Mark Evans Studio

There are moments in this industry when the business of acting can become louder than the reason we started. The emails. The auditions. The waiting. The self-tapes. The callbacks that don’t become bookings. The endless wondering about what’s next. And sometimes, without even realizing it, something starts to shift. The excitement gets quieter. The work feels heavier. We become more focused on getting somewhere than on the extraordinary privilege of being an actor. So, as we head into the fall, I want us to remind ourselves of something: Acting is incredible. We get to step into another person’s life and, for a few minutes, experience the world through their eyes. We get to tell stories that make people laugh, cry, question, understand, remember and feel less alone. We get to play. We get to imagine. We get to collaborate with wildly talented, passionate, strange, generous, complicated human beings and create something that did not exist before we walked into the room. That is extraordi...

  There is a particular kind of energy we can bring to our lives that feels productive, but often isn’t. The frantic energy. The tense determination. The feeling that if we just push harder, move faster, concentrate more intensely, somehow we will get better results. But what if the opposite is true? What if we could accomplish just as much, perhaps even more, by dialing down the frantic energy and simply taking a breath? It is surprising how effectively we can work, create, perform and communicate when we remove some of the tension from the equation. We don’t necessarily need to be less committed. We don’t need to care less. We simply need to stop gripping so tightly. Tension rarely serves us in life, and it definitely doesn’t serve us in our acting. Think about a scene that requires enormous emotional intensity. The instinct can be to tighten everything - the jaw, shoulders, stomach, hands, breath. We think that because the character is experiencing tension, our body must be tens...

  Ten months ago, my son was smaller than a sesame seed. Just sit with that for a moment. Today, I’m looking at his tiny ears - perfectly formed. His fingernails, impossibly delicate. I listen to the little grunts and groans he makes as his lungs learn to do a job they were never asked to do before. For nine months he relied entirely on an umbilical cord. Now, every breath is his own. Every cry, every stretch, every yawn is another step in his remarkable introduction to the world. How is any of this possible? The more I stare at him, the more I realise how disconnected many of us have become from the sheer wonder of nature. We walk past trees without noticing the way they continue to grow. We barely think about the complexity of a flower blooming or a bird navigating thousands of miles across continents. Creation surrounds us every second of every day, yet we’ve somehow become numb to it. And then a child arrives and reminds you that life itself is the greatest miracle you’ll ever ...