We practice speaking and listening. We don’t practice conversing. We practice nothing else but speaking and listening. Nothing else but that simple back and forth of communication. It is a conversation with no subject.
But the first thing that happens when two people speak and listen with no subject of conversation is someone will start acting. We put on a mask. Speaking and listening without acting is extremely intimate. It’s shockingly raw. It’s very real. And that in itself is unsettling. We’re not used to that kind of truth.
But this is an acting class and so there’s no acting allowed. Acting is not allowed in Dialogue class. Because your instincts matter. Authentic impulses matter. How will they be ever known or realized if you never practice accessing them?
In a class we need to see dialogue without acting demonstrated by one person, at the very least. One person to demonstrate to others what it means not to act. One person to demonstrate how not to pretend. One person to be willing to not to hide.
“You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.” – James Baldwin.
You want to speak and listen as clean as a bone. That is the goal.
Dialogue starts up online in January, 2021 on Tuesday evenings at 7pm. If you have taken Foundations at Actorium you may enter directly into this class.