Change is coming.

 The leaves are turning, the days are shortening, and apparently we’re all expected to start liking pumpkin.

Transitions can unsettle us. We get comfortable. We find a rhythm. Then something shifts.

But perhaps, as artists, we can meet change with curiosity rather than resistance.

How is this next season going to affect me? What might it bring out in me? Energy, melancholy, excitement, irritation, hope? Whatever arrives is useful. It becomes part of the ever-growing collection of experiences we carry into our work.

And feelings are remarkably temporary things. We can transition into frustration in seconds and, sometimes just as quickly, transition out of it. We are not required to remain loyal to a feeling simply because it arrived first.

The same is true in our acting.

We can become strangely attached to our idea of a scene. We decide where the emotional moment happens, what the scene is “about”, how a particular line should feel. Then we spend the scene trying to preserve it.

But a moment is allowed to happen and then immediately disappear.

You can be devastated and suddenly find something funny. You can be furious and then soften. You can feel completely certain and, halfway through a sentence, realise you’re not.

That isn’t inconsistency. That’s being human.

So perhaps this season, practise allowing transitions rather than controlling them. Notice when something changes in you and resist the urge to drag yourself back to where you were.

Let autumn become winter. Let confidence become uncertainty. Let sadness become laughter. Let the scene become something entirely different from what you rehearsed.

Change doesn’t necessarily mean something has gone wrong.

Sometimes it simply means something is happening.

And for an actor, that’s rather the point.

Keep up the great work 

Mark :)

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