I am a very lucky person. I am privileged to witness the moments when souls come out of hiding. The moment when a soul stops stuffing itself down into a small corner of a body, hoping it will be safe there, hoping it won’t be heard, hoping it won’t be seen. Because a seen soul is vulnerable. A heard soul can be hurt. A speaking soul can have its words held against it. But such a soul can also connect, inspire, touch, love, think and give strength to others.
In class after class, I have witnessed the moment when the lights come on in a person’s eyes, when their heart engages, when their mind fills with hope and love and connection. And the ability and need to do all this was present when they entered the room, this ability and need were why they entered the room – but they didn’t know for sure if it would be safe to let their souls out into the open. They hoped for this moment, they had an instinct that this would be the right place to release their souls, to let them go fluttering out into the big, wide world, but they weren’t sure. And then, suddenly, there it is! The moment when they let go, when all their defences go down and there they are, all of them, in the middle of the room.
Of course, I know there are many of these moments in a person’s life and I don’t mean to suggest that an acting class is the only place where you can experience connection. But obviously in my life right now, when I am teaching three times a week and taking a class at least once a week, this is the space I am in.
An idea that has taken hold in me is that humanity is going to die at its most enlightened moment. It has seemed to me for a few years now that people are communicating and connecting as never before and yet the powers that be – and will be for some time yet – have no interest in the changes of which we speak and attempt. Italian political theorist and politician Antonio Gramsci wrote around 1930 that “the crisis precisely consists in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
Perhaps this belief of mine – that we will die at our most noble hour – is just such a morbid symptom. Essentially, the climate and biodiversity crisis will force a collision between our hard-won humanity and the cumulative sins of our shared past and I worry that humanity will not survive. This idea took hold of me in 2017, as I became seriously aware of the terrible danger to our planet and all the creatures on it. When you parent young children, you become more alive to the life and suffering of everything else. I was living in Berlin with my husband and two young children at the time. Brexit and Trump’s election not long after made it crystal clear to me that world leaders were not focussed on solving the danger our world is in. When I got back to Amsterdam, the Extinction Rebellion movement was just taking off in the UK and then in the Netherlands. I joined the first XR meeting in den Haag and was suddenly surrounded by people who felt the same as I did; people who were often extremely skilled at connecting and loving. Since then, I have met so many people, many of them young, who know the tragedies we face and yet maintain the courage to fight for a better world.
During a recent trip to London to visit family, I walked into a bookshop and was struck by the titles on display. So many writers now are engaged in making sense of the world in an effort to make it a better, fairer place. And when I talk to people from different walks of life, it seems to me that, since Covid struck, more of us than ever want to connect despite the increasing polarisation and alienation with which modern life, or more specifically our capitalist masters, tempt us. But still a voice inside of me whispers: the sins of our fathers will be visited on us.
Yet despite the bleakness of this vision, I draw strength from watching souls take flight. Over the next few weeks, I am devising a piece with a group of actors that explores our need to connect and to become our whole selves with one another. (And of course I’m trying to sneak in my morbid idea that human life will shuffle off its mortal coil at its most enlightened moment. I think they might not let me though …) Watching them come together with all their unique experiences and abilities and learning to speak as one is very powerful.
At the same time, I continue to give Meisner classes and watch the interactions between the students, learning to use my words to help them get to that truthful place. I met a Danish student at the University of Amsterdam the other day who asked me what it was I was teaching. When I explained it to her she said, “So you’re teaching people to apply their humanity.” I don’t know if I can live up to that explanation but I’d like to try.
Leila Gray 