Embodiment as an Ensemble.

Lately I have been noticing something – something that not only applies to acting class. It comes into play when I am with a group of people who must work together, but do not participate with the same level of commitment. I’ve felt the imbalance in acting, as well as in my piano class. Every time we must all play out loud together, we mess up. Someone hits a wrong note or plays too fast, and then we all lose the tempo and end up resembling a five-year-old banging on the keys with their elbow. You can feel the lack of concentration and connection in the room. Some are very sure of themselves and plow ahead, while others hesitate and throw off the rhythm. Only after multiple tries do we finally begin to come together and harmonize as a whole. I felt the same sort of disconnect in acting class, as well. On Friday, when we were doing the new exercises dealing with embodying a certain characteristics, I didn’t feel like we were all putting the same amount of effort into it. When it comes to PPL, you can feel how everyone is equally as engaged in what we’re doing. We feel as if we are completely aware of what everyone else is doing, and therefore can participate fully. However, on Friday, I felt like because we didn’t know what to expect, we all weren’t as engaged as we tend to be, which threw me off a bit. I wanted to fully envelope myself in what we were doing, but I also felt like we were all so unsure of what to expect, that we were looking to each other for guidance and acceptance of what our next moves should be… just to make sure we were doing it all right. And through this, while I do feel like I personally developed a better grasp on how to embody an emotion, I feel like we were still all very wary of each other and therefore not as engaged as I wished we could’ve been.