Becoming the Body

I found an inspiring talk by Amy Cuddy on “body language”.  And it resonated with me in all the ways that words become scripts become characters become bodies.

As an actor I’ve worked with some stage directors who were all about the floorplan, “Move left three steps, raise your arm, turn away, walk to the wall.” There were times when I was asked to do some physical bit of business, that was not organic to my process, that made me feel like a puppet on a string. Other times, I would find becoming the body of the character in the challenge of doing something that wasn’t my idea.  And sometimes it was all about finding the shoes that my character would wear, as the footprint of the body would tell me how I would walk in that play.

But what I related to most in this talk, was the idea that “I don’t belong here.”  I’ve done a lot of shape shifting in my life, in my travels and shows, and that concept of “belonging” has been a large part of my hunger and identity. Being able to be part of the LA PI blog gives me a place to belong

The clip is 21 minutes long.

Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk

The artist is Catrin Welz Stein