073 The Actor and Their Body

Take a second and Google the alumni who have come out of NYU, Yale, Juilliard, Brown, and serious Meisner training programs like Charlie's. The majority of accomplished actors have seriously trained their body and their voice. Developing a physical instrument that is capable of supporting and processing rich emotion will dramatically improve the quality of your work. This week Charlie talks with his movement teacher Sara Fay George. They discuss training the actors body, and the issues that arise when trying to unwind decades of parenting and socialization. You can follow CBP on Instagram @creatingbehavior, and Charlie's NYC acting conservatory, the Maggie Flanigan Studio @maggieflaniganstudio. Theme music by  https://www.thelawrencetrailer.com. For written transcripts, to leave a voicemail on SpeakPipe, or contact Charlie for private coaching, check out https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com

Transcript

Charlie Sandlan:

So I want you to do something for me, even while you're listening to this episode, I want you to start googling. Look at all the actors that have come out of Yale, NYU, Juilliard, Brown, UCSD. Google how many actors have come out of Meisner training programs, serious two-year programs, and I think you'll be shocked if you didn't know this already, how many of the actors that you watch that you look up to, have seriously trained themselves.

If you're going to be an actor, just learning how to act is not enough. You have to master your instrument. And that also includes your physical body. Training yourself physically, vocally, so that when you come to life, you have a body that can process emotion, a body that's free of tension, fluid. You have a sense of ease, grace, clarity. That needs to be trained. So today we talked to my movement teacher at the Maggie Flanigan Studio, Sara Fay Geroge. We're going to talk about the physical instrument of the actor. So put the phone back in your pocket. Creating behavior starts now.

(singing)

Well, hello my fellow daydreamers. Yeah, the physical instrument. It is, I think something that is often overlooked with actors when they decide that this is what I want to do with my life. I want to act. And I know that when you say that, you're saying to yourself, I don't want to do three lines on law order. You want to take on major parts, complicated roles, complex, the kind of work that when you watch it on screen or on stage, you go, "Goddammit, I'd love to do that." Right? Well, you better have an instrument that is capable of accessing all parts of yourself.

And it's got to happen in a body that's released free of tension, that you're capable of breathing through very intense experiences because oftentimes in life, when we are charged emotionally, whatever that is fear, rage, humiliation, shame, joy even. The body locks up Often. We don't breathe. And we you don't breathe, you can't experience. Because in life, I think most people do everything they can not to feel. But the challenge for the actor is that you have to actually step into all of the emotional aspects of what it means to be human. So in order to do that, you have to change your body's relationship and your mind's relationship to emotion.

And certainly in Meisner's training and the work that we do at the Maggie Flanigan Studio, this has to do with getting comfortable first with anger and your relationship to anger and what that does to your body. Now, you can't work on your body in an acting class, right? You're going to get acting lesson. You're going to learn how to act. You're going to learn about the fundamentals of acting. You need other classes to work on your voice, to work on your body. And when you do that, the quality of your work is going to change.

So if you want to compete at a high level, you better master your instrument. And any great artist does. I don't care what the medium is, I don't care if it's dance, sports, painting, music. The best artists master their instrument. And for you as actors, it's your entire being. It's your imagination. It's your physical life. It's your vocal life. It's your temperament. So that's why I'm excited today to bring on Sara Fay. Sara Fay has been working with me for about five years now.

She teaches level one and level two movement at my studio. It's the Williamson Technique, which she's going to talk about that here. I just think it's an excellent conversation to give you some insight and maybe some clarity about maybe some of the things that you're dealing with when it comes to being able to access and express emotion in a way that's fluid and has a sense of ease to it.

So at the top of the conversation, we were talking about just her growing up and her relationship to her own emotional life, particularly anger, and all of the physical ailments that suppressing that side of herself caused in her. And then we go from there. So let's just get right to it here with Sara Fay.

Sara Fay:

I grew up with a lot of denials of especially anger and what people may call negative emotions. And it made me sick. I had eczema all over my skin for most of my life from just a whole life of emotional suppression.

Charlie Sandlan:

Oh, that's a horrible, eczema is a horrible thing to have.

Sara Fay:

Oh yes. And it was everywhere. Pretty much, my whole life since birth. But then around puberty, it got really, really bad. I remember when I first got on the movement floor with Theo Morin at the William Esper Studio as a student. We were in that first 10 exercise of awareness and acceptance.

I was very familiar with the concept of awareness, of consciousness and attention that had been drilled into me. But this acceptance to accept what is going on, just as it is to accept it, you don't have to transmute it, transform it, change it, evolve it, but really just being with what is. And I remember thinking, this is going to change my life. It was like a real light bulb moment.

So a lot of it has just been my own personal healing journey of trying to find out how to have my own emotions, how to have them in a way that is not destructive to my relationships, but that is also honoring myself and how I feel. So through using myself as the beta testing model, I've been able to start to offer that work forward to other people. It's a real honor. It's a real honor to hold space for other people to explore parts of themselves and maybe they were conditioned to block, or deny or suppress.

Charlie Sandlan:

So you've done the full progression of Meisner's work. You've done the movement work. . Well, how do you go from taking movement and finding the power of that work to wanting to teach it?

Sara Fay:

I think I've always been a teacher. I've always been a teacher. Even when I was young,

Charlie Sandlan:

You've known that innately. Like you just said, "There's a teacher in me"?

Sara Fay:

Yes. Even when I was a teenager and doing theater, I would teach the younger generations and direct them in plays. I've been a teacher my whole life. I think it's just something that's very natural to me. And after I graduated from William Esper, I moved to Berlin and was teaching movement in an acting school there. It's just this intersection of the creative process and the art of acting and the individual. It's such a mystical art form that you yourself are the instrument.

I know we talk about that. That's a catchphrase that's thrown around a lot. But it's really quite something that it's your body that you are working with. It's yourself that you're working with to develop a plasticity in the individual that is able to spread so far to embody so many things. It's an amazing thing to teach and to learn how to do. It's just the most fulfilling work I could ever imagine. I mean you know it too, right? As a teacher, when you suddenly see someone just busted out of a husk, it's pure magic.

Charlie Sandlan:

It's extraordinary. It is. And I was lucky enough to have Lloyd for all of my movement work when I was at Rutgers. Lloyd Williamson was still teaching. What is the Williamson Technique. I think it's a brilliant way to physically train actors. He has an extraordinary history with Sandy and Bill Esper. How would you describe the Williamson Technique? What is it?

Sara Fay:

Wow. It's an amazing progression that trains the actor's body in what Williamson calls the physical process of acting. Sandy has such wonderful structures in that training progression, the Meisner training progression to create the structure that students are able to enter into. And in that form, they can explore something, something in themselves, things that pop out and surprise them. But it's cerebral that structure. And Williamson is really, like you said, bringing the heartbeat, bringing the emotional flow. How do you train the body that has years and years of physical tension, and conditioning, and blocking, and ideas of who I am and what I'm supposed to be and what I cannot be.

So the Williamson Technique is about opening the body to be able to enter into that full spectrum. And Williamson talks about the body as a channel. And this corresponds so beautifully with the Vedic tradition and the chakras. He took that framework and created this understanding for actors that your body is a channel. Something comes through and something comes out.

You see that reciprocal energetic flow between two acting partners. If the channel has become a container and it's just holding, taking in, taking in, taking in, but holding, holding, holding nothing is able to flow to the other acting partner. So to sum it up so beautifully and concisely, Lloyd said it himself that the body is a channel for processing experience into behavior, which is motion and sound. So that's it. That's really it.

Charlie Sandlan:

It's such a beautiful way to say it. I just really love how he phrased it. That is what behavior is. It's motion and sound.

Sara Fay:

Yes.

Charlie Sandlan:

And he also talks about the cycle of communication. So how would you describe that?

Sara Fay:

Well, again, it's this flow. It's this process. It starts with the first moment, that first moment is really, I guess all of it at the foundation is breath. It all happens on the breath. Everything is happening on the motion of the breath.

Charlie Sandlan:

I mean, you can't experience without it.

Sara Fay:

Right. There's nothing. There's nothing. I think the thing is, because we're always astronomically breathing, when you tell people this, they're like, "Well, duh, it seems so obvious. Well, of course everything happens in the breath.

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah, but you know in life...

Sara Fay:

Of course.

Charlie Sandlan:

Yes, but in life, the average person, when they're encountered in an intense situation, whether that's fear or it's anger or it's humiliation or embarrassment, the initial thing is to stop breathing, it's to clench up, is to tighten up, is to not feel that it's to stop and hold. But the actor has to be able to open up into that and breathe through that and allow that to come in and out of you in a way that's aesthetically pleasing to watch. And that just is not something that you can just step into a space and do. You have to really retrain your physical body to do that?

Sara Fay:

Exactly. And that's the thing. Because it's so natural, this physical process of acting, it's so natural. It's really our natural state of being. All the time, we're taking in stimulus and it processes through all the time, all the time. When we encounter something that we cannot process through that we do not understand that it's too painful, that it's too intense, too extreme, that's when we stop that natural process to really begin to explore those points in oneself of where am I holding? Where am I blocked? What am I not allowing?

And the work, really the work, it starts with that first moment of contact, right? Coming into contact through your sense. Breathing, I always say to our students, breathe your partner in. On the inhale, really take them in. Can you bring them in a little deeper? And can it not be about you really coming into contact with that person, that painting, that sunset, that horrible smell on the subway.

That's what you got to bring in. And even the most horrible and horrid things, how can you bring those things in with a sense of curiosity, of play, of wonder, right? As actors, we have to be able to enter into the most horrific situations that we would not wish on anybody. And you can only do that through a sense of play, of exploration, of willingness.

So from that contact, we have an experience. Something does happen in the body. It's natural, we change. And then allowing whatever that is, to just process through on the exhale with the sound, with the motion. Just letting it flow through your body without that judgment. That's the thing here. It's like that part of ourselves that is always second guessing, calculating, judging. "Oh, if I say this, how am I perceived? Or I need to be this kind of person, or I'm not lovable. I can't react that way."

Stripping that all away to come to, no, just what is it for you? Right now is not a right. There's no right experience, no wrong experience. It's just what does it elicit in you?

Charlie Sandlan:

It also forces people to come face to face with how they were raised, how they were parented, their relationship to anger and conflict and trauma. I mean, Jesus, sexual trauma, abandonment issues and rejection and all of these things that are baked in from childhood. All that, I would assume just gets really unpacked and put up into a blender in this kind of training. I see it in my class, but not everybody that I teach actually works on their body. Not everybody I teach takes movement.

Sara Fay:

Right.

Charlie Sandlan:

It makes it much more difficult for them to put the work together if they're not working on their physical instrument.

Sara Fay:

And the thing is, what a privilege, what a privilege to be able absolutely to take the time to investigate within yourself and not to get to know yourself enough, to unpack some of that, to feel into some of that, to maybe even release and move through some of that, to question the beliefs about ourselves, about the world, about our relationships that were developed because of those traumas. Not every art form offers that. Not the training in every art form offers that in the way that actor training does.

Charlie Sandlan:

It's also the only art form that really requires the totality of who you are in order to be able to create in that medium. So you have to use your body. You have to use your voice, and you have to use your imagination. You're not using a canvas or paint, or metals or clay. Or even just your body if you're a dancer, it's everything.

Sara Fay:

Yeah. And that's the beauty of it. I also think that's part of why... We've taught so many different people, right? and some students go on and have professional careers in film, TV, theater. And others don't. They go on and they take this education and they're able to forge a path for themselves that is authentic to them in a different way than they would've if they hadn't come and done the training.

Charlie Sandlan:

Absolutely. It's interesting. I've had over the last couple of years, a number of former students. Actually really quite talented students, actors, reach out to me for letters of recommendation because they're going into medical school. They want to become therapists, to med school, to psychology and psychiatry, which makes sense to me because it's all about listening and understanding patterns of human behavior.

Sara Fay:

Yeah, it's human work. The work of the actor, the education of the actor in the end is all human work. It would benefit anyone to come do it and explore it and experience and grow in that way. It's very special and it's something that I often hear students speak to. What we do here, there's no place to do in our society, in our culture. There's no space for that. It's really something that we do need to cultivate more and create those subcultures in which we say, "No, these are our priorities. These are what we value. This is where we put our time, our attention, our resources because it's important."

Charlie Sandlan:

I can tell after maybe the first three months of the year in first year, the students that are in movement and the students that aren't, 100%. And the students that aren't, are just riddled with tension, riddled with tension, to the point where when you watch them come to some sort of life. They're so strained. It looks like they're going to have an aneurysm. The veins are popping out of their head. They're ripping up their vocal chords. You could just see the tension. And then the actors that are training themselves, it bleeds into the work unconsciously.

I can just see somebody start to open up. They're just a little bit softer. The experience is dropping a little bit deeper. They're a little bit more comfortable in their skin. They're a little bit more comfortable just hanging in uncomfortable moments. And they continue to get more comfortable being alive.

Sara Fay:

Well, also, I think we have these images in our head like when you think of the emotion of anger and someone is expressing anger. You see the red face and the just exact... Like an emoji. We see an emoji. You know what I mean?

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah. The red tomato face and the bulging veins.

Sara Fay:

Exactly. It's like we have this idea of what it's supposed to look like because we do live in a culture in which it is so repressed. There's so many patterns of suppression around different emotions for different people that then when we do start to have them come up and elicit, we start to express them through the pattern of resistance, tension holding as opposed to actually feeling it. This is the thing. This cognitive dissonance where we think our feelings are our thoughts. Feelings are actually physical sensations in the body.

You literally feel them with those sensory neurons. But it seems to me, the more I work with students, it's like they think their feelings are their thoughts, that it happens in their mind and not in their body.

Charlie Sandlan:

It's very interesting. I had Lenard Petit, who's a really great Chekhov teacher who I studied with at Rutgers. He posed this question once in class and it stumped everybody. It took us a while to get to what he was saying. He said, "How do you know when you're angry? How do you know when you're upset?"

And no one could really answer until we finally got to exactly what you just said. It's because the body experiences it. It has nothing to do with the mind. And everyone was like, "Whoa, what the fuck? Yeah, that's right. It happens in the body."

Sara Fay:

Yeah. And the more I research into different systems of energy anatomy, and now I'm entering deeper into traditional Chinese medicine and the understanding of energy meridians, and through this lens, all of your emotions actually originate in your organs and then travels along these energetic meridians throughout your distal points from the core to the fingers, to the toes. And that idea that really all of your emotions starts right here in your torso. Everything starts right here. It starts in your physical lungs, your physical heart, your physical liver. That's where your anger starts, and creates those experiences, a change in temperature or those movement, that motion.

But we're so blocked in our torso. We hold so much physical tension in our torso, from the rock hard abs, to the shoulders. We try so hard to keep ourselves together physically to present ourselves in the way that we think is appealing that we end up really blocking off our truths, the truths of whatever it is that we're feeling. Feelings have so much utility.

I always try to frame for students in class. It's not that they're right or they're wrong or they're bad. If you have anger coming up, it's because a need is not being met or boundary has been crossed. It's informing you of what you need. There's nothing wrong in that at all.

Charlie Sandlan:

Most people are taught from an early age that anger is it's not good. It's bad. It's unattractive. It's dangerous. Is there anything that is universal when you're working with students that everyone just seems to collectively have issues with that you can say, "Yeah, everybody deals with this, or everybody has this particular..." I don't know, problem.

Sara Fay:

You know what I think, Charlie, I think it comes down to fear. In the end, at the root of it, we have to not be afraid of fear.

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, what do you mean by that?

Sara Fay:

Well, so let's say just taking for myself, for example, if I ever was to express anger, it wouldn't be met. It wouldn't be heard. It would just be ignored. So I developed a pattern of withholding that because I wasn't getting my need met. By expressing it, it wasn't working. So I start to suppress and internalize out of the fear of being ignored in my need.

How painful you're expressing something, a real concern, a real genuine need. And it's because of how it's being expressed. It's just blocked. So at the root of that, if I really want to get to the freedom of expressing my anger, I have to address the fear that I'm going to be ignored. I'm going to be isolated if I express that. At the root of it is fear. For other people more emotional vulnerabilities of allowing grief or sadness or to be affected in that way is something that there's stories especially with men that it's weak and that mentioned time. It's very deeply culturally ingrained.

But if a man or any person is to move through that, they have to address the fear of the vulnerability. We can't be afraid. We can't fear fear. We have to go into that point, into that point where we are so very afraid and move through that, act from that point in that crux, in that moment. It's just this intersection of space and time. In that moment when you feel it start to rise and the pattern starts to develop of pushing it down and you say, "No, I'm not going to... Yes, maybe I'm afraid, but I will not cower to my fear. I will step out of my comfort zone. I will step out of that and embrace the truth of whatever it is."

I really think courage, couer in French, the strength of the heart. I really think that's the root of all the practice is how to not be afraid of fear.

Charlie Sandlan:

So you're saying, "Own it, have it, understand it. That's happening to me." But then you've got to move through that.

Sara Fay:

I don't know. We all have something that we fear. Right? But to be able to find the way to stand in that, to stand in the fear and not completely collapse or enclose or disengage, but to say, "Yes, I'm afraid, and I stand here anyway. That's the heart of the actor, right?

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah. Well, and what happened, I think early on in the training, because when you start first year, you really start to confront what it means to come to life and to... To have your anger, it really is the first thing that Meisner challenges you to get comfortable with. But the fear as an acting teacher, what I get from them is the fear that if they have their anger, that they're going to lose control, that just absolutely something bad is going to happen. And it's trying to get them to understand that, "No, nothing bad is actually going to happen to you. You're just going to have an experience." But it's this fear of losing control.

Sara Fay:

Right. Yeah.

Charlie Sandlan:

That's terrifying to them.

Sara Fay:

And it's a different. In the frame of a Meisner exercise, we've come to certain agreements. We agree with our acting partner that we give each other the permission to hold the space, to have those experiences together. And in a way, you give yourself freedom to express how you feel without feeling like, "Oh, I need to express myself, nonviolently." We could be able to say, "No, I feel... The way I feel it..." When we feel that rage, it does feel violent within us. Right? It's like there's a energetic volcano that's coming the fuck up because it's been repressed for decades, decades, decades, decades.

Charlie Sandlan:

Decades.

Sara Fay:

So when you start to allow it, it feels like, "Fuck, no. I will lose control." Right?

Charlie Sandlan:

Right.

Sara Fay:

But this interesting thing of the permission of saying, "No, here you have the freedom. You can express yourself however the fuck you want." You don't have to express yourself nonviolently. This is a creative exercise where you get to own that. Right? It doesn't work in our real lives. That's the thing.

Charlie Sandlan:

That's why I think acting is so permissive. Well, I mean, because there are consequences in life to having your anger, like real world consequences. Especially when I work with people of color, particularly African American men who have never really been able to, for the most part, fully and freely have their rage, because I mean, there's real world consequences. Are they going to be shot, arrested? And to unpack that in training yourself to be an actor is it's a long process.

Sara Fay:

Yeah. You get to develop an emotional literacy that does benefit in life, right? It's like...

Charlie Sandlan:

I love that. I love that term, emotional literacy. I think it's what actors need to be incredibly emotionally literate.

Sara Fay:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And then learning, "Okay, yes, I'm in this conflict with my partner. No, I do not want to communicate violently with them. This is not an acting exercise, but I'm angry and I can be honest about the fact that I'm angry about something that has happened, something that they did. I can express the fact that that I feel this way and that it's valid." Right?

It's something that is so beautiful that it's able to bleed over into the personal as well as, of course, the professional. And being able to have an actor's body that is so emotionally plastic, but then also just as human, just being able to communicate authentically and honestly, because they're actually in touch with how you feel. Most of us just aren't. It takes the time and space and awareness and permission to really be able to touch in to our authentic authenticity.

Charlie Sandlan:

Absolutely. And I think, you can boil acting down to two things, conflict and intimacy. One of those two things, essentially. And by intimacy, I'm not talking the sexual, which is, I mean, like I said, is part of being intimate, but the intimate connection between two people. And so I know that a lot of what terrifies the students that come into your class is that early work of being in real intimate contact with another human being. It rocks their fucking mind. I mean, in a very deep, profound way. So can you just talk about that, the importance of intimacy and what that means as an actor and what it means about being in contact?

Sara Fay:

Yeah. It goes back to what we were saying actually with Lloyd Williamson and that physical process of contact, experience, behavior. And when two people are in that flow together, something develops in the space between them. And that's the magic. That's the thing. That's the play. That's the story. That's the life that the audience is able to witness.

It really is almost like a third body. It's very palpable. I always say to my students like, "You create it together. You see, if you keep that process going, something develops in the space between you that you mold, that you shape, that you create. At least in the acting work, of course, we have scripts and stories and narratives that we're crafting within. But when you're just in an improvisation, you really don't know. You don't know what's going to happen. You don't know what the next breath is going to be. And to be able to be in that place, that place of aliveness with another person, it's also, I think, very therapeutic for people to be able to just have that ability to connect without needing anything from the other person or them needing anything from you.

It's not a place of codependency or want need or push pull? No, just being present with another person.

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, that's vulnerability. I mean, that is vulnerability. And that's why when they do this kind of work with you, they become more vulnerable actors. They just become more grounded. They become more open. Their emotional life becomes more fluid. It ebbs and flows in them because they're breathing and it improves the quality of the work. It improves the quality of the behavior that they create when they go to scenes.

Sara Fay:

Yeah.

Charlie Sandlan:

A hundred percent. A lot of the work that you do also involves chakras, energy centers. Can you just talk about that a little bit about the body and how that just relates to the physical instrument? Yeah,

Sara Fay:

Absolutely. So the chakras are part of the Yogi Vedic tradition. These vortex of energy, seven different energy vortex that are about six inches in diameter and spin in a clockwise rotation. And each, they run along the plexes of the spine, of the central nervous system. They align right along the central nervous system. And each energy center holds a different facet of your personality, of the way that you relate in the world, is that they relate to different organs, different emotions, different experiences.

And it completely changed my frame of understanding myself. I started just reading everything I could find. I love Barbara Ann Brennan. She actually worked with NASA, was a physicist, very, very brilliant, and created her own center that wrote many books about energy and how it operates and the different layers of the aura from different energy centers. And through that research, I started to connect how holistic our instruments are, our body, our emotion, our thoughts.

We tend to think of all of these things as disparate, as separate parts, almost like a Newtonian worldview where we are made up of all of these separate parts that are just put together to make you. You have your shoulder and your elbow and your brain, and all of those little parts come together and they all stick together and they make Charlie. But this understanding that no, everything is inextricably connected and that one part connects another.

You can't separate the parts of ourselves. And each little part contains the whole, right? It's a more holographic view of one's self. So through chakra training and entering into these different energy centers, and whether you believe in that kind of spirituality or not, I think it's a very valuable frame.

You don't have to believe anything. It's just more a framework to work with to maybe better understand what parts of yourself are you really connected into, and what parts of yourself are maybe a little bit blocked and areas that you can work on yourself a little bit more.

Charlie Sandlan:

So all of us have certain chakras that are blocked.

Sara Fay:

Oh, sure.

Charlie Sandlan:

And then when a chakra is blocked, what does that mean? How does that manifest itself in just life?

Sara Fay:

Well, I guess it depends on what chakra it is.

Charlie Sandlan:

How about the first one?

Sara Fay:

Let's talk about the root.

Charlie Sandlan:

The first one.

Sara Fay:

The root. Yeah, the root. It's when you said, what is the main theme or the main thing that actors need to work on, and I said fear. That is directly related to the root, which is located at the base of your spine, at the coccyx between the coccyx and the tailbone, then the sit bone. It's really connected to your sense of physical self, like you. You are the very basic foundational, you exist. The mantra is, I am like, "You fucking exist. You are a person. You are here. You take up space." And as well, the lineage that you come from.

Everything that has come before you to bring you to where you are. So your ancestors, your history, all of your past experiences. It's about basic needs. It's about survival. It's about fight or flight. It's about the part of you that is able to stand your ground and be a warrior. I call it the badass part of yourself that says, "Oh fuck no, fuck no, I'm going to stand my ground." We work with the idea of a root system. It's called the root chakra. And the idea is that the energy pours from this floor, the base of your pelvis down your legs into the floor, and roots you, grounds you so that whatever storm comes your way, whatever emotional storm comes, you will not be uprooted. You'll stand your ground. You can weather the storm, whatever it is. But a lot of that is really about feeling safe. It comes back to safety, and it comes back to fear.

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, it's either fight or flight in a primitive way. I guess the fight is the root chakra.

Sara Fay:

It's the flight too. It's the part that when you need to, you say, "I'm going to curl up my fucking roots and get the fuck out." Even the experiences that are very traumatic and we're not able to respond, were not able to act. We freeze, and we're not able. And suddenly that that center is paralyzed and is not able to move. And you don't have that support anymore. You don't have that.

But it's something that as an actor, to be able to cultivate that it's really the foundation in acting in life and everything. Cultivate your roots. And you can have a lot of fear and not have those roots curl up. To be able to have the fear and be able to say, "I claim it. I even claim my fear and I stand here in my fear." And to allow that, to even exist there is very, very powerful.

Energy is always meant to move. It has to move. It's natural state just like water. It has to flow. So I'm a big believer in, with whatever is going on, how do you just move that energy into where you need it to go? So if you are an actor that suffers from stage fright or have a lot of anxiety, you can't deny the fact that that's the experience that's happening in your body. You can't block it. You can't deny it because then you're just going to be blocked. But if you can find a way to move that energy through, to embrace it, open it, and direct the flow of the river, then something could happen for you. Something can change. Something can move through.

Charlie Sandlan:

The majority of actors do not ever think about any of this stuff unless you are put in a position where you're seriously training and it's really offered to you. I don't think most actors have any of this kind of understanding about themselves, about their bodies. I mean, I think the really good ones do. They're really seriously well trained ones. The ones that are operating at the top of the profession that have such fluidity with their emotional life and are so grounded and so simple. You just can't roll out of bed after 25, 35, whatever years of living and be able to operate this way.

Sara Fay:

No. Especially once you start to enter into more challenging material.

Charlie Sandlan:

Absolutely. Which is what everybody wants. The major parts, the lead roles, the complicated emotional lives, the rich deep experiences. Of course, that's what everybody actor wants, every actor wants to do. You've got to have one hell of an instrument to be able to sustain that eight shows a week, or to do what 25 takes

Sara Fay:

Right. The bandwidth that is required to play the great tragic heroins or Shakespearean characters, or even the more modern characters. It requires so much bandwidth. So much, the channel has to be so wide, so big, so open, so free and available in order to really do justice to these archetypical characters that hold so much space in our psyche. And so much medicine. So much medicine. I think-

Charlie Sandlan:

What do you mean by that, so much medicine? What do you mean by that?

Sara Fay:

Well, stories of medicine, I think. Right? There's that great Joan Didion quote that we always quote in my theater collective, that we tell stories in order to live. And I think it's very, very true that we all contain, we all contain all of it. It comes back to that holographic. We do have every character inside of us. We do have all of humanity inside of us with all of its horror, with all of its beauty. And to see that.

Charlie Sandlan:

Also the ugly parts. The despicable parts, the beautiful parts,

Sara Fay:

Absolutely. And to be able to hold that, to hold space for the despicable, for the sick, for really the shadow parts of our psyche that is so often suppressed.

Charlie Sandlan:

And the great actors can access all of that. I've had many discussions with fellow actors and people who have come on this podcast, teachers, and I think particularly with this younger generation we're we're putting out, and I say mostly the universities in this country that are forced to now are putting out actors in the world who are very resistant to the darker, nastier, uglier sides.

Sara Fay:

Right. And it's a problem.

Charlie Sandlan:

It's corporate. I'm not going to do that. Listen, I've had students say, "I don't want to do this scene because of the racial implications, or it's too violent, or it's too nasty." People don't want do it. I'm like, "Really?" But you want to be an artist and you're not really willing to look at the uglier parts of humanity, or step into that?

Sara Fay:

That's the responsibility of the actor. That's our job.

Charlie Sandlan:

Absolutely. But I don't think most young, I mean, like these 20 somethings that are coming out of school. They're too coddled. "Are you triggered? Or this is uncomfortable for you?" Sure. You can sit out." We walk on eggshells with students now.

Sara Fay:

Yeah. Well, and this is-

Charlie Sandlan:

I think it does a disservice to the art.

Sara Fay:

Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. It's something. It's really speaks to in the end, whenever a student comes and says, "Oh, I'm having difficulty accessing this emotion. What do I do?" I say, "Well, where have you blocked that emotion in your life?" It's pretty clear. Right? It's like cause and effect. Why is it? What is the story around that emotion that makes it hard for you to access?

I think it's something similar with what you're talking about, about not wanting to get the hands dirty in the messy parts of humanity, what we would deem the ugly parts, the shadow parts. And I think it points to a lack of self-reflection in us as a society, as a culture, to be able to really look inward and be honest about the parts of ourselves that maybe are not pretty or lovable or likable.

Charlie Sandlan:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, if you're going to step into the part of a misogynist or a bigot or somebody who's xenophobic, those kind of roles, if you're not willing to be able to look and embrace your own bigotry, your own xenophobia, your homophobia, your misogyny, you're not going to ever be able to approach that kind of material. And we all have bigotry in us. We all have misogyny, we all have... We're just hopefully educated and parented and socialized in a way, and insightful enough to be able to put that into perspective.

Sara Fay:

Right. But not necessarily. That's not a given. I don't think we're a very critical society. Even just speaking for America. Culturally, we don't really criticize our own country. We don't look and take a critical eye and say, "Well, what is our role on the world stage?" In what ways have we fucked up.

Charlie Sandlan:

That's why everybody shit their pants over critical race theory. My God, critical race theory has just caused such an uproar when really I think people are just trying to take an honest assessment of-

Sara Fay:

What's going on.

Charlie Sandlan:

... slavery and the bigotry and the history of this country. And just in a very kind of honest way, but no, no, no.

Sara Fay:

We don't like to do it. And it's not this way in every country. Not every country goes on national television and says that they're the best country in the world. Other countries don't do that, and I think it's kind of a macro umbrella that affects each of us as individuals that there is no cultural reward out there for turning within and saying, "Well, where does my shit stink? What do I need to work on?" You see it's very pervasive. Even right now, it's very trendy to say, "Oh, the narcissist. Oh, narcissistic behavior." How do you spot a narcissist?" But no one is talking-

Charlie Sandlan:

That term gets thrown around just willy-nilly. Really, everybody has the ability to diagnose a narcissist.

Sara Fay:

But here's the thing.

Charlie Sandlan:

Oh, he's such a narcissist. She's a narcissist.

Sara Fay:

But no one is turning within and saying, "Well, in what ways am I a narcissist?" Right? We live in a narcissistic country. We live in a country that proclaims we are the best and are willing to put our best interest forward no matter what it means for the rest of the world. And so naturally, we have narcissism, each of us, because that's the culture in society that we live in. But everyone wants to point the finger and say, "You're a narcissist. Oh, that narcissistic act." But what about ourselves? What about looking within and saying, "Wow, in what ways do I exhibit narcissistic behavior? How do I deal with my own narcissism?"

These are the things that it's like we have to... Well, that's what I love so much about the culture that we have at the studio is the this little subculture where we're able to just say, "Well, let's just carve out a little space to ask those questions, to look within and address it and bring it into contact." And then eventually even into art.

Charlie Sandlan:

You mentioned earlier about emotion, certain emotions that people, but students that we're training struggle with. And there's a predominant one that I notice, and I wanted to ask your thoughts about joy.

Sara Fay:

Joy.

Charlie Sandlan:

The joy bucket.

Sara Fay:

The joy bucket.

Charlie Sandlan:

Oh man, it is a real problem for a lot of actors. I think most people. But in acting, you're training yourself to allow yourself to experience real joy and it's hard for people for many reasons. I'm just wondering your thoughts on that particular emotion and why you think actors struggle with that in particular.

Sara Fay:

There's a lot of vulnerability and joy. It's a very vulnerable place. And as children, we have it innately. It's a very innate part. Every emotion is completely innate to the human experience. But we live, again, in structures and forms where children often don't have a lot of permission in place to express their innate joy as it bubbles up out of them in given moments. They're told to listen, to be still, to be quiet, to tone it down, to not play so loud. It's too much.

Everywhere they turn, whether it's at school, at home. On the playground, they're able to go and be free. But at home, no, "Be quiet. I have a headache. It's too much." I'm raising a child and I know it's tough. It is tough to keep up with that level of joy and energy as an adult human. It begins to create a pattern. When you express something like that, that is so pure and it's shut down. It's no. Make it smaller.

Over time, the more we're told that, by the time we get to adolescence, it's too cool for school. That's becomes the attitude. It's like, "Oh no, I'm too cool for joy." And we can develop these-

Charlie Sandlan:

That's so true.

Sara Fay:

Right.

Charlie Sandlan:

Too cool for joy.

Sara Fay:

Yeah. It's partly a defense mechanism, but it has developed, I think from just getting so shut down so often and from childhood of when we really just want to play and children are meant to play. They're meant to explore and that's how they're meant to learn. But they're kind of put into school systems where they're told to just sit at your desk and memorize this and go here when we tell you and there when we tell you, and there's not a lot of room for them to really explore who they are, which is what I think children really need. That's what they really need is to explore.

Charlie Sandlan:

Absolutely. I also think that we judge and criticize and make fun of and roll our eyes at people we see expressing it. We know that I think in some level that, "Oh Jesus, give me a fucking break." We just roll our eyes at it, or we make fun of it, or we gossip about it. I think we know that and so that's also... I think the we're the too cool for school comes in, too cool for joy.

Sara Fay:

Yeah, because I would rather be-

Charlie Sandlan:

I don't want to be made fun of.

Sara Fay:

Right. I would rather be-

Charlie Sandlan:

I don't want to make an ass out of myself.

Sara Fay:

Right. And it can also go the other way. Joy can also be its own buffer. I know for myself, I default to joy. That's my button. That's where I interface. I'm all about spreading the joy. But to such an extreme extent that it's like, "Well, what about the other parts of myself that I need to honor? The parts that are not joyful, the parts that actually need time to not be in that space?"

I think we all have these patterns of the emotional places that we're comfortable. For me, it's like the joy and the heart and the love and the bring together. This is where I'm-

Charlie Sandlan:

That's you.

Sara Fay:

That's me.

Charlie Sandlan:

That's Sara Fay. Fuck, yeah.

Sara Fay:

To a tee. Right? To an extreme. And it's true for some people it's way too much. And I can see it. I'm not like obvious. I see it. But it's where I'm comfortable. That was my relating pattern that I learned from a child that in my family dynamic, by being joyful and making everyone happy, I could get what I needed, which was stability. So that was why I developed that way.

Charlie Sandlan:

That's amazing. See, I'm like, Eeyore. I'm on the complete other end. I'm like, "God, Jesus." Cynical. Ugh.

Sara Fay:

I love that. I love that for you, Eeyore.

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah.

Sara Fay:

I really take that with me, Charlie. Exactly. Or if other people maybe will default to anger or standoffishness or give me my space and I don't want to be close or to stay also in that melancholy place because it feels comfortable. Because at some point you learned that that was kind of your safe zone, that if you operated right there, you got your needs met in some way.

Charlie Sandlan:

It's aloof. I've always operated in aloof kind of way. And that's been a word that's been used to describe me most of my life. "You're so aloof." Not really. I'm actually very emotional and very sensitive.

Sara Fay:

You are.

Charlie Sandlan:

That's the inner life of me. But I don't show that very often.

Sara Fay:

But it's beautiful. The longer that I work with you and get to know you and getting to experience that part of you, you are so sensitive and so present. That's one thing that I notice about you is whatever I am bringing to the table in whatever it is that we have to talk about, you're always there for it. Really authentically. And I really appreciate that about working with you.

Charlie Sandlan:

Thank you. I'm glad that that's the case. I would be probably disturbed if I've spent my whole life teaching people to be present in the moment if I can't do it in some way.

Sara Fay:

But what do you think it is?

Charlie Sandlan:

I could talk to you forever.

Sara Fay:

I know I'm having so much fun. I want to ask you a question though. What do you think it is for you, the Eeyore persona or like modus operandi that makes that feel safe for you?

Charlie Sandlan:

Oh, it just keeps me kind of on the periphery. I'm a forced extrovert, so I have no problem stepping up when I need to, but I'd much rather be on the side.

Sara Fay:

Observing.

Charlie Sandlan:

I would much rather take solitude over a group of people. I could be by myself for weeks and not have a problem with that. I love traveling by myself. I love going places by myself. I love being alone. And so there's just a part of me, it's like, "I'm safe here." I'm just safe in not fully engaging. Trish is the complete opposite. She'll fucking talk to anybody. She puts herself out there. She's bubbly. She operates in your kind of neck of the woods.

Sara Fay:

Yeah.

Charlie Sandlan:

We'll be out somewhere and she'll just start talking and talking and talking. I just sit there and after we leave, she's like, "You didn't say a word. Why did you?" "Because I'm not interested. If I'm not interested, if I'm not really fully invested or curious about something or someone, I don't pursue it." So it comes across as being aloof, quiet, an, asshole arrogant. All of those things that have been used to describe me.

Sara Fay:

I don't know. It's very interesting because I think it... Well, there's two sides to this. On one side it's really beautiful just to recognize difference. We all have those places where either we feel safe or it's really just an authentic place of relating and to really meet each other in the difference. It's like, this is how you are. It's not about me. Or we so easily would say, "Oh, he's this. Take it personally." But being able to hold space for each other in our difference. And then also in traditional Chinese medicine, they speak of these different meridians and elements related to different emotions. And the idea of finding the balance between all of these. The part of ourselves that is joyful. The part of ourselves that is angry. The part that experiences pleasure. The part that experiences anger.

And saying, "Well, how can I cultivate space for each of these feelings, each of these experiences?" I've been working with that recently, say, "Okay. Yes, Sarah, you know how to be very bubbly and joyful, but why don't you just also hold a little space for yourself, that's maybe grief if that's what's going on." Or yeah, maybe it's anger in a moment if that's what's going on. But to say, "I'm starting to try to challenge that idea of, well, this is how Sarah has to present herself," saying that could be where I default to, but how do I find room for all the other colors in my daily life? It's an interesting question, I guess.

Charlie Sandlan:

That's ongoing work. That's heavy lifting.

Sara Fay:

The process doesn't stop, Charlie. We're in it.

Charlie Sandlan:

It's true. It's true. Well, we have to wrap this up because otherwise you keep talking. But before we go, I just want to say to you that I am really, really grateful that you came into my life, into the studio's life. You are, like I said earlier, the heartbeat of the studio, what you do and your love and your compassion and your sensitivity and the work that you do in Studio B there is not just changing people as artists, but you're helping them change their entire life. And it's work that'll stay with them and change how they relate to the world until they die. It's a profound thing that you do. And it's a cool thing-

Sara Fay:

Oh, thank you so much for saying that. It really touches me and means a lot. I also want to thank you for cultivating this space that is the studio. It's such an honor and such a privilege to be able to come work in an environment like Maggie Flanigan.

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, it all goes back to her. I mean, I just try to maintain and improve what she created. This is her legacy and it's what she wanted. It's her vision really. All right. So we've said things to each other. That's wonderful. I love that.

Sara Fay:

Thank you so much, Charlie.

Charlie Sandlan:

You're welcome. So before I fade the music up here, because I'll fade the music up here in a second, what are a couple of things maybe you'd want to say to actors out there that are grappling with their relationship to their emotional life or their body, or just advice that you just might want to give somebody who wants to pursue this kind of work for you.

Sara Fay:

I would say give yourself permission to be messy. And that it doesn't have to be perfect. I think we get so stuck in this idea of it needing to be good or needing it to be at the best. Just to give yourself permission to say, "Fuck it. Be messy. Let it all hang out. Make a mistake. Just don't be so dear with everything. You got to break a few eggs. You got to just give yourself permission to fail, fail, fail again, fail forward." That's great and love it. Just to embrace that part of yourself that doesn't need it to be perfect, that doesn't need to already know.

Put yourself in a position of openness, of learning, of being like a sponge. Just that curiosity. That's what I wish. That's what wish for the next generation of actors, just bringing a sense of play to all of this that is so deep and powerful and meaningful. But to enter in with that childlike period sense of wonder.

Charlie Sandlan:

(singing).

Well, my fellow daydreamers, thank you for sticking around and keeping that phone in your pocket. Please subscribe and follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. If you have a few seconds and you can go to iTunes, leave a written review, that would be fantastic. You can go to https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com Go to the contact page, hit that red button. I use SpeakPipe. You can leave me a message, share with me some of your thoughts, ask me a question you'd like answered on the show.

You can go to https://www.maggieflaniganstudio.com My next in person, first year class in New York City is January 5th. You can also follow me on Instagram @creatingbehavior, @maggieflaniganstudio. Lawrence Trailer, thank you for this song, my man. My friends, please approach your artistic work with childlike curiosity. Stay resilient, play full out with yourself, a don't ever settle for your second best. My name is Charlie Sandlan. Peace.

(singing)