Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Shtick therapy
So this afternoon I was really annoyed to learn that a particular decision did not go my way, and I was so angry and bothered that I wanted to just go home and skip the rest of my responsibilities. But I had a class waiting so I went in there and put on this big fakey smile and started through my usual clownlike shtick and before you know it I got caught up in the performance and forgot to be annoyed. My students aren't perfect but they're engaging and they're why I'm here, and sometimes that's enough.
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Actors refer to this as "muscle memory." It's a tenet of the Stanislavski Method, at least as it has been translated by Strasburg here in the U.S. The re-creation of the physical effects of an emotion cause the re-birth of the emotion, or, as one of my profs used to say, "Monkey do, monkey feel."
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