How Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" helped me in characterization

I want to briefly talk about some TAW tools I used for the last play I was in last year.

One friend commented:

"Knowing you and knowing it was you, your role confused me a little in the beginning. By about ten minutes into the evening though I actually forgot it was you! I can't think of a greater accomplishment or compliment for an actor. Thank you so much for this evening and your seemingly effortless indifference."

(My role and job was to be indifferent to the other characters throughout the play. I play a Tour Guide that ushers the audience from one room to another where they see scenes of torture, and I comment and explain the scenes nonchalantly.)

One other friend exchanged sms with me:

RICO: How did you like Information for Foreigners?
FRIEND: It was pretty intense. I didn't know you watched it, too.
RICO: That was you with Ping, right? (Ping's a famous TV actor here.)
FRIEND: Yes. I didn't see you, though. Too bad! I didn't know we watched on the same evening.
RICO: I'm sure you saw me. You couldn't have not seen me. I was wearing this tall hat with glowing brains spilling from the top. And striped shirt and pants.
FRIEND: Gasp! You were our tour guide! OMG! You were our tour guide! Hahahaha! I can't stop laughing! Of course you were our tour guide! I didn't recognize you! Hahahaha!

Well, haha. That's what happened. I really don't have a theory on acting, except to read the script at least a hundred times and to listen to the director. I don't have anything against acting theories and they have their function in today's theatre. For example, it has almost become a backstage joke when actors suddenly fall quiet and say, "Wait lang. Nag-be-being lang ako," in reference to Eric Morris. I do know it works for some actors. And there's lots out there: Stanislavsky, Uta Hagen, Don Richardson, Judith Weston... The trouble happens when the actor becomes more concerned with servicing his acting school/method/teacher rather than servicing the material and his audience.

But here's how The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron helped me, though.

1. Morning pages show directions to take the play to the edge... attacks and choices I would normally not think of on my own.
2. Artist dates trigger synchronicity.
3. Imaginary Lives. Remember this in Week 1? I put in "Mad Tour Guide" as an imaginary life, and go on from there.
4. Image Files. I pull images here and there, pictures of what I think would show up in my character's thought life and dreams.
5. "Just show up." Whenever my resistance is up and the last thing I want to do is to go to rehearsals, I remind myself to just show up the way I do for morning pages when the last thing I want to do is to get up and write.
6. Affirmations. Our arsenal. Woot! Affirmations work. Three I used for Information for Foreigners are: "I am big inside and I can let that out" ... "God is holding me and I am safe" ... "I believe in this play. I believe in what I say."
7. The Virtue Trap Quiz. When circumstances prop up against me, I immediately recognize this as the virtue trap, wanting to leverage me back to old scarcity thinking and defeatist behavior. I wake up and plunge on with the work I need to do.

TAW has taken me further into my Christian faith. Now we don't have to be Christian for TAW's tools to work. I just think that TAW allows us to be truer and truer to our individual truths... TAW drives us gently into who we really are. We become who we really are, whatever it is... Christian, agnostic, Buddhist, Moslem, father, mother, husband, spouse, child, and ultimately, artist.