CREATIVE LEAPS:
Journal for the Arts in Leadership and Interdisciplinary Learning

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Acting Compassionate

by Krista Apple

As a theatre artist and a teacher of acting, I like to think I'm in the business of nurturing not just better artists, but better people for a better world.

People don't always understand my choice to be an artist. I live from one short-term job to the next. I have no insurance or savings to speak of. I don't have an office, or even a car. Beyond that: sometimes fellow actors have trouble understanding my ambition to teach. While my friends are landing roles on soap operas, I'm writing lesson plans to teach Shakespeare in middle schools. But the way I see it, the joy of being an artist lies in the opportunity to share your passion with others. Sometimes my audience is a theatre full of strangers; sometimes it's a classroom full of seventh graders. Either way, I like to think I'm doing something important...and seemingly impossible.

One day in a recent acting class I heard, for the first time, the words I was using to coach my students. There were fifteen of them standing in a circle in the middle of the room. Their assignment was to move together so that they were standing in a horizontal line against the back wall. The stipulation: they all had to start moving at the same time -- without speaking or using signals of any kind. (For those who are familiar, it's a basic round of Viewpoints training.) The objective was for them to sharpen their instincts and put them to creative use as a group, as a team.

And there I am in the corner of the room, calling out to them: "Take care of each other. Help each other out...Work together to make something happen!" I was talking to them as actors and fellow collaborators. But in that moment I realized why I do what I do. Because I was also talking to them as human beings. Helping them -- I hope -- to learn what it takes to make a more compassionate world.

Compassion is the first thing I expect from fellow artists. From fellow human beings. If compassion and understanding are not in the room, then -- if I have anything to say about it -- neither am I. And there is something about creativity that is inherently compassionate. To engage in a creative process is to embrace possibility. To create, according to Webster's dictionary, means "to bring into being; to produce through artistic or imaginative effort." To make something out of nothing. To do that, you have to cast a wide net of imagination and let yourself believe that anything is possible. So, to allow for a creative approach (whether it be in reading a script, painting a canvas, or structuring a human resources department), you must willingly abandon preconceived notions and think (you know what’s coming!) outside the box.

Aren't these the same basic elements of compassion? Opening your arms and casting a wide net? To consult our dictionary once again: compassion is a "sympathetic concern for the suffering of another." The main ingredient for sympathy is mutual affinity. To achieve mutual affinity with another person or being, we must acknowledge some common element between ourselves and the other individual. More often than not, this means letting go of preconceived notions -- assumptions, stereotypes, and the like -- and allowing for some thread of understanding or similarity, even if there seems to be none. It means embracing possibility, and it often takes a good deal of imagination and effort.

Thus, true compassion requires some creativity, and vice-versa. Compassion involves -- it requires -- a constant process of creating opportunities to give to others. And unless we're making art in a void, creativity takes quite a lot of collaboration, mutual affinity, and 'sharing of toys.' Either way, we are inviting the opportunity to make something happen.

How great it would be to walk into a room and say to a group of people: "Take care of each other. Help each other out. Work together, and make something happen!" But we all know that in today's world, in our offices and classrooms, compassion is for dummies and the only way to survive is to be the fittest and edge out the competition.

But my acting students learn pretty quickly that working solo won't get you anywhere. (Consider one student's recent realization: "Oh, so it's not just about me. It's about the other person in the scene, too!") You feel lucky when you're around for those moments, when you're there to see the light bulb turn on. When they realize, sometimes for the very first time, that their success depends on the success of those around them. Suddenly, in the middle of an acting exercise, they're desperate for very simple things. Eye contact. Agreement. A hand to hold. Before they (and I) know it, they're seeing the world around them for the first time. They're seeing themselves in the world for the first time. And if you're really lucky, you're still around for the next step too: when they realize that the world they're in needs some serious changing.

Sometimes the lesson is a matter of context. I recently directed a group of students in a production of Polaroid Stories by Naomi Iizuka. The play is full of marginal characters: drug addicts, homeless teens, prostitutes. Now, it's one thing for a rich kid from the 'burbs to look up facts about runaways and drug abuse. Which they did. It's another thing altogether for that same kid to walk into rehearsal night after night and try to imagine what it must feel like to be sleeping next to a trash can on an empty stomach. But they did that, too. With astonishing artistic results -- and acute personal ramifications. I wasn't surprised when one of my actors abruptly stopped rehearsing mid-sentence one night to scream, "Can't we do something about this? What can we do?"

These are lessons that stick. They spark what I call 'divine restlessness' -- a state of constant dissatisfaction with the world that catalyzes our creativity and evolution, in the inspired hope that we truly can, as Ghandi says, be the change we wish to see in the world.

These lessons, and this restlessness, transcend the actor's (and writer's and painter's) process. Many of my students are continuing on to wonderful professional careers in the arts. Many more are choosing different paths, different careers...but I'm willing to bet that they're still using those same skills -- and that same compassion -- they first learned in rehearsal and acting class no matter where they are or what they’re doing today. They are, I hope, forever dissatisfied in a glorious way. And they are still asking: "What can we do?"

I like to think I'm doing the impossible. I'm making compassion and understanding cool. I'm teaching people to want more of both in the world. I'm just doing it surreptitiously, and giving it the title "Acting 101."