Nine years ago I attended Shakespeare & Company for a month-long intensive training program. I had enjoyed performing Shakespeare in the past, and the magazine ad that I came across had promised a "connection" of sorts. As it turns out, the six-day-a-week 14 hour days were exactly what I needed. I was surrounded by artists that were looking for something, searching for meaning in what they doing. Most of us had performed Shakespeare to one extent or another, but never this way before. Absorbing the text and using breath and movement to really embody one of the greatest playwrights in the English language was not a pretentious self-serving exercise, but rather a way to touch the depths as he intended. For four weeks we were eliminating the bullshit and affectation. We got to what was true, as everything I felt that I performed before was a lie. That was how powerful the training was.
I haven't been on stage in a long time. I haven't auditioned or had the ambition to pursue much of anything in regards to live performance. I wasn't reading plays. I wasn't going to see plays. I slowly but surely was past caring. I wasn't being cast, and I wasn't doing what it took to be cast. I was lost.
I wrote a screenplay as an artistic outlet. I was convinced that it had merit, if not, just a little work. A friend of mine savaged it, and it was the best artistic gift I had received in a long time. I was shocked, but not insulted; I knew that his words had merit. It was a real wake-up call. I wrote dialogue with the intention that it would form my story and make cinema magic. What I wrote was mediocre, at best. I was reaching for something with the hopes that it would substitute for my acting career that ground to a halt. It didn't, and wouldn't with the way I was going.
My friend recommended that I read Story by Robert McKee. I purchased it soon after, and devoured McKee's demands. Like most other writers, I was writing from the "outside in", not the most effective way of "inside out". A story told with no desire and artificial conflict was not a story; it was crap. I was inspired to do better. I knew that I could.
When Robert McKee himself was wrangled by an old pupil of his to come to my town for his four-day seminar, I had to go, despite the expense. And that's what I did for the last four days. Why not? I worked it out previously with my new job and had the vacation time. My new new creative endeavor deserved it.
It was inspiring, to say the least- punctual curmudgeon laying out what he thought was important to not just writing, but the art of telling a great story. It enhanced my understanding of the book and energized my project again. I felt like I could really do this, with insight and energy.
I brought my book, without realizing McKee would be willing to autograph them. By Day 2 I had the courage to approach him at a break for his signature. He was gracious, as he was with all of us. I told him that his book was "a real slap in the face" for me. He smiled obligingly while signing his name and catch phrase:
"Write the Truth".
