A Personal Pep Talk

Today's post is a discussion on fear, inspired by true events.

I am afraid. I am afraid of many things -- of everything, just about -- but this is going to be mostly about fear with regards to acting.

Tomorrow I'm putting up a scene in class for one of my toughest teachers, but it isn't him I'm worried about disappointing. It's myself.

The scene is the confession from Martha in The Children's Hour just before she commits suicide and it terrifies me. I picked it. I wanted to do it. I wanted to challenge myself and I love the role. I know that I have it within me to connect, that I am equal to the task. I know this in my soul. But I am afraid that I will fall short. It's a daunting scene. It's demanding. It isn't even that I feel ill-prepared, although we've never put the thing on its feet. Our lines are memorized, I've done most of my homework, but I'm so scared of it that just thinking about the scene sends panic through my veins.

If I can relax, be open, be honest...it's a rehearsal and nothing else. But there's the part of me that feels unequal. There's a part of me that thinks that I'm not, as I said in Physical Acting the other day, "larger than life."

This is the struggle Terri saw in me the day she told me I was on the "verge of being a great presence" and that I had the "potential to be a leading lady". But she called me erratic and said that on stage, there were moments of connection and truth and then suddenly I would shift and become someone self-conscious. She said I needed to find out who I am on my own terms. That I ought to pick one of those people to be and be it fully. I want to be the one who connects to the truth. I don't want to be self-conscious. I let fear rule me, both in life and in art.

This is why, on Wednesday, I'll be starting therapy. We're going to work on my anxiety and my ability to cope with it and to be in the present. I don't want to have to escape anymore. I want to be able to escape, but I don't want to feel like I can't handle my life without pretending to be living a different one.

I am not a movie star or a spy or a superhero or a Jedi. I am not a witch or a genius or a member of Starfleet or an elf or the little sister of anyone romantically heroic. I am Vanessa Lauren Bellew, for better or worse, who suffers sometimes and hurts sometimes and fails sometimes, but who also loves and smiles and sings and sometimes, just sometimes, wins. Succeeds. There is the clown inside of me on whom it is always raining, who cries at nothing and feels failure more keenly than anything else. I am an expert at that and now I will be an expert at life. At the present.

I watched two episodes of Charlie Rose today, one of them on my teacher's recommendation and one of them on a whim of my own. The first is Jeff Bridges and the second is Robin Williams. I was struck by the honesty and openness of both and by their ideas about acting, fear, addiction, and life.

Jeff Bridges
Robin Williams

I was struck particularly by Jeff Bridges' assertion that fear is necessary, particularly to acting. That the thing to be truly afraid of in acting is the absence of fear. That fear is something to be used and ought to be and can make you a great actor. Fear is part of the thrill of acting. But you cannot let it use you. You cannot be daunted by a role, by a task, by an emotional journey.

Maybe I ought to be using the word 'I' instead of 'you'. I'm beginning to trust myself more and more through my life journey and my time at Circle. I'm learning that it's okay, even good sometimes, to fail.

Alan, during an exercise in class, always mentions that if you're open, honest, present, and truthful...if you're private in public, what's the worst that can happen? You won't die.

During his interview, Robin Williams talks about why he is not completely free on stage. Why there are places he doesn't/can't go. He says that he weighs the reward of going somewhere with the consequences. Can he deal with the consequences of delving into that part of himself?

I have been to this part of myself and back again. Without medicine. Without help. I did it on my own, tooth and fucking nail, pulling myself up with desperation even when I was listless, and sometimes falling again harder and farther than the progress I'd made. Acting is the safe place to explore it. Acting is the safe way to explore it. I don't want to cheat myself out of the experience and, God, think of the victory, think of the joy, the exaltation, think of the growth if I even come close to succeeding. Succeeding. What does that even mean?

I don't want success. I want truth. I want connection. I want honesty and openness and to be private in public. Truly private. Without self-consciousness, without thought to the people sitting in the chairs out of my space, without care to what Alan might say. I know what Alan will say. He will say that my personal story was remarkable on its own, that that itself is truly something of which to be proud. Fuck judgment, fuck my own judgment, fuck the idea that fear is something bigger than I am.

I am bigger than fear. Fear is an idea. Fear is a narration. From now on, I narrate my life, my art, differently. I narrate with my own voice.

On Friday, I opened up my voice in Singing Technique and my teacher said "that's the voice of your soul". I want to narrate with that voice.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but action in the face of it.

And that's what I'm doing. Acting.

Fuck yeah.