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Volume 6
Issue 6 Jill Place, Publisher
jill@actingintuitive.com
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June 29th
BRANDact is almost HERE!
Your Headshot, YOUR
LOGO
Hi [[FirstName]]
 WE'RE IN
THE HOMESTRETCH WITH BRANDact! Call today or
else we'll be full! Don't you want
a winning career? Call me today at (323) 225-9850.
Don't delay.
The Clarity
intuitive sessions are also packed!
I've been doing
two and three a day lately. The price for this life-altering
combination of psychic information, energy healing, and
guided imagery to rescript negative beliefs MUST GO UP
July 1st.
So if you've been thinking about doing a
session for awhile, now's the time
to do one at the the old $75
price.
This
week, I'm sending you
an advanced peek at my next Art and
Soul Column . . . Are You an Acting
Channel?
[NOTE:
Some words in this e Zine have been
disguised to avoid triggering sp^m filters.]
Who should take
BRANDact Branding for Actors
on June
29th?
-
Actors who want to take their careers to the next
level!
- Actors who'd
like to look more professional!
- Actors who want their pictures
to look stupendous!
-
Actors who'd like
to manifest success!
-
Actors who'd like to make
Casting Directors
sit up and take notice!
-
Actors who'd
like more work!
Doesn't that sound like
YOU!
Spend the whole
day with me working through processes and
acting exercises to create one simple statement. A statement that fully expresses
your acting essence. A statement that focuses you and creates a positive presence. A
statement that sets you apart in ShowBiz.
It's a truly magical success-manifesting experience.
And now this dynamic process
has been refined and improved. You'll do brand^n$w
exercises I've never done in a group setting before.
Exercises that'll help you go even
deeper to create an even better
brand!
Once actors name and claim their talent,
their careers soar. Actors who have taken my BRANDact
w()rksh()ps and done my work$bo0ks have gone on to
star in TV episodics, award-winning Indies and BBC
miniseries. And the success stories just keep rolling
in!
Oh . . . and
if you've taken the BRANDact w0rksh@p
before and need to update your brand, now's
the time.
Retake it at the original
price.
Also, check out
the other things I do . . .
intuitive sessions, now called
Clarity, and
individual acting coaching
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Are You an Acting
Channel?
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I believe in synchronicity. So when several actors brought up the subject of channeling recently . . . and wondered if actors actually channel their characters through some sort of mysterious psychic process . . . I just had to write a column about it.
The
concept of channeling has been around since the beginning of
conscious thought. It's the belief that communication of
information occurs with an outside spirit or other paranormal
entity through a person, the channel. Theatre may owe some of
its origins to the acting out of channeled spirits in
primitive dance circles. In recent history, the 1800s were a
hive of paranormal activity as thousands of spiritualists and
organizations embraced channeling and other psychic phenomena.
Abraham Lincoln was also a big believer, and often invited
trance channelers to the White House.
By
1900, channeling as a way to receive advanced wisdom and
prophecy had fallen out of favor. But the writings and
teachings of such noted channelers as Edgar Cayce, Jane
Roberts (Seth) and JZ Knight (Ramtha) sparked renewed interest
in this psychic phenomenon around the middle of the century.
And channeling has remained a psychic mainstay ever since.
Shirley MacLaine talks of her channeling experiences in many
of her books and cult movie favorites such as What the
Bleep do we Know!? include channeled information. And the
teachings of Abraham as interpreted by Esther Hicks in many
books including the bestseller, Ask and It Is Given,
has attracted a growing worldwide audience.
Most of
these famous spiritualists channel by trance. They set their
conscious selves aside in order to allow a non-physical or
spirit being to speak through their body. But the channel may
also be anywhere from fully conscious to semi-conscious while
receiving and relaying seen or heard messages. I'm either
pleasantly relaxed or in a light trance when I do my intuitive
work. In this deeper state of consciousness, I speak with
guidance that gives me often thrilling information.
So what
has this all have to do with acting? Well, I don't know about
you but there have been times when I've felt a character
almost take over my body and do the walking and talking for
me. It happened once during a long-ago performance of The
Last of the Red Hot Lovers while playing Bobbi, a
whacked-out, pothead erstwhile nightclub singer. It was one of
the best performances I ever gave. There was a reviewer in the
audience that night. And I got a glowing review in the
L.A. Times the next day.
It
happened again during my first Actor's Studio audition. I was
doing Leonard Melfi's Birdbath and playing the
twittery girl who murders her abusive mother. We worked so
hard on the scene that the character began to insinuate itself
into my life. I reeked with her hopelessness and terror.
During that time, I managed to alienate everyone around me,
including my boyfriend.
Perhaps
it was my intense commitment to the part. Or the fact that we
were auditioning for . . . the Actor's Studio! But that day my
partner walked onstage, looked at me in sheer horror . . . and
froze! The next thing I knew someone was saying, "thank you".
This time I had totally gone somewhere else. It must have been
a good place though. Because I not only thawed out my partner
and, according to him, gave an inspired performance. But we
both passed the audition. And even got a rare nod from
Strasberg. Whatever transpired also purged me of this heavy
character presence. Moments after the audition, I leapt up the
Studio stairs and hastily dialed my boyfriend to apologize for
not being myself for so long.
So,
after a few near-out-of-body acting experiences, do I think
that we channel? Not in a pure psychic sense. To do that, you
have to invite some sort of outside entity to communicate with
and through you. Actors don't do that. But I do believe that
all human beings have many different characters churning
within them. And that actors do have the capacity to "channel"
them into a performance. As Paul Newman says, "acting is a
question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding
some of your own experience."
To that
end, actors are keen and avid observers of human behavior.
When I was acting, I collected walks, voices and even whole
personalities. Often I'd begin a characterization by using one
of these collected walks or voices. I also modeled my Red
Hot Lover's Bobbi on a really loony . . . and really bad
. . . singer I once met in a showcase. And spiced it up with
some of my own innate craziness. The great actress, Frances
McDormand, described her own personal process in this way.
"After Blood Simple, everybody thought I was from
Texas. After Mississippi Burning, everybody thought I
was from Mississippi and uneducated. After Fargo,
everybody's going to think I'm from Minnesota, pregnant, and
have blonde hair. I don't think you can ever completely
transform yourself on film, but if you do your job well, you
can make people believe that you're the character you're
trying to be."
So
perhaps we're a channel of a different kind. When you do your
job well, when you intensely prepare for a part using every
craft and trait collection that you possess, you can allow a
deeper state of consciousness to occur. A psychic emptying of
all that extraneous stuff that clutters and rules your life so
you can channel creative expression. Ironically, the great
teacher and director, Jerzy Grotowski, calls this profound
state of openness a trance.
Trance
. . . channeling? But instead of channeling entities we're
channeling character and craft. Craft that results in a shift
in energy that finally provokes expression . . . that elusive
connection with the life of the character or the theatrical
piece. Viola Spolin put it so well when she said, "it is
highly possible that what is called 'talented behavior' is
simply a greater individual capacity for experiencing. From
this point of view, it is in the increasing of the individual
capacity for experiencing that the untold potentiality of a
personality can be evoked.&
So is a
performance the end result of, as Paul Newman says, absorbing
personality in, according to Grotowski, a trance-like state?
Or is it, as Frances McDormand says, simply the result of
doing your job well? Or, in Spolin's words, is it intense
experience that evokes personality? Or are actors just
intensely present in the moment? Or is it a combination of
inner trance and outer channel? What do you think?
Next Issue: From Aligning your
BRAND: Demo Reels
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the way, DON'T LEAVE JUST
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Jill Place,
The Acting Intuitive 1309 Montecito
Drive Los Angeles, CA
90031 (323)
225-9850
Copyright © 2008 Jill
Place, the Acting Intuitive, All Rights
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