Breaking My Balls

Exercise:

Music in foreign language. Actor onstage must show their pleasure imitating the singer. Then the music turns off and the actor must continue, singing.

Exercise:

Actor enters singing. When they feel they are boring the audience, they must pick up phone and call in another actor. The two performers have a tennis ball they throw back and forth to exchange being in major and minor. A third actor waits in the wings and, whenever the two actors onstage are terrible, the third must come in and save the show.

Prof: [to students onstage] “Leave the stage, right now. You’re breaking my balls. [to classmates watching] Whose balls are full? Who says, stop bouncing on my balls? [Several students raise their hands]. Bon. You are breaking everyone’s balls, thank you. You want too much. When you want too much, you break the balls of everybody. You come onstage to prove that you deserve to be there, not to make miracles happen. You don’t have to prove anything onstage, you have nothing to prove, only lots of things to have fun with.”

The Prof has nothing to prove. That is for certain. He gives his students exercises at which they fail miserably over and over again. His feedback never offers suggestions or advice. He rarely even critiques why something doesn’t work. He just responds, violently, to that which does not work.
I am put in situations where I fail terribly, horribly. Over and over. And I am given scathing critiques. The torrent of abuse has no clear reasoning. There is never a discussion and rarely a debate. All that you know is that your work is not being given approval. That you are boring. The audience does not love you.
Here is what I am used to: the teacher is to be a voice of reason, of clear and comprehensible authority. The teacher’s critiques are informative and constructive. The Prof destroys this relationship. The teacher is neither a source of knowledge nor authority; the teacher becomes simply a source of provocation: “Show us how you play. That wasn’t you playing, try again. No. Again. No. Again. No. Again.” The student is constantly thrown back onto themselves. It is impossible to rely on an authority for what is “right.” In fact, it is impossible to know what is “right.”
Sometimes I feel horrified and discouraged. Other times inspired and dying to have another go. But always I am deeply curious. I feel that it is possible to discover something within myself from this onslaught of abuse and these impossible exercises where I go in front of a room of people and make a total fool of myself over and over again.

I am accustomed to structure. Words. A story to tell. A character. But now I have no structure. Nothing to hide behind. Even when I was doing Meisner I had a partner, there were rules. But now, no. How can I go onstage and be full of play, of pleasure, without any of those things? No givens? No objective? No rules? Well, there are rules. But they are so simple. Have a strong complicite with your partner…etc. Go onstage and show us your pleasure. Speak text, we don’t care what it is, and don’t play the meaning of the text. What??? What???? What????

How do I do this????

I don’t know

I don’t understand. Not at all.

I feel completely lost. (Thank god!)