You have to bring yourself up after you’ve found what you want to do. First assignment in drama at Baylor University, and even for someone with no theater experience like me, was to present something dramatic for the whole class. Other students, started in high school, and wanting to become actors, were used to getting up in front of people. They presented monologues from plays and had the benefit of having acted before.
I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think of anything. I had to come up with something (“To be or not to be-that is the question). And after procrastinating until the last moment, I did what! I placed a chair in the center of the stage, sat down on it, and stared at audience members. I waited, and they waited for me to do something. But I did nothing. (I’ve since learned the importance of doing nothing for an actor on stage; however that wasn’t the object of that first assignment.) Eventually I couldn’t stand it any longer and did something; I started imitating people in the audience. I don’t think we were graded.
My point here is that the creative urge can come from anything; that makes everything a possibility. And there have been other incidents of this that I can point to: a trash can placed over someone’s head, from squash to rock-squash for a name of a piece, the lip of the stage as an acting area, sounds from the guts of a piano (and recently the idea of placing a three-story art piece on top a three-story building), all came from unexpected impulses. But you have to be open to them. You can’t cut yourself off from those instant flashes of creativity. You have to bring them forward or else they will be lost. You have to be interest in them as material, and also use them.
My thoughts this evening, Randy Ford
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