Ternary Symbiosis
The magical number three
We embark on our experience/career as actors with the knowledge and hope that every job should be a unique chance through theatre to break the cycle of our own and society’s dysfunction.
Many of us as actors, spontaneous creatures, seem to live from one reactive moment to the next; like a chain reaction. Sometimes, but not always, there is always little, if any, thought given for planning ahead possibilities and/or how is best to approach situations. And why should we?! We are spontaneous full of energy, hopes and dreams beings. Some of us, with an earlier vision, tried to change something, maybe this pattern, disappointed of how things were turning out to be. The more we advance in our artistry, the older we get, there is a possibility of becoming rigid, rigid as adults, rigid as actors, rigid in mentality or when planning, maybe to overcompensate for the chaos or the disappointment we had experienced or feeling too overwhelmed by quantity over quality abundance. New generations appear and they seem to be the young ones while we are the oldies observing on the side. As actors of our own times and this arts industry, we might not have acted accordingly. We all took shortcuts: directors compromising with actors not learning their lines, actors compromising with their height, weight or financial reward, spectators paying absurdly high theatre prices just to compensate for the lack of artistic value, scenographers creating meaningless props to justify a budget…
When we find a new way as actors, we forget of our old jobs and old ways and we are trying to focus on the new people with new ways… But ingrained habits do not disappear overnight. As actors we are taught in acting institutions to focus on our centre point, whether it is a crossing from one side of the stage to another or an existential monologue scene. As human beings we should do the same, when feeling frustrated or overwhelmed, we should centre ourselves. And so we manage to reinforce our acting life with an actor’s well deserved peace and serenity. There are actors who believe that they put their life on hold when focusing on the life of their character. Even going for a cup of coffee, the process is still continuing, like the character is the one having coffee, not them. I believe there is a beautiful magical phenomenon happening there, a harmonious intertwining between the human being, the actor and the character, between premeditation and surprise, respectfully and holly pausing each other, a serendipitous equilibrium, a perfect ternary symbiosis.