to write a little something every day - and then to get up the courage to share that work. That day came on the summer solstice of this year. The arts community of Laramie got together to create work of all styles and genres inspired by the Major and Minor Arcana of Tarot. Relative Theatrics' Playwrights Inc. group became involved with the help our tarot expert, Richard Morell. Each playwright was paired with an artist and/or card with the goal of writing monologues and scenes inspired by the artwork. I was paired with Ariana Kimble, a wildly talented artist who brings nature, power, and femininity into everything she touches. Two cards were assigned, the 10 of Swords and the Moon. I should preface, I know very little about tarot. I asked my tarot knowledgable friends endless questions, listened to podcasts (I highly recommend The Archetypal Tarot Podcast if you're in the market for listening material), read books, surfed the web, basically researched Tarot and these two specific cards without end. The newfound tarot knowledge, combined with the inspiration from Ariana's artwork, set a clear path into the tarot monologues. Did I have periods of writers block? Yes. Did I have moments of self-doubt? Absolutely. Did I ever give up? NO. I made a pact with myself to write something every day, whether I had the inspiration or not. The end result was pages of mediocre writing, and just enough nuggets of gold to assemble two strong, but very different monologues which were then performed by local actors at the Major Arcana Tarot Project Art Showing. This is the second time I have ever shared my writing with the public. My heart was thumping. But the actors brought such life to the pieces and the work was so well received. And best of all, I left the evening with a newfound feeling of accomplishment and self-pride. I did it! I took the risk. I reaped the benefits. I may not be at a place where I will call myself a playwright, but I can say that I have had my own work produced. That is a pretty neat feeling. Do you have something you have been wanting to do but are too scared/nervous/comfortable? What about a moment when you stepped out of your comfort zone to try something new? I'd love to hear about it in the comments below! And because I shared the story of my monologues, I suppose I will share the monologues as well:
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