Exciting news!
Yesterday, an article of mine on meditation and performing was featured on Elephant Journal. Yay!
This piece was a bit of a personal one, exploring one of the main reasons I've struggled so much as a performer for most of my adult life. But beyond the struggle, it also talks about one of the biggest game-changers in my life over the past few years: meditation.
If you've been reading my blog or following my work, it's probably no surprise to you that I love meditation and that I see it as an important (if not fundamental) tool for performers.
But I didn't always feel that way. In fact, for a large part of my life, I didn't think that I would ever be able to meditate. In order to be a meditator, I thought you had to be a certain "type" of person: an already zen, quiet and undramatic person (in my mind, not a performer). But all this changed for...
I remember clearly the first time I had a panic attack on stage.
I was in high school, performing a play in drama competition. It was a two-person show; just me and another actor in front of the audience for 45 minutes. While I had acted in a similar style piece before, this felt much more high-stakes. It had been years since my school had made it this far in the competition and I took this responsibility both seriously and personally.
We were the second show of our night. Before us had been a lively and intense piece with a large cast. Now, as I stepped out on stage, that entire cast was sitting in the first two rows of the audience staring up at me. They were buzzed from their performance, with too much energy to sit still. They chatted amongst themselves, so loudly that I could hear them clearly on stage. Thank goodness this was the time before cell phones....
In my last blog post, we began exploring the idea of performance energy. We discussed energy as vibration and the exchange of energetic vibrations that happens during a performance. And we also started talking about another energetic force at work when we perform.
That’s where we’ll pick up here.
If you have haven’t read the previous post yet, you can do that here. Then join us as we continue to explore performance energy.
A spark.
That little flash of energy that transforms us from our everyday selves into performers. When do we feel it? In the moment of stepping from offstage to onstage? In the seconds when our hands first grasp our instruments? In that breath that brings the microphone to our lips?
What happens in that moment? Where does that burst of energy come from?
That my friends, is the power of the performance itself.
Let me explain.
In the previous post, we talked about how we give off energetic vibrations in everything we do. This...
We all know there’s an extra special something that happens when we perform. We’ve all felt it. But how do you quantify it? How do you describe that lift you get from the audience watching you, that jolt you feel when they respond to your performance? What do you call that magic that transpires between you and your fellow performers when you put on an amazing show? We often call it “energy”. But what does this really mean?
Energy is one of those terms that gets thrown around a lot. We talk about good energy and bad energy, how we get energy from the food we eat, that we have no energy left when we’re exhausted and that we feel energized by a new idea. We use the same word, “energy”, to describe all of these different “states of being”. But if we ask ourselves what we mean by the word “energy” in all of these examples, I think many of...
Hello! Welcome to Act(ing) Mindfully. I’m so glad you’re here and that you’re interested in exploring along with me.
So what’s this blog all about?
Being a performer is a rewarding, ever-changing and often challenging life choice. Beyond the everyday mental and physical rigor it requires of us to keep our skills in shape, it also demands a lot from us emotionally and energetically. Unlike many other careers, performing requires us to fully commit our whole selves to it: body, mind, emotions and spirit. It can be incredibly invigorating, but at the same time it can be incredibly draining. Many of us find ourselves caught in this constant flux of energy, unable to keep ourselves grounded both on and off stage (or camera).
But is it possible to be a great performer and live a balanced life?
Yes!
That’s what we’ll explore here.
Who am I?
My name is Mairin Smit and I’m a theatre and movement artist, teacher and artist wellness coach. Artist wellness coach? Yes,...
