Crocodile tales

I got an upgrade to my mental health condition. I no longer have imposter syndrome, I have imposters’ syndrome. I am now an imposter in multiple fields of activity. Impressive, right?

Last Saturday the wonderful master of Mask, Grainne Delaney, came to the studio at Tugelaweg 85 and taught a workshop to some of my Meisner foundation students. She led the students through some breathing and vocal exercises and then some slow-mo fighting to get us all to slow down and become connected with our bodies. It was also a lot of fun. We then gave her a demonstration of the repetition exercise, which she had never seen before. She taught us how to “read” the masks, half-masks made by Juan C Tajes, and what part of the body each part of mask corresponds to before encouraging the students to discover the personalities of their masks and bring them to life physically and vocally. The last exercise we did was a combination of Meisner improvisation and Mask, which led to a hysterically funny and yet also moving performance posthumously entitled “The Hospitaal!”. I had given one of the actors, Amanda Lee, the double instruction to try to remove one of the other actors (Ady van de Plas) from the scene, while engaging the third actor (Grace En-Tien Chang) in very vigorous repetition, calling out all her behaviour. Amanda responded to this wonderfully, constantly pointing out the most absurd truths in the nasal whine induced by her mask. Ady’s character was apparently in terrible pain and Grace kept fruitlessly trying to help him, so the whole story revolved around Amanda telling him to go to the hospital while the other two, who wanted of course to carry on playing, blocked her at every turn. The straight-to-the-point style of the fool archetype played by Amanda worked perfectly with the Meisner instruction to always work from the truth. And as we all know, the truth might hurt but it can also be incredibly funny.

A few nights ago, I couldn’t sleep. I was struggling with various problems, one of which was how I had bitten off more than I could chew by deciding to lead a group of dancers in a devised piece about the climate crisis and our collective inability to get to grips with it. (Working title: (Rehearsal for a (r)evolution.) All sorts of thoughts wandered through my head, looking for something to connect with. Most of them wandered out again, but some hung around despite the vacuous atmosphere. At some point, a crocodile took up residence. A bartender swiftly followed. The crocodile had a few drinks and told stories about all the times he’d almost caught hold of Captain Hook before the alarm clock in his belly went off and foiled him, once again. I was enjoying the whole thing immensely when, suddenly, my alarm clock went off and I realised I had to get through the day, all over again. Still, the crocodile stayed with me and is now a pivotal part of the project.

In the middle of all this, I suddenly had an image of a random woman demanding funding to direct a team of crack astrophysicists in how to discover a new solar system. I chuckled silently. And then realised I was the random woman. And that I don’t even know how to define a solar system. Mid-chuck-sob, my husband woke up to remind me that some people liked to use the night for sleeping and could I please wait till morning?

Later on that week I had a very difficult experience in one of my classes when one student did something that inadvertently upset another. I learned a lot of lessons, the most important two being that I have to enforce the rules of the Meisner technique more vigilantly and that I need to create a brave and safe space. This means giving actors the permission to take risks and also permission to remove themselves from a space in which they feel at risk. It is about the difference between trying to protect actors from difficult experiences (which I cannot always do) and giving them the agency to call their own boundaries.

Luckily, I have a wonderful sounding board in the group of Meisner teachers I study with online in L.A. every Sunday evening. As well as the joy of working through the exercises together – last week I played Medea in a therapy session – they keep me sane when things go wrong which, inevitably, they do.

In the meantime, my children are spending their lunch breaks swimming, random indoor cats come to visit us because all the balcony doors in our street are open and I am hiding from the sun because the heat makes me ill. On Wednesday, I will brave the midday heat to travel to Den Haag to start another project around the nitrogen crisis (Stikstof crisis) here in the Netherlands. Reading about the terrible drought in Spain, the drought and rains cycle in Kenya and the wildfires in Canada, my faith is in short supply at the moment. But I know I am incredibly lucky to have the luxury of hiding inside in a relatively cool (27 degrees inside!) apartment. And so, this hot Monday afternoon, this multiple imposter raises her iced elderflower drink to you, cheering on the swift demise of capitalism, the longevity of connection and the survival of crocodiles, fictional and real. Stay truthful my friends, for truth is beauty and beauty truth.