#welcome to my art blog/ photo/ blog / apparently now therapy journal

[devsquared]

For Theatre International we're supposed to bring in the text of a post from the internet that we find this week that is particularly striking

There's a bird site post floating around here I'm going to use, a post Michael Sheen wrote to a fan in answer to a question about their lack of confidence causing them trouble in a role they'd been cast in:

"Imagine the character is a real person who can only live again when someone plays them. They're desperate to be alive. To connect with people. To breathe. To see. To touch. Only you have the power to give that to them. Now get on with it and leave your worrying about yourself"

I love this so, so much. Memorised it immediately

Never been able to just "be confident." Oh sure I can fake it, but it's brittle and liable to lead to a self-centred sort of insecurity that revolves on itself getting ever worse, like the midnight picking of a hangnail. Bah. Useless. Boring

But shift the lens from the artist as someone who has to do it "right" - whatever that even means - to the artist as someone helping someone else, that's a mental-emotional place I can work from and thrive even in terrifying or frustrating conditions

It's like helping a friend move house, isn't it? You don't endlessly wonder if you're carrying the cartons "correctly." Or how other people will perceive your carton carrying. Cartons need carried; you carry cartons. Doesn't even matter if you're not confident about it. Your friend needs help and you provide it. I'm not trying to say there's no craft; I am saying that if there's craft in carton carrying, it probably comes after self-aware pantomime carton carrying gives way to authentic carton carrying

Very cool and sexy of the world to give me the 52 words that sever the entire artistic process from the rubbish holding me back right when I needed them and was ready to listen

#acting #quotes #Michael Sheen #confidence #hi yes #welcome to my art blog/ photo/ blog / apparently now therapy journal #where I apparently write in round-about fashion about trying to get over whatever the pandemic did to me