La leadership distribuita

The moment Lynn hugged David, she connected with his fear and both actors relaxed. She immediately became honest and intimate. This intimacy permeated the scene. Even though she is quite a bit older than David, we believe that they could have been lovers. It was a great piece of work after she accepted respon-sibility for his fear.

Receiving at the Same Level

When you are Receiving, you need to respond on a level that is equal to or greater than the emotion you have received from the other actor.

Both Giving and Receiving are of equal importance. When someone gives you emotional energy, receive her generosity. Accept more than just the emotions you want or think are proper, and receive all feedback from the other actor—

voice, facial expression, body language, tension, relaxation, passivity, aggres-sion. Responding immediately to an emotion allows you to go beyond logical thought and let out your impulses.

The Relating Exercise

I developed the Relating Exercise in Chapter 1 to teach you how to recognize another actor’s emotion and, by responding to that emotion, how to use your energy in such a way that you become a better actor. The first step in the process is emotional copying. If you receive anger at seven on a scale of ten, then return your emotion at seven or more.

Returning emotional energy at or above the same intensity you receive it does not mean to breathe harder, wave your arms, make facial grimaces and ges-tures, or shout louder. It means receiving the energy given you and internally matching its intensity so that you become an equally participating partner in the scene. If the other actor yells at you, with strong emotional energy, that he loves you, you may reject the love or receive it; but either way, you have to reject or receive with the same or greater internal energy than given. If you respond with a lesser energy, you then become a nonparticipant, an uninterest-ing place holder, and the scene dies. Again, this doesn’t mean that you should go through external antics to demonstrate that you are matching the energy level given to you. You merely have to receive what is given, take it seriously, and respond honestly.

Different Emotional Levels

Your response to the emotion you receive from your partner does not have to be that exact emotion. As long as your energy remains equal to or

greater than the level received, your emotion may be different. If your partner is angry, your response could be laughter, fear, sadness, love, or any combina-tion of emocombina-tions, including anger. This is a reciprocal event that comes from both giving and receiving. It does not come from some idea as to how you should or would respond.

Two actors in my workshop do a scene in which their mother has just died.

Earl starts off by trying to fake sadness and Ozzie is reading his lines without participating until Earl’s faking strikes him as funny. Usually I stop actors who start off with an idea instead of an emotion, but for some intuitive reason I let them continue.

OZZIE

How are you holding up?

EARL (trying to be sad) Okay. You?

OZZIE I’m still in shock.

EARL

Maryann took her to the doc-tor. They just told her she was fine. Keep taking the pills.

OZZIE The heart medicine?

EARL

Yeah. She was putting on her coat and . . .

(Earl takes a long pause. He is trying to force his tears.

Still working from his idea.) EARL

She said she felt funny. Those were her last words. She col-lapsed and was gone.

(Ozzie sees Earl trying to fake sadness and tears, and he starts laughing.)

Different Emotional Levels 143

OZZIE (laughing)

You’re sure the doctor had nothing to do with it. I mean, could he have caused it?

(Earl is still trying to fake his tears.) EARL

She’s had heart problems for years. She was dead before she hit the floor.

(Ozzie still laughing, mimics Earl’s whining.) OZZIE

(mocking Earl)

Okay, Earl. We’ve got to get back tomorrow. We can’t take off any more time.

(The class laughs.)

OZZIE (mocking)

I wanted to clear up the details before we go.

When Earl realizes that Ozzie is making fun of him, he stops trying to fake his tears. He gets angry.

EARL (angry)

What details? Now you’re going to tell me you hate the casket?

OZZIE

No, hell, no. It’s fine.

EARL

Good, because it was a pain in the ass. The home tried to soak us for mahogany with inlaid mother-of-pearl. They get you when you’re vulnera-ble. Maryann’s crying her eyes out and that bastard. . . .

(Ozzie really laughs when he hears “crying her eyes out.” He finds it hysterical.)

OZZIE (laughing) Earl . . .

(Earl responds to Ozzie’s laughter by getting angrier.) EARL

I told him pine. She wouldn’t have wanted me to blow it all on a box.

OZZIE (laughing)

You’re right. I would have done the same thing.

EARL (angry)

It wasn’t easy providing for a wife and kids plus Mom.

OZZIE (laughing)

I helped, when I could.

EARL (angry)

I wasn’t saying anything.

OZZIE (laughing) But the house?

EARL (angry) What about it?

OZZIE (laughing)

We were both . . . It’s half mine.

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EARL (still angry)

You moved to Springfield and stuck it all on me. Well, now I’m stuck with the house.

(This stops Ozzie for a moment. He gets angry.) OZZIE

(irate)

The hell you are.

EARL

Take your best shot, brother.

My name’s on the deed.

(Both actors have peaked their anger at each other. On Earl’s last line, Ozzie looks like he’s been hit in the stomach. They sit there for a few seconds in shock at what they did. Then they relax and laugh.)

JEREMIAH: That was great. Thank you. When you two quit being fake and started responding to the laughter and the anger, you looked great. (to the class) See how exciting the scene was when they started giving and receiving?

The class has questions.

MARIA (to Jeremiah)

I have a question. I liked what they did, but they weren’t copying each other’s emotions. One was sad, and one was laughing and then angry.

This negates everything you said about receiving and relating to the other actor.

JEREMIAH: You picked up on that? Good. You don’t have to always give back the same emotion. If you did, every scene would be all laughing, all anger, all sadness, or all whatever, and that’s pretty monotonous. You can control what you think, but you can’t control what emotion you are going to experience. In everyday life, you don’t always let other people see what emotions you are feel-ing, but you feel them just the same. In actfeel-ing, you don’t hide your emotion.

What comes, comes, and you let everyone see it. That’s what makes a scene interesting. You have to relate to an actor’s emotion and respond with the emo-tion it brings up in you no matter what it is. But you don’t have to respond with

the same emotion, only with the same intensity. Your scene is more fascinat-ing when the emotional feedback is unexpected, like Ozzie’s laughter when he saw Earl faking sadness.

KATHY (to Jeremiah)

Yes, but Ozzie never dealt with Earl’s sadness.

JEREMIAH: That’s because there was no sadness. Earl wasn’t sad. He was try-ing to be sad—he was faktry-ing it. Ozzie laughed when he saw how ridiculous Earl looked, but he was still sad about his mother. His emotional response was appropriate to what he received.

There Are No Officially Sanctioned