I did not study the basics of acting, but everything in an actor’s work is aimed toward creating the right communication. This is natural. When we play the roles of our friends, we understand each other better and as a result, the amount of conflicts immediately drops. Statistics show this as well. A person starts to judge everyone, including himself and his friend. Besides his own role, he can learn one more role and live out both. He can become his own judge, or his friend’s advocate. These persona become totally equal! By acting, a person becomes objective.
– During the workshops, should we monitor the extent to which the children have learned to understand and justify one another?
– Of course. If I start living out someone else’s role, it means that I justify that person to the end. I blame myself entirely. This is natural. I “enter” him, so I am he and he is me.
Suppose that a conflict arose in one of our groups. The children’s egoism suddenly and drastically escalated, and they could not do anything about it. During the studies they listen to articles about friendship and unification in order to achieve a common goal, and they sing and communicate. Everything’s normal. And then suddenly, a minute later, there is an explosion of egoism and conflicts break out as if the children have been replaced by someone else. And half an hour later, at another lesson, friendly relations are restored between them.
What can we do so these outbursts of egoism won’t occur? How can we prevent the egoism from breaking out to the surface, so separation won’t emerge? The children admit that they cannot control these outbursts.
So what do we plan on doing? First of all, videotape the entire process on camera, including the mutual criticism and accusations. This will allow us to see pride, envy, the desire for power over others, and in general, all of the feelings and urges that are inherent in every person. Then we will show it to the kids. Let each of them try to play the role of his friend.
Suppose you and I quarreled, it was filmed, and now we are watching this process from the side. At first, I am 100% sure that I am right, and I live out my role all over again. We remember what we experienced.
But the teacher says, “Let each of you learn about the other person’s behavior and try to understand why he acted that way.” So now I have to look at the whole process through the eyes of my friend, I have to exit myself and enter your state. I have to see myself “from within you,” how you see me, how and why you are blaming me, and what you are criticizing me for. After that I have to play the role of my friend, and the friend plays me.
We know that this is not easy for children. Afterwards we discuss to what extent we succeeded in playing the first role and the second one. Thus, your first character, which participated in the conflict in reality, becomes just one of two roles. You look at your first state more objectively, your position shifts, and you are already somewhere between these two images.
And it doesn’t matter if everything doesn’t work out perfect right away. The most important thing is that as a result, the child’s qualities begin to gain a “multi-faceted” character. He begins to understand that it is possible to be different and that it is possible to learn to rise above himself.
In a child, egoistic outbursts are expressed powerfully and occur immediately. But we help the children learn to transcend them.
– Onstage, egoism agrees with this kind of work.
– With playing a different role?
– Yes. And does it! It’s a huge pleasure.
– And we don’t need anything more than that.
– But during moments of real outbursts, it is very difficult to negotiate with egoism.
– It’s not that difficult, really. This is exactly how children start taking part in the process of working on egoism. Let them sit in a semi-circle in front of their friends and act. And the more a child can rise above being a slave to his egoism, and put on a different role from the bottom of his heart, change “places” with his friend, the more approval he will earn from his society.
By living out foreign images and drawing any one of them out as if from a deck of cards, a child begins to treat these roles “objectively” so he no longer personally identifies with any of them.
A child’s attitude to his “I” changes. He asks the question, “What has remained in him of this ‘I’?” A person begins to realize that he is pure and not filled with anything. He begins to see everything as purely an act. That way, a person even starts treating his own urges as phenomena that are installed into him by some program.