Imaginary Emotional Preparation Technique

Imaginary Emotional Preparation

Imaginary Emotional Preparation

Imaginary Emotional Preparation uses concentration to achieve Visceral feeling. A visceral feeling when deepened becomes an emotion. Imaginary Emotional Preparation Technique achieves an outcome of activated internal emotion. Permission your logic to gain activated emotion. Let your Imagination run wild to find and activate emotion for your acting.

Gaining the ability to stimulate oneself emotionally takes courage. Using your imagination to the point of entering a feeling that goes deeper into an emotion is the goal.

Imaginary Preparation is vivid, vivid Daydreaming.

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It is incredibly important for Actors to realize that they need to have creative license to enable themselves to imagine things about each other, so they have acting materials to play with within their exercises. This is why Simon teaches the Imaginary Rumors Exercise for Castmates and Classmates.

Copyright 2018 Simon Blake

BOOK CHAPTER 8

Imaginary Emotional Preparation is a Daydreaming technique which uses the Imagination. To call this the Daydreaming technique undermines the use of imagination in the Actors work. The reality that you are working to find imagery that stimulates you is the outcome. Other Techniques of Preparation can be just as useful as this one.

What you do after you learn to stimulate your imagination to the point where you feel outcomes from it. Then and only then you turn that work into putting your focus on real and present stimulation within acting exercises. By doing this you train yourself to learn Imaginary Emotional Preparation Technique.

This is a separate Technique but can still utilize the Basic Steps of Emotional Preparation.

Often students and professional Actors go into dream like states and attempt to go into Trances or trans-medium meditational elements of themselves. Getting lost in Imaginary Emotional Preparation is not ideal.

The most practical element of this technique is the capturing of images that have meaning to you and that can impulse your instincts with meaningful matter.

_________

The point is to explore an imaginary storyline that activates you several times before you experience a deepness that you feel gives you a full preparation. You cycle through the imagination until you allow your impulse to be stimulated at a deep level because of your emersion within the imaginary elements.
At a point where you feel highly stimulated you wake yourself from your imaginary sleigh ride and immediately focus on making contact with your acting circumstances.

The key is to leave steeping internally all that was stirred and impulse within but with your conscious awareness focus on the other in your acting scene or exercise. The undercurrent of your daydream may be Suttle or extreme. However, it exists it follows through as your undercurrent until something in the work brings it into awareness.

If nothing in the work brings your undercurrent into awareness than what you activated in your imaginary Emotional Preparation remains a flowing river beneath the actual happenings. Sometimes the more fantastic scenes will never address the undercurrent entirely.

Treat your prior imaginary sleigh ride as a prior experience that is still active in you when it is. Do not treat your prior imaginary Emotional Preparation as something that you have to defend or present to your scene partner. If the script, has you presenting a just prior experience than of course do your best to bring that into the present reality. Otherwise, relax your mind and allow what is working for you to work for you without your interfering with it. Stimulated emotional life will work itself into the present conditions in spontaneous ways if you trust.

Realize: Bringing emotional elements into your acting by Interacting with someone or something is a natural way. Think Interactions over Interfering or forcing inside life into the outside world.

Imaginary Emotional Preparation is NOT:
Transmedium meditations
Putting yourself in a sleepy state.
An Inactive state of being.
Trying to think up stimulants (it is not Brainstorming ideas)

The more intense you get in a relaxed way with your Emotional Daydream the more stimulated you will become. Relaxation will allow you to springboard emotionally and permission parts of yourself to soak up the emotional elements of your imaginary experience. This is great, as long as you allow outside stimulation to spur the internal elements to release. When you relax you actually absorb the emotional responses, and the intensity of the immersive imaginary experience increases.

Teacher: “You literally can springboard into a scene if you can learn relaxation in your Imaginary Emotional Preparation. Just remember to allow your partner to control your (springboarding) height. ”

Emotions in a daydream is a sign that you are actively involved in it. The key to having emotions in your daydream is to let them roam freely inside of yourself. Remembering that when emotions are focused upon, they will often dissipate until you learn how to work with them. If you focus on a single emotion and are trying to have an Imaginary Emotional Preparation, just to prepare one emotional color you might be limiting yourself and your own depth.

Example: – limiting self because was limiting their emotional preparation to one area of a single emotion.
When they go to work in the scene their work looks scattered because there is not a natural expression between the moments. There are times where the emotional color of anger gets sparked and that emotional color is frightfully neurotic and has intense depth and the rest of the time there is no engaged activity.
The imbalance looks very odd. The work is real but odd.
These oddities are part of learning the Imaginary Emotional Preparation Techniques. It is alright that these types of exercises happen when an Actor is learning to work their own techniques. The knowledge of learning from the experience is the essential ingredient to turning the exercise into a success’s learning experience.

Simon Blake with ‘Some’ of his acting notebooks.
Imaginary Emotional Preparation
  • The emotional color of anger did not saturate entirely throughout the actor so that they would be activated to remain in an angered state of being. This is fine too, but in this example the intensity is so different from one moment to another that there is no fluidity between the actions.
    The Actor is not intentionally trying to act out anger but instead attempting to have the real experience. The issue is that they have not entrenched themselves in anger thoroughly enough. This has to do with interweaving and interlacing emotional layers in themselves when they are having their imaginary emotional preparation.
    This Example: This example has two realities to it. One is that the Actor is not pushing for a performance and on an improvisational level they are living truthfully. Their technique is an intermediary acting technique which will and is helping their acting. Unless the other person is stimulating their anger to come out, then it doesn’t come out.
    At an Advanced level they need to adjust their Emotional Preparation to saturate themselves to the degree that stimulates their anger in more areas of their imaginary preparation. This takes more skill and time to achieve an imaginary emotional preparation that will encompass every visit of themselves and master from them the stimulation of anger within their being.
    Both realities to this working example are valid. To the intermediary student they did a great job not to push their improvisation techniques to become a performer of emotion that did not exist inside of themselves. To the advanced student they learn to stimulate themselves in a way that only the desired emotional color comes out of them with interaction with their scene partner.
    ?emotions rising up within you may influence how you pivot through the imaginary world, but they should not be the focus your Imaginary Emotional Preparation.

If in Professional Acting or Plays the scene is designed in a certain emotional range the actor needs to be emotionally prepared enough so that their nature will release that emotional color with interaction with their partner. Emotional Preparation is the key to preparing the certainty of the emotional outcome without faking the emotionality.

The fullness of expressions is based off your interactions. Whatever your scene partner stimulates you can release. If you have prepared fully then you will have full responses that are actually automatic. The intensity that your partner gives out you give back. As you give back to your partner elements your emotional undercurrent will bleed into your natural expression.

If both Actors are using Emotional Preparation Tools than the likely outcome will be a reascending one. The experience will start off with some type of spark and build and build and build upon moment upon moment. This is when acting becomes a craft and the audience can appreciate the authenticity of the actor’s involvement with each other. The audience will likely never see the emotional preparation techniques that leads the actors to the work that they do but they will see the evidence of the work done. The layer of emotional life is self-evident in acting scenes.

How to do Imaginarily Emotionally Preparation

The funniest thing about imaginary stimulation is that it can stimulate you to a tangible level of awareness and Self Stimulation. Your pure imagination can cause you to shiver with joy or shiver with fear.

Emersed yourself into a storyline of the desired ballpark of emotion.
Be willing to believe anything that you can image
Believe what you can image
Experience the affects and be open to the effects of the experience.

How Imaginary Emotional Preparation is different than Brainstorming
It is definitely true that using your imagination during brainstorming can assist your outcome. However, the purpose of Imaginary Emotional Preparation differs from Brainstorming in many ways. The most common way is in its process.
When you do Imaginary Emotional Preparation, you go from one idea to another idea to see if the images of what you access stimulates you. In Brainstorming you are often with a group of people talking about or talking out the ideas but in Emotional Preparation you are alone and accessing your imagery data base and its longevity.

Imaginary Emotional Preparation

This technique of Emotional Preparation about immersive imagination in a storyline activity.

Example –

  • Activating yourself with imagination until you have a strong feeling and sense of self.
  • Successful basic and will influence the work.

Example –

  • Specific about the experience – empty after it, did not prepare to gain the stimulation.
  • Faltered emotional preparation example
  • Made it about the preparationary experience and not the activation of experience

As an entry point into a difficult memory

  • The looseness of the memory allows them to be free enough to enter into the shame that they knew they still remembered as a child.
  • Telling the story of their prior experience – is ?? – That is just bad acting technique –
    ? – ?? Forcing your imagination and interfering with your imaginations flow –
    Rather than including what your imaginary circumstances imagined and then adding to it.
    The student tries to erase what they have already imaged.
    The goal is inclusion not segregation. Your emotional sleigh ride already started so putting focus on what you are starting to activate it key. ?

Problem of filtering ??

What is Imaginary Evidence??

When you are under the influence of the Imaginary Surroundings of during your Acting experience what you believe in may start to self-prophesize. If you start to believe that the other Actor is grumpy your output may start to prove itself to your perception.
This is both a hinderance and evidence of your talent.

Key: The Key thing is to make sure by working off others you are within the scene that they are seeing some of what you are witnessing. You can be a leader in Imaginary Evidence yet not be believable by others you are with. Any Brilliant artist that surpasses those they work with have a different outcome than they originally expect. So, allow yourself to limit test your new realizations as you are living out in real time your scenes by including the other Actors realities as well as your own. This way you are balanced and representing more than just your active talented imagination.

In truth you may be absolutely right about what your instincts are perceiving or witnessing but until film cameras can also capture those changes in a way that editors are capable of putting those concepts into sequences you are stuck having to be careful in your instinctual endeavors. This is much of where the talent in the industry must meet the road of what is communicable on camera which highly depends on the collective creative endeavors of those who surround you as you are working.

Example:
You work off of what you realize when you realize it or when it occurs to you. Trusting to allow your instincts to release takes patience and the willingness to allow others to believe that you may not know what you’re feeling.
Taking the chance to allow others to believe that you don’t know what you are doing or that you don’t have instincts is a chance that you are good to take as long as you have enough time practicing the acting techniques you choose to use.

Being grounded as to your interaction with your imagination in acting is key to it being believable.

Imaginary Emotional Preparation Additions (some call these What If’s)

Imaginary Additions
What If? | Little Secrets

Hint: All of these techniques work best if you want to believe in them or if you want them to be true.

Individual Additions:
It is vital to your Imaginary Addition that they are clear. Your What If or your ‘Little Secret’ that you keep private and personal the Little secret to yourself. The more personal and private it is the more likely the more authentic it will generate in you and in your work if you literally keep it a secret.
Just because you are an artist, or an Actor does not mean the whole world needs to know every little thing about you or your life. The smallest of personal secrets can reveal the largest of behaviors or influence the direction of your behavior.
When something like an addition is being used you will have an additional life going on within you emotionally if you use these well enough. The secret, imaginary or real desire, wish or want will manifest in you better if you just keep it minded to your own business.

Imaginary Additions are incredible add-ons that can build on top of a structure that is already active. You want to already have a baseline of emotional preparation in affect and be working on it when you add the additional input to your Emotional Preparation.
These are believable (by you) additions that you find very easy to believe in. These additions are like nourishment to your acting and are activators and catalysts to your acting reality. Never add any addition that you don’t actually believe yourself in or feel is such a likely close match that it is truthful to life closer than you can imagine.
Many times, when people do “Imaginary Additions” or “What If’s” they play around with their belief’s as if it is a comedy routine to imagine a staunch reality. In this approach it is recommended to take it 100% sincerely and to the point of just as truthful as life is. The less you mock or jovial these ingredients the purer your acting concoction will become and firmer your reality will harden in your acting work.
It is essential to support yourself when you are gaining such realisms in your work and achieving modern era realism.

Example 1:
Paul is a negotiator who likes to stay calm and rational. His secret is how he really feels. His addition is letting himself know how much he feels upset when his sister calls asking about his dating life. He is a private guy and really wants to

Example 2:

Little Secrets
Little Secrets are additional secrets that only you know, unless you need to tell your acting partner because it is common information that they would know under the imaginary circumstances. All you do with little secrets is choose them wisely knowing that they will activate you to appetite into believing in them. You literally tease yourself into knowing you are setting up something that your imagination can believe. There is no point in setting up something that you can’t imagine. Allow yourself to give over into the belief of it and discover what the outcome will be by experiencing it without telling it aloud.
Little secrets will add nuance to your abilities and literally invest yourself into the responses of the other person. Using personal secrets your essence will identify to others in the way you relate to them differently.
Little Secrets are very interesting details that are just like Imaginary Additions.

Example:
You tell yourself and believe it that your acting partner in the scene actually has a crush on you. They have a crush, but they were not telling it.
If you tell yourself this ‘secret’, do you feel stimulated with some sort of intrigue after you aware yourself to the idea?? If so, then it is a good one. Don’t question it and don’t think about it any further just go into the work of the rest of emerging yourself into your acting and your acting circumstance.

Shared Imaginary Emotional Preparation Additions

You agree on a secret between yourself and your partner. It does not have to do with the same content that is in the script but it likely will relate somehow. This is not a real secret from your own life it is likely a secret that would activate something inside both of you but also add to the scenario of the script.
Due to the reason that you are both understanding the same shared addition you will allow yourselves each to have your own individual understanding of them. There are times when you are working that your secret may come out in your acting craft. Its ok to allow whatever instinctual emits from yourself to express itself. Don’t hold back the topic of the addition or restrict the acting work going into that focus. Instead let that element come in and out of your work at its own will.
This is different than releasing your emotional preparation. Emotional Preparation is an ingredient, not an element of the work. Shared additional imaginary circumstances are components of the work just as much as the storyline’s components.
The craft is the interweaving using that additional element, not the saturation of an emotional preparation into your acting work. Emotion will integrate but components of the work like imaginary additions are objects to work to play with and make some noise with when they are used in a crafted way.

Example:
Both Justin and Jeff agree to an imaginary addition. Their shared reality is that they both have experienced trying to take revenge on somebody. Their addition is revenge on someone else. Agreeing to this prior to their work will make their acting work clearer and crisper as long as they simply accept it logically then go off and add their own personal work to it on their own.
The construction of additions is to establish the logic side of it with your partner simply and then go off and find your own point of view about the topic.
It may be true that both Justin and Jeff are terrible people, but their acting can be improved still by utilizing technique. Normally what will happen with two ill witted people is that they will try to feel the emotions with each other instead of just understanding it simply. Then they will be all emptied from and of their own personal investment in it.

Shared Real Additions:
Each actor tells the other actor a real addition about themselves. So, two active shared Real Additions are active in the work. The important thing is to accept and trust what the other tells you about their addition. Let yourself believe that it is real.
There is information that often times needs to be known by more than just yourself. When you know that another needs to know a piece of information you need to share it equally as a factual concept that is true in the work. In some scripts and scenes, it is multiple things that need to go over with the other actors. For exercise work allow it to be one really good one for each actor.

Example:
George tells Sally his addition that when he was 8 years old, he was kidnapped, and it has always affected him feeling secure ever since
(George will then go off and do Emotional Preparation that matches that fact. He doesn’t try to give Sally his Emotional Preparation just the one addition)
Sally tells George that she has always wished for a father and has never had one. This may not be true for Sally’s life, but it is for what they are setting up together. Without asking questions or inquiring George accepts Sallys addition. Sally doesn’t try to show him emotionally the additional fact, just mentions it to him so that it is something that he is aware of.

Alternatives:
If you are doing a long part for a film, there are all types of expansions that you can do with ‘fact’ sharing additions in your acting work. The key is to take your time about them and understand that the simpler and better processed they are the more real they will be to experience.

Keys to Remember
What grips you and awakens you has reality to it. This is different than a belief. The goal is to awaken truths within you and to activate it so that it cannot be prevented in being lived out. This ideal is the ‘habit’ of using Imaginary Additions in your acting work.

Emotional Preparation is Not Meditation

Imaginary Emotional Preparation Meditative Quality is not Meditation. Understanding this early on can make a huge difference to being able to learn Acting or struggling and only learning part of acting.

Emotional Preparation initially forms a mediative achievement but does not have the result of mediative achievement because it is not for the purpose of relaxation. Emotional Preparation is for the discovery of Activation. Discovering the Activation of internal stimulus is the act of Emotional Preparation.

Society emphasizes a discipline of doing that often reduces the realization of self in a being state. To be in a state of relaxation is not a lazy thing if you are actively aware of your surroundings, which by the way is the most ‘filmable’ quality of being in film as it keeps the state of being opened to receiving which the camera absorbs.

The truth of relaxation can be clarified as not being a state of inactivity. The reason why as children we notice so much is because we are in an active state of being which has a relaxed element within it which is still not purposed to be in a state of relaxation but instead to be relaxed enough to be agile to respond to any happening either as an observer or a participant, whichever occurs to us.

Even though the relaxation element of Emotional Preparation is present, the purpose of it is Emotional Activation. What we need to realize, and trust is that the reduction of stimulation during the initial steps of Emotional Preparation primes us to be activated during the acting work also. The relaxation during the Emotional Preparation is essential to achieve the fullness and actual effect of the scene or exercise that we place ourselves in.

First experimentations of Emotional Preparation are suggested to be between 5 – 15 minutes but could easily run from 25 – 35 minutes in length. Taking longer is not advisable because emotional exhaustion is a very real thing. If you could not identify the activating quality desired, it is better to take a break than return and try again.

Most people would be able to find an activating emotional quality within a 5-minute period of focus. However, when it comes to adjusting to the appropriate ballpark of emotional life or layering the emotional components then the time length of Emotional Preparation expands and deepens.

The depth of emotional experience prepared often does correlate to the time it might take to prepare however if simply depends upon the Actor preparing.

Some actors will always find it or be able to reactive it within 2-5 minutes then later deepen it when longer preparations are needed for other Emotional Preparation Layering Techniques. In truth layering techniques of Emotional Preparation and practical time on a film set could have an Actor waiting 60 minutes before a scene begins.

In a professional setting you want to achieve your Emotional Preparation within a short and appropriate time and have control enough to re-stimulate the desired ballpark within less than a couple minutes. If you are given longer to prepare you need to be able to stay ready for the extended period of time or work out your Emotional Preparation time frames with the Director.

The meditative quality of Emotional Preparation is the relaxed state the occurs while doing Emotional Preparation often occurring at the beginning but sometimes throughout the preparation until the activation period.

If you are doing Emotional Preparation for a topic that causes an upset within you and you take a moment to yourself to achieve your emotional ballpark, you will quickly feel the effects of the Emotional Preparations Emotional Ballpark. That upset feeling of your emotional ballpark is the success of Emotional Preparation.

The Meditative qualities of Emotional Preparation are also qualities which keep you calm and not overly expressed until the scene or entrance on stage begins and the meditative qualities keep you calm as you can adjust your desired preparation.

Pending upon the materials that you are working on the initial activation of an emotional river may be the entire Emotional Preparation. However, if the events of multiple Emotional Preparation Rivers that need to be in place the meditative quality of Emotional Preparation needs to hold together the Actor until all the pieces can be successfully put in place and full activation can occur.

It is important to note that sometimes you need to have a meditative quality to your Imaginary Emotional Preparation technique in order to achieve all desired aspects and although the result is anything but meditative, the meditative moment of near silence is the help to the Actor that the Actor must find within themselves in order to progress to more complicated Emotional Preparations.

It is not all about only finding one activation quality of the Imaginary Emotional Preparation and then succeeding. At first, we learn to deal with one activating quality and then learn to deal with more as we progress to be able to do more complicated scenes.

The Emotional control and the Meditative Quality of the Actor’s own ability to calm themselves down and remain a focused Emotional Preparation is the main factor in being able to produce more complicated emotional life and/or Layered Emotional Preparations.

It is vital to not underplay the ability to stay calm and be able to wait for the moment to let go of your Emotional Preparation and this builds a large part of an Actors talent base. Quietly holding back, the emotional stimulus till the exact right moment is a key skill that not as many Actors have that should have. The reason for the lack of controlled Emotional Preparation Capability is due to lack of instruction and lack of practice. Practice is key.

There are few places to learn Emotional Preparation for Actors and the importance needs to be placed on praising those who are teaching the Art and Skill of the Craft.

The meditative qualities that are present while Emotional Preparations are taking place are qualities of awareness and relaxedness, not ignorance. It is a process that fills up a person from the inside outwards to their maximum ability. The results of the work done produce self-evident results which are evidence that a process has been followed or achieved within a safe environment and thus delivered in a timely manner.

Preparing for Imaginary Emotional Preparation: (with Clearing) note

 If we abuse our Imaginary Emotional Preparation Practices and techniques than we abuse our emotions.  It is incredible the things that Actors are willing to sacrifice in order to leap towards what they believe their acting goals are.  Sacrificing Emotions is not a practice that is needed to utilize Emotional Preparation. 
In one word ‘Clearing’ is the process before Emotional Preparation begins.  Preparing for Emotional Preparation is a task to complete in order to be ready to delve into the desired emotional stimulations of Emotional Preparation with a full amount of needed stimulus ready at your disposal come time to do the scene.  Those initially learning Emotional Preparation often mistakenly believe that the clearing or relaxation before the process actually begins is the process of Emotional Preparation itself. 
Emotional Preparation is the action of preparing the self to be stretched in the similar way of concept of a sports player stretching before the game, so they do not outstretch a muscle during interaction with other players or interaction with the circumstances of the game.  During the action of clearing to get ready for Emotional Preparation an Actor may find that there is a part of themselves that is not capable of becoming accessed.  This in-capability is a clue for the Actor to discover within themselves and their journaling.  This is why the personal approach to preparation is not an element that needs to be shared with others.  Sometimes you will find that shared experiences will be similar but often you need the solidarity of self-exploring that will resolve in your own understanding of yourself and however you comprehend it with your own language.  The desire of exercise work is the desire to explore all that has been Emotionally Prepared as well as super-seeding that because of the connection between the Actors catapult the existence of themselves above their own expectations and realizations of self.  The range of motion of a scene or exercise is a direct relation to the range of Emotional Preparation and the ability of letting go of direction that the scene or work is supposed to go in.  
Preparing for Emotional Preparation is not planning out how to or planning out how the scene will happen once it commences.  Emotional Preparation is for the under current emotional stimulation that is the emotional river beneath the dialogue and occurrence of the scene.

In Film the recommendation to be ready to film a scene at least 6 times for each scene but also having done the required improvisational work and Situational Exercise rehearsals as to not be surprised is recommended. The reality in film is that it is a different animal when it comes to preparing. It is vital to be able to Emotionally prepare and stay activated at every turn of the work. That is every single take of a film lens needs to be one where you have an appropriately adjusted Emotional Preparation that is going to achieve the ability of consistency and the ability of Emotional Continuity.

Film Directors and the newest Digital Film Directors have a responsibility to the Cast to break the material up into Emotionally responsive sections in order to give the ability to the Artists/Actors places where it is easiest for them to reactivate their emotional life. The newest Digital Film Directors forget to set up the shots in ways that break the emotion into Segway and sections which old Filming Directors had knowledges of. The reason is that if you treat the cast in a way that does not allow them structure to adopt their craft too then you take away the craft of the Actor in your films. Unfortunately, it is very easy to see that the craft of acting is being affected and subtracted from the Digital Film mediums because the structure of how the films are being set up to capture the life within them.
If you are working with a Digital Film Director try to work closer with them and every so often suggest places to start in the script that can allow you to have a moment of emotional preparation and you will see the difference in continuity of your work as an Actor.
On the Acting side of Preparing for Imaginary Emotional Preparation:
How to be absolutely ready for a part is to ready the material for Imaginary Emotional Preparation success and break the scripted material into sections.
Sections of a script

  • Clearing away all but what is connected to the experience desired to have emotionally active.
    Examples:
  • Clearing examples
  • Clearing all but upset feelings about her children.
Imaginary Emotional Preparation
Imaginary Emotional Preparation

Acting Classroom

  • Student stuck in his head about process comes into the work with confusion rather than activation. The teacher stops the work.
    Combining Emotional Preparation techniques is simply combining emotional activations. This is an addition process not a subtraction process. Once you have activated and emotional aliveness inside of yourself you add another. It really is no different than a great acting scene or exercise. Impulse builds upon impulse as long as logic is lesser.
    If logic of process gets in the way of the adding of combining emotional elements, then there is a chance of losing emotional spontaneity. The addition of another piece of stimulation is the goal of accumulation in combining emotional preparations. The Goal is not in being able to execute techniques in a certain order other than simplicity.
    This is why hog pugging stimulating elements will always result in something active. The craft becomes the learning of contouring with accuracy a certain aliveness within you that fits the life of the scene. Then that aliveness becomes the undercurrent of the scene.
  • Adds an imaginary element that they try to represent rather than integrate.
    Student comes into the work alive more at the beginning and works off their own added imaginary element to lessen their emotional responsiveness.
    Do you realize you lessoned yourself with whatever you added? What did you add to your emotional preparation?
    Teacher – unfortunately, you added an idea to your work. You added a concept and not an active ingredient of yourself.
    You did not have the sleigh ride of your partners experience of you. This is because your focus was on the idea that you added to your work. You know that somewhere inside yourself what you added did not integrate with your emotions because you couldn’t let go of it. The idea you had to keep investing in to make it your reality. Instead of just making your attention about the other person you had to make your attention about yourself. This is what is called trying to control the idea of you having emotion.
    (Possibly this student argues and gets kicked out of class) >
    Student – I had something going on.
    Teacher – what you had going on was not connected to your partner because you didn’t want to let go of the idea that wasn’t working for you.
    Teacher – did anyone else see that?
    Students nods in the background. One student speaks up. “It looked odd, like you were trying to figure something out while you were working”.
    Teacher – distracting yourself from putting your attention on you acting partner is what you were doing. This has nothing to do with Imaginary Emotional Preparation. It has to do with what you are not responding to that is in front of you.
    Student – well I’m not coming back.
    Teacher – that is your choice. You will continue to act out ideas rather than live the experience with others in scenes you do. Practice is the only thing that might change that. You would benefit with adding improvisational work to your training. Improvisational work that has nothing to do with scenes, so you can find the life of the work and focus on it rather than be focused on
    (( Next example with the same student. Teacher – I am happy to see you. What happened? Student – I spoke to some other students, they saw the same thing too. He says humbly. Teacher – this work is difficult but I will always try to steer you ahead so you can discover it rather than perform it. Student – I appreciate that. ?teacher – do you see how difficult this work is for sally? She was practically raised to perform since a little child. But she is constantly finding discoveries and receiving the experience of the other person’s viewpoint of her. If you don’t know what the others viewpoint of you is, you can be sure that you are not connected to them! Student – yeah, that’s part of what I was doing, or not doing. They both laugh together. Teacher- you’re not the first and you are not the last!))
  • John has come imaginary capabilities that are grand and make him look or feel good are easily believed by him. The issue is that when he works the other person may not see him in the grandness of his own perceptions.
  • This happens in the exercise, and he becomes really angry within the scene working with this technique. He blames the technique for it.
  • Scene-
    Teacher – Do you also drive the wrong way down the street too?
    Student nods their head to say no they do not drive the wrong way down the street.
    Teacher – That Is what you did here. You must have added something that went against yourself instead of adding something that went for yourself.
    Student – oh. That’s what happened.
    Teacher – if the scene calls for that than it is kind of neat to know how to add that type of inner conflict within yourself. This scene did not call for that.
    Teacher – it takes time to be able to make additions to your work that truly add to what you are stimulating in your emotional preparations. Additions that flow with the baseline that you are building in your emotional world. Be willing to make some mistakes but realize your mistakes.
    This was a mistaken Emotional Preparation. Remember, your work was good because you followed your scene’s partners life and exchanged with them. To make your work excellent you need to do the right type of adding to your Imaginary Emotional Preparation so that activations all go in the same direction and serve a similar purpose.

Copyright 2018, Simon Blake
Draft Copy

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