Act Like It’s Now: Lessons from Acting for Living in the Moment
How the Art of Acting Can Teach Us to Let Go and Be Present
I recently participated in a very intense acting workshop. By intense, I mean that during the workshop, I had a few “OMG, why did I sign myself up for this!?” moments. However, I stuck it out, learned a lot, met some great people, and had a fantastic time doing it. It turned out to be well worth a few of those OMG moments.
One of the most important lessons I learned wasn’t specific to acting but was an excellent life lesson overall. This critical lesson was about how essential it is to live in the moment. By “live in the moment,” I mean not thinking about the past or worrying about the future but just being present. It was about switching off your inner editor and being fully alive.
For the workshop, I was given a dream role to prepare. It was a brilliantly written sitcom comedy script. I was playing the male romantic lead and cast along with a beautiful actress as the female lead. Of course, this is where the problem started. First, as an actor, when you’re handed a great script, you do not want to mess it up. Also, the scene had six pages of dialogue, and I only had two days to memorize it. I take my acting work very seriously. As a professional (and one who aims to be a team leader), I feel very strongly that it’s my responsibility to arrive fully prepared, off-book, and completely ready to act. But six pages of sharp comedy dialogue with so little time to prepare gave me a lot of anxiety.
That previous paragraph shows that right from the start, I was already not living in the moment. I was worrying about the future—forgetting my lines and looking unprepared in front of the group.
The trick about learning dialogue is you do it one line at a time. Guess what it takes to memorize a single line of dialogue. You guessed it. It takes being in the moment. As soon as I put my anxiety aside, I picked up my script and began working through it line by line.
Because proper concentration and focus are pretty difficult, I committed to focusing on my script for ten minutes in the morning when I woke up, then again for ten minutes after lunch, and then for a final ten minutes right before bed. Ten minutes at a time doesn’t sound like much; however, in our smartphone / social media culture, dedicating ten minutes of pure concentration to a mental task is rare. I would wager that many people would struggle to maintain perfect focus on a task without being distracted by something during that time.
Because thirty minutes a day wouldn’t be enough time for me to commit six pages to memory, I supplemented my focus time by carrying my script around and working on it whenever I got a spare moment. You get the idea if you can picture me folding my laundry while working on my dialogue.
By following the process above, I turned up on the first day of the workshop prepared and ready to act. However, there was still a lot to do! Most importantly, I needed to meet and get to know the course instructor, my scene partner, and the others taking the course with me. Acting is a team effort, whether for a live audience or for a camera. The challenge now was to set aside my anxiety over my performance and dialogue and get to know the people around me. In particular, I needed to get to know and build trust with the actress who would be the scene partner.
Lucky for me, my scene partner and I bonded, and as we worked together, a very positive chemistry developed between us. As we worked to solve the tough challenge of delivering a funny comedy performance, we learned that we could rely on each other. Together, we gained confidence and believed that our performance would be successful and, most importantly, funny. (It was comedy, after all and being funny matters!)
The stakes were high when it came time to perform our scene. Not only did we want to put on a good scene for ourselves and the other participants in our class, but a key casting director would be joining the audience to watch. I hadn’t met this casting director before in person, so this would be an important opportunity to make an excellent first impression. So definitely… there was a lot at stake!
To be good in any acting performance, you cannot worry about external things (like what your peers or the casting director in the audience might think of you.) You’ve just got to do it. Because the scene was sitcom style, we performed live in front of an audience, so we had to do the scene in a single take. Guess what happens when you are performing live? The unexpected happens! However, because my scene partner and I were well-prepared and had built a strong bond of trust with each other when the unexpected happened, we could adapt at the moment and keep our scene and our performances on track. Nobody would shout “Cut!” in this situation, so no matter what happened, we stayed in the moment, supported each other, and carried our scene to its happy conclusion.
Even if you’re not an actor preparing for a challenging scene, there are some lessons to take away:
First, if you have an important event to prepare for (say, an exam or job interview), don’t waste your time worrying about it. Instead, dedicate small chunks of focused time to preparation. Do what it takes so you're ready when you arrive.
Second, once you get there, there are often things you must do before you get down to the critical task. In my case, getting to know and building trust with the other people in the workshop with me was crucial. This requires being in the moment and not thinking about my preparation (which was in the past) or my performance (which was upcoming in the future).
Finally, the event itself. Because life never goes as planned, you need to be in the moment so you can deal with whatever wrinkle life throws at you. To do this, your preparation really must be complete and you’re not worrying about the outcome. You do your best and let the outcome happen.
That may sound complicated, but do you know what? The more you can stay in the moment, the more it happens naturally. This is because our anxiety (worrying about either the past or the future) prevents us from succeeding at what we want to do. When you’re in the moment, that anxiety over the past or future melts away, and you enjoy success.
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