Acting is the art of choice.

It is the opportunity for each character to be discovered in the lens of an actor’s singular vision for understanding life and its complexity. We each hold a different starting position. No matter where, when, how old, or how young, we’re at various times in our lives somewhere along a trajectory of knowing and learning, and as I’ve been getting older, the more I’m learning, a lot of life is counterintuitive. To receive, you must truly let go. And fear, it’s there to keep you safe. And, if you let it steer your direction in life, you will often find your life feels anything but safe.

And we all have choices—not just our actions, the outward signifiers of our motivations. Be it opening a door to get to another room or peeling an orange to feed a young child. The act and the drive behind how we’re making it is a choice we’re all making, whether we realize it or not. There are motivations, and there are intentions. There are known experiences that create reflective responses to situations that can often make no sense from the outside, but internally we’re being driven without anyone driving, and sometimes the narrative’s a story we’ve been riding for a long time.

How often has someone asked if everything is okay—and it’s not what you’ve said, but how you’ve said it, that tipped them off? We hear tone, it’s the thing we all know, but few learn to navigate the pathway of feelings and deliver them with a measure of control, let alone a consistent reflective command. I am not a fan of my husband knowing something is off with me before I have had the chance for my brain to catch up with the feelings driving my tone. We’ve all had our tone get the better of us.

As a trained actor, I’m generally quite apt at knowing my body, but put me in close quarters—like long winters indoors—time and sharing space with all the wonderful complexities of being human can be tough. Sometimes, we’re just hungry. And other times, our bodies are signaling things we’re not ready or able to respond to or process. It takes a lot of space, time, and skills to navigate the underlying emotions. First, we need to recognize them, and that is far easier said than done in the chaos of life. I love discovering spaces that offer tools and opportunities to discover the right words or realize, more often than not, no words are even necessary.

As I now sit in my forties, I look at myself in my twenties much the same way. And I imagine, as I near the age of fifty, I’ll do the same for myself in my thirties. But here’s the thing, I’m determined as ever that when I am in the second half of this decade, I’ll look at my early forties, like hell yeah. Finally living my game. No one else’s. The girl who was lost, she’s been rediscovered and discovered anew.

Acting is the opportunity to step into a character’s shoes and try to discover how it is they come to make the choices they’ve made. No judgment, just curiosity. Like an inspector searching for evidence in the play for everything, whether implicit or explicit, that happens that impacts the life of the character, and from here, we build a roadmap. To understanding, to a shared sense of knowing and being, and eventually, hopefully, a knowing love and connection to the life of the character. Great theater, no matter its size or budget, is often experienced when actors and the whole production team discover these connections and share in the reality of the story they’re telling.

I can be a lot. If you have a problem, I ask questions. I interrogate the situation to understand where people are coming from and positioned. I get it wrong. I get it terribly wrong, but usually, with an underlying something is here. In this way, I can be both persistent to the point of possibly being invasive. My graduate studies have taught me to sit responsibly with this. I’ve learned to wait for the engagement, but if you’re trying to avoid, I’m not necessarily the one to go to.

If you’re looking to dig in, I’m filled with abundant questions. I wonder, why? Why do we do what we do? What happens in life to make us come to these decisions? What happened to make it so we can see this way or that way? I believe everyone has the right to their story, and oh, what a messy world it is with everyone having a say, this way or that. If this experience is right, then you can’t agree with this experience. They’re wrong. I’m right. Everyone has an experience, and we’re not really good at allowing others to have differing ones and simultaneously believe the other’s experience is valid.

As a society of humans, I think a lot of us are navigating a world with more connections and less genuine community. With more visibility and less witnessing, we’ve culturally cultivated ourselves. Where are there stories that break this narrative and challenge the power of difference?  

I think it’s rare that any of us want to be the bad guy in anyone’s story. And yet, I know, we all can be bad guys in someone else’s story. More often, we’re the bad guys and not even realizing it is our own story. The bigger picture, both the other side and our own, can be particularly hard to see when we’re not fully living in our own lives. There is so much in this world to navigate, and that includes navigating other people’s wounds and unhealed traumas, as well as our own.

And so, as I age, I learn, it’s best to let go. Let go, and when I do, it’s far easier to find comfort in the midst of the chaos and clutter of life.

Believe.

Hope.

Trust.

& Let go…

From one moment to the next, it’s our lives to unfold.

With love,

Mallorie