No Third Eye

One of the most important classes I took in my recent degree was an acting class. I learned more in this class than the teacher will ever know. As far as I know she is not a religious person, but unwittingly she taught me a great deal, among other things, about why the approach to personal piety in evangelicalism is less than compelling.

As an actor, she was most strongly influenced by students of Stanislavski, who revolutionized theatre when he acted on his observations about what kind of stage presence provoked his actual interest as an onlooker. The story goes that he was sitting in the dark theatre watching the rehearsal of some star actor. At that time, the style was a highly presentational kind of theatre that emphasized the delivery, complete with gestures and calculated everything: facial expressions, intonation, pauses. Enter a repairman, to work on some mechanical deficiency of the stage, and he dropped his toolbox, tools scattering everywhere! He was mortified to so crudely interrupt the great actor in his work. What Stanislavski realized as he observed the whole encounter has had an enormous effect on the way that acting is taught. Stanislavski was riveted to the repairman in his embarrassed scramble to pick up his tools and retreat to obscurity, and the skilled contortions of the actor went unnoticed as long as the repairman was on the stage. Why should a lowly repairman compel such a fascination? Stanislavski realized that the answer was that he could see the interior life of the repairman clearly. The actor’s interior life was irrelevant, obscured by his rehearsed lines and gestures. The real interior life of the repairman compelled engagement; the rehearsed façade of the actor did not. The exercises she put us through during each three hour class were all about helping us to be present in the moment, helping us rid ourselves of making choices with the awareness of an audience, what she called “the third eye,” and instead to really notice and engage our acting partners’ reactions, attitudes, facial expressions, etc. My favorite thing she said that will go with me forever: “Your partner is more important than your line.”

When I consider the two great commandments, loving God and loving neighbour, the two great Others, my upbringing emphasized my part; I’m learning that I can only fulfill those commandments if I’m completely engaged by the Other. If I am, I’ll be less prone to self-consciously agonize about whether or not I’ve sacrificed enough or done the will of God to the letter. At any given point, I can safely assume I haven’t in fact, but that will not be the point. Someday, those may at long last no longer be the questions I’m asking.