Which actors walk into the room

I say I teach acting, but that's not quite accurate. What I do is train a group of people to act, while having them co-create work that is on my path. If I am not making work that's growing me, I lose interest in teaching. I need the orthogonality of training and performance.

An ongoing challenge is how to bridge the gap between where they are and where I am; it keeps widening. I have to invent new structures; break my own beliefs about what's hard or easy. As soon as it's easy for me, I know how to make it easy for them. There is always infinite hard stuff left.

The first day is like Christmas. All these actors walk into the room. Sometimes one or more -- enter who make you revise all notions of what's possible. "YOU're here? Oh man, well, to do something that would stretch YOU, and me, we'll have to do..."

I noticed yesterday in my team meeting that I can look with those same director eyes, and tell which actors were in the room.

The part of me that goes, "Oh MAN" at a formidable actor, did that again and again. I totally revised my notions of what's possible on the project, after registering their massiveness. And the unconscious rough alignment of the team. I know what to do with them. It's shackling not to have the whole theatre armament available -- things would go much faster with statues, mooshing, slowtens, and exponentially-expanding awareness -- but I can feel rehearsal mojo in the air.