meisner - day 10

we did another touch based exercise last night. we sculpted each other into shapes and formations and as the sculpture and sculptor alike, we were encouraged to allow whatever images/sensations we had to surface. i was surprised at how many images were derivatives of the world of the book thief. at points i was hiding with a pack of fugitives. at other times i was living impoverished and scourging for food. a lot of desperation and extreme states of being.

at one point, i had an extended section where my body was the one being sculpted and shaped and i was being rolled along the floor. there was this tangible surrender of control to the other person. complete. and the experience that came to mind was of being a corpse, casually being moved. i have had dreams of dying and being dead {yes, you can die in dreams} and there has always been a significant element of tragedy associated with those deaths, but sunday night i felt this blessed sense of bestowing my life in an other's hands. it was no longer mine to wield and i could just rest and be moved as an object. i don't know if this was another part of the book thief's influence. death was such a gentle narrator and caring of the souls given to his care {even in the face of such a relentless and sempiternal task} that i wouldn't mind being put in his hands. whatever the source, i didn't want to let go of the experience.

there was one other image that really moved me. at the end we took turns walking around and viewing different tableau's that students made in their final frozen moments. these two were sitting side by side on the ground, hands overlapped and intertwined on the floor, heads just a few inches apart and arms growing straight up from the ground. their bodies didn't touch, but they arched around each other in this elegant curve. torsos spooning and a beautiful buffer of negative space caressing them both. there was something so alive and joyful about their pose. a discovery had just been made and it radiated out from them. it was really sweet in the most tender and genuine of ways. vividly fresh. and painfully graceful.


as for the meisner work itself. i'm on a plateau. and that's okay. for a while it felt like i was backtracking or stuck because i wasn't making the catalystic growth of the week before. my head knows i'm really just in a processing period and crouching for my next leap forward. tuesday's class: here we go!