When is it okay to be passionate about the things you do and give yourself over to the things that you believe in?
When I was a young actor coming up in New York and LA, all I wanted was "do" my craft. I didn't even care if it was a craft or an art or something that was just plain fun, all I knew is that I wanted to be a part of something that was bigger than me.
During the rehearsal process of the last plays that the Negro Ensemble Company did at the 52nd Street Theater in New York back in 1986 (called The War Party), I was confronted by two of my colleagues for "duffing it." Duffing it in Southern African American vernacular means that you are not taking things seriously. I was horrified that anybody would think that I wasn't taking my work seriously. After all, the play was one of the the first truly paying gigs that I ever had. I was excited (inside), but looking back twenty years later I believe that my fear had gotten the best of me. I couldn't show the fear that I felt, which had to do with being a part of a theater company that had produced A Soldier's Play and the likes of Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson.
What my two fellow actors were trying to say is, 'You [Brian] should be appreciative to have been given the opportunity to work because these moments are fleeting.'
They were right. Now, I corrected course after their "intervention." I began to take notes when the director gave them, and I looked more attentive, even though my process back then was to close my eyes half-lidded and drink in the notes that the director gave after each rehearsal. The director was an icon and one was one of those grand old men of the American Theater. I just didn't seem like I cared. By not showing "filial piety" to my theater forebears, I was thumbing my nose at the work that they had given to us, the younger generation, over the years.
That director of The War Party and the artistic director of the Negro Ensemble Company was Douglass Turner Ward, who I regard as one of the greatest and under appreciated figures of the American stage. His play, Day of Absence, was one of those pieces that mostly African American theater companies and kids in high school did as a contest play or reader's theater. Doug Ward's play turned us on to acting and being and seeing ourselves in the theater mirror.
I miss the process that is acting. It truly is a progressive practice--both in design and execution. There is so much discovery and innovation in the theater, but the play itself does not change. What you bring to it makes meaning.
I guess when I look back on it I can say that I had a very progressive upbringing as a student because I was often in the theater. That's all I really wanted to live for back then: the theater and the good friends that I found in it.
So, when you are looking around for what you are passionate about in your life, remember the things that you are being led to and that you gave yourself over to with abandon. Perhaps it's painting, kicking a soccer ball, understanding philosophy, or just hanging out on stage; whatever is your passion, be compelled to follow it wherever it might lead you.
I highly recommend Douglass Turner Ward's play!
Find your passion with Julia Cameron's road map to artistic recovery.
