"I am in Patrick" sounds better than "I feel Patrick's feelings," right? :)))

[anna_unfolding]

So I had two really fun theatripod rehearsals today for two different projects, and I loved them! I got to talk to several people I’ve only ever seen reference to online, and meet several more. Plus it was wonderful to hear the voices of people that I’ve met irl before and talk with my fandom friends. Yay, collaboration!!!



Even in these short rehearsals, I felt a lot of things got worked through quite effectively. In the Teen Wolf/World of Warcraft pack project, there were a lot of technical things to sort out in how to navigate difficult scenes where a host of characters are on an online chat together. I mean, honestly. The chat was six or seven Teen Wolf characters as their online avatars in a WoW-themed fic, so it wasn’t even Lydia and Stiles, it was their online selves (how’s that for fannish meta), with different names and roles in their game than they have in their real TW lives. Some of their chat lines were public to the group and in the midst of that, some lines were like DM’s. AAAAAND, the fandom actors playing them were on skype, a different online interface, using spoken words and not typing. Jeez, what a challenge! That was exactly why I wanted to be part of this project, because of the technical and artistic challenges and to give our director different takes and examples so that she can choose how best to tell a complex story of real events and online chats over the singular medium of a sound file. LET ME JUST SAY I DO NOT ENVY HER, NOR THE EDITING THAT AWAITS HER!

In the other project, a pretend dating FoB fic, we discussed the characters’ inner dialogues and how to interrupt each other and how best to dramatize those feelings. So great!!

But the thing that is striking me as really interesting is that I learned something really important about myself as an actor today. I think I already knew this intuitively, but not having ever done acting with others where I play one character against theirs, I never really got it.

I have no acting training. I have no idea how to say dialogue with someone else’s voice or feelings. I’ve never even taken one drama class, beyond, like, the middle school play that everyone did. I know no tricks for characterization. But thinking of Patrick in the FoB fic, I do know how it feels to want something, and enjoy something, but feel horrible about it. I know how it feels to wake up turned on and vulnerable and have to jarringly face reality that that person isn’t yours, and pack up your emotions quickly and guardedly. I know how it feels to be just fucking done with the packing up of emotions, and feeling the electric energy of letting your guard down and asking openly for what you want. To wait. To know.

And this is why I can do a vulnerable!Patrick but probably couldn’t do a smarmy-but-good-natured!Pete, not without some serious instruction. I don’t know what smarmy-but-attractive-and-good-natured FEELS like. I’ve never ever been that. (idk, perhaps I could get on board with Pete's protective instincts in this fic?? I guess I'd find a way to identify with him, right?)

It’s also why I wanted to hear all the narration prior to my/Patrick’s emotional moments, the interruption of which cost me something, artistically. I am in Patrick. (Um, that sounds hotter than I meant it.) Well, the way I meant it could translate to hot podfic, though, I guess! I meant that when Pearl was reading the way Pete was kissing Patrick, or pulling away, or walking towards him, or smiling incandescently at him, I was RIGHT THERE. I found the moments in my life that resonated with Patrick and it’s like I copy-and-pasted them into this moment between two band mates on tour, even though I have zero experience with their lifestyle.

I feel others’ emotions so readily and easily. It’s a wonderful gift, but it’s caused me an enormous amount of pain and derailing in my life until I began to learn what is going on and how to work with it. It gets in the way because I know how they feel; I’ve felt that way before, and I didn’t get it attended to (a parent problem from when I was young), so now I damn well sure am going to attend to this thing (that I recognize, emotionally) in the other person. The problem is, then I don’t attend to whatever is currently in me, and the thing where I have feelings but no one attends to them happens over and over again. This actually resulted in me not knowing my feelings in the moment (unless they matched whoever I was with), and only ever feeling them on others’ behalves at a later date. WHICH IS NOT COOL. AND NOT A GOOD WAY TO NAVIGATE LIFE.

But… staying in myself and my own feelings can be costly. It cost me a very beloved friend once, and another dear person last night. It’s not as fun when that happens. Of course, it will be fun when staying in my own experience is happening with people who expect nothing less or more from me than that. And for those of you who are like that with me and with each other, thank you. But here, with acting? I’ve found a place where I can do the thing I am training myself to NOT do irl. I can get lost in Patrick’s feelings, and connect them emotionally to my past feelings. And all of that results--not in me getting walked on by a more emotionally-demanding person--but in ART and PERFORMANCE and the manifestation of the creator/author's vision.

I am elated to find a place where it’s okay for me to feel into another’s feelings with my own stuff. And where it’s Good and Right that I do so, instead of being emotionally dangerous to me and misleading to them. I got to do this really pointedly over the summer with Disclosures, and pretty intensely/deliberately with the recent hockey podfic I posted, To Challenge Control. I am so, so grateful for podfic and for the out-loud reading I’ve done for nine years with my kids. And today, I'm grateful for theatripod, a place where I can even more solidly do That Thing, since I am not shifting between characters and narrator. I truly am in Patrick for those 20 minutes. And it feels amazing. I am so proud of what I can do, and to begin working in a world where I can bring that to an artistic process and product. There’s so much for me to learn, but I know there is also so much that I bring. <3 <3 <3


Originally posted at my DW here.

Comments

[girlpearl]

I will try to formulate a more coherent reply to this at a later date, but basically, your description of how you podfic is how I write, and reading this made me feel weirdly validated or heard or something. I'm not sure what, just that it's good :)

[anna_unfolding]

Oh, I'm so glad. It connected for me when I was focusing on what was happening to Patrick, and drawing something out from inside myself, and I was feeling it, and the scene would break, or we'd pick up but not early enough for me to regain that place of connection. I'd been popped out from Patrick and back into Anna-on-skype-in-her-room for a moment, and it was fine; that's going to happen frequently in rehearsing, but I wasn't going to pop back in without some re-emersion into Patrick's experience. And I thought, 'huh, why is this seemingly easier for everyone else here? Oh, maybe it's because my delivery and skills are entirely dependent upon being INSIDE Patrick's experience.'

Did you ever see My Week With Marilyn? She has a ridiculously hard time getting into a scene, and it's super irriating for all the others there, and it's only one line, ffs, but she finally is like wait, but this line doesn't make SENSE, and I think if I'd been in that moment I'd have been the kind of person who would've added: "The way I'm feeling this character is such that this line doesn't work. Can you help me expand my feeling/understanding so that this line works within my feeling of her? Otherwise, I simply can not deliver it." And this isn't because I'm fussy. It's probably because I lack something that real actors have: an ability to work outside of themselves. But since I lack that, I can not do a line well if it's outside of what I feel the character is feeling. It limits me in a way, but then again, when I find a character for whom I can stay in the feelings for all of the lines, and the whole thing resonates, I think I can potentially nail it. :)

[melusina]

This is a really interesting post! It really resonates with me and the way I work as a director. I think you know that I trained as a director in high school, college and grad school - along the way, I took a bunch of acting classes in a variety of styles. The style I tend to work in as both an actor and a director is rooted in emotional/psychological realism which focuses on sense memory, connecting your own experiences/history to the character's and using that to get yourself deeply into the character's head (it's closely related to what's sometime's called "Method" acting), so all of this makes perfect sense to me! It can be very emotionally intense for everyone involved in a production (including the audience). It's really good for me to know that this is how you want to work and I'm glad to talk more about Patrick's motivation and what might be going through his head if it would be helpful to you to bounce that off someone. . .

[anna_unfolding]

Your background (along with my familiarity and comfort with your communication style) is one of the reasons I so desperately hoped I'd be cast in this work. I knew my opinions/contributions would be honored, but that you had the authority and ability to direct me. It's something I am really excited about.

The style I tend to work in as both an actor and a director is rooted in emotional/psychological realism which focuses on sense memory, connecting your own experiences/history to the character's and using that to get yourself deeply into the character's head (it's closely related to what's sometime's called "Method" acting)

Yes, I know I've heard about that, and I always thought it was first an intellectual exercise. Well, I think sometimes it probably is. If I were playing Pete, for example, I could imagine you asking me to actively jot down experiences where I felt seductive, or protective, and then give me space to connect my sense memory with Pete's situation. But in this case, because of the easy emotional match between this Patrick and me, I could skip that step (I didn't even really know I was doing it, tbh).

And yes, it can be emotionally intense. I had a very intense experience doing something like that, quite deliberately, in To Challenge Control, and even recorded some meta about it that I'm willing to share (privately to people who listen to to podfic and want to know more) because it was so arousing um, erotic no... moving. :)

I think it'd be great to have a conversation with you and Pearl after another rehearsal, perhaps. I think at that point I might know which moments I'm just acting/faking it and which moments are true and real. Then you can help me connect to something that will turn those acting moments into something real. Yay, art!!!!

[regonym]

...goodness, I don't really envy the director of that Teen Wolf podfic either. Sounds very complicated! XD

It makes me really happy to hear that podficcing fulfills an emotional need for you in a safe way, and how it turns something you've been fighting against doing in your RL to a positive thing in this context. I enjoyed reading about your acting process a lot. :)

[anna_unfolding]

That TW fic is such a delight, though! And I think there's a lot of fun internal meta about connecting fannishly, and about connecting online, though how much of that was deliberate vs. unconscious vs. serendipitous, I can't say as I don't know the author. Still, a super fun fic.

Thank you for this comment, and for seeing how important it is that I can so This Thing, but do it safely. You know, it's actually reminding me of something I really like about d-s. Submitting to someone and giving up my autonomy because they have needs and demands and I want to keep them happy has been the status quo in a lot of my personal life, stemming from my childhood (AS YOU WELL KNOW). So I am learning to not do that automatically, and it's been empowering and positive. But.... there is a part of me that is so good at doing that; that misses it, even, and longs to have a safe place to do it. Not because the other person is like my parents: needy or demanding, nor because it's my job to make them happy... nor because if I don't submit and make things easy for them, I can't stay in a relationship with them (ooh, ouch). But because she, too, needs a safe place to exercise this part of herself. And it only works if she ISN'T happily ignorant of my needs and just how much I am giving when I submit (even if it's about something very small).

[regonym]

I'll look forward to hearing it! I like well-done AUs a lot - I remember reading a WoW!fic in Sherlock fandom that I loved to bits.

The differences in reasoning behind your decision to submit or not in each case are subtle but so, so important. I think that it's great that you've figured out where your boundaries are and are comfortable in asserting them. I'm still working on figuring out a lot of that stuff for myself, largely from the lack of any practical D/s experience. I can track the way I react to certain things, but it's often unexpected for me - I won't realize something's a button for me until I read something that makes my breath catch in my throat. It's a work in progress, I suppose. ^^

[anna_unfolding]

Well, the fact that you are attuning to the feeling when your breath catches in your throat is really, really good.

I once figured out that my heart catches at the moment in fic when char A offers himself/his heart/his feelings to char B. It wasn't even in the reciprocation or the consummation, though I loved those moments. My heart caught on the vulnerability, the utter gorgeousness of that offering. Spending time with that idea helped me know a lot of things.

My practical d/s experience is still in the beginning stages, I think. But I've had enough time with it to know about the structure that makes d/s accessible for me, and how to negotiate a shit load of things, from areas of interest to how each of us likes to end a session/be acknowledged. How to initiate a session. How to handle it when we're out of sync. (There's less to talk about when we are perfectly in sync, but it's fun to, anyway.) How to talk about it when one of us isn't getting what she wants out of something. How and when to take a break from relating that way. D/s can put people in touch with SUPER vulnerable feelings, and it's helped me to know that all these feelings that I have are welcome to be shared and processed. Even if they aren't matched by my partner.

[analise010]

:D. I'm glad you've found a place where you can feel your feelings along with someone else's. It's nice to have a place where you feel like you belong. That's not easy to come by.

I could never be that vulnerable in a podfic, let alone real life. I have the opposite problem where I can look at my feelings and those of someone else very objectively. All of that "calculating" is sometimes counterproductive, but my entire life has been based around having 374083091 contingency plans. People always tell me to lighten up and go with the flow, thought, after seeing as many things go wrong as I have, that's a hard concept to escape from.

[anna_unfolding]

Ah, I understand about the contingency plans. It's not always easy to have a balance between things, I've found, and that perhaps being the way you truly are is fine in this life. There are wonderful things about doing it that way, and there are even MORE wonderful things about being the way you are, whichever that is, without guilt or the external compulsion to shift anywhere. <3