You may have realized that you feel free when you rehearse at home; but as soon as you act in front of the audience, you stop listening. Instead, you start controlling and pushing your performance and your instrument closes down and shrinks. In other words, you do not feel free.
Of course, this can be a painful experience since when you act, you want to be fulfilled and free from pleasing the director or from worrying about what the audience may think of you. Actually, when you start acting in front of people, you may start wondering whether you are doing it right or not, whether you are doing what they want you to do or whether you made the right or the wrong choice. You may put a lot of effort in all these result oriented aspects that get you too much in your head.
In order to fix this issue, you may have tried a lot of acting classes, done some therapy or learnt new acting techniques out there; and realized that the problem persists since you send all your energy out there instead of bringing it back into your experience.
When you watch my training below you will discover that the root cause of the fact that you do not feel free in front of the audience is because your ego takes over, which means that you will try to look good, please others, be a good actor, be liked, etc. When this happens, your ego hijacks your system and takes over your performance so you may catch yourself trying to be an interesting actor instead of being interested in what your character wants at the moment. But your job as an actor is to be a character and defend their needs.
And the reason why your ego takes over is because since you were little, you were conditioned to “be good”, “do it right”, “look good” by some external authority so you could fit in and please others. Inevitably, when you act in front of an audience; the conditioning, the external authority and the fear of making mistakes or not being liked shows up.
Therefore, the work to do to feel free in front of an audience is to undo that ego and layer of conditioning that is on top of your freedom so that you can be your free self again progressively, even in front of the audience and under pressure.
Watch my training to hear all my thoughts on this topic.
After you watch the training, I'd love for you to join in the conversation happening in our private Facebook Group THE INSTINCTIVE ACTORS' SOCIETY. You can get answers for your specific situation directly from me and connect with THOUSANDS of like-minded actors across the globe, so we can move things forward faster together.
If you're not already a member, be sure to request to join ASAP here.
See you there!
Jo Kelly
Creator, The Reset Journey From Resistance to Freedom
P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are two ways I can help you:
Get your FREE training on how to STOP TRYING TO BE A GOOD ACTOR SO YOU HAVE A CHANCE AT BEING GREAT
Get on the waitlist for my program, The Reset Journey From Resistance to Freedom, and stop struggling to access your natural, authentic talent in the audition room or on set. You'll learn how to reset your instrument to be 100% instinctive and free in just 33 days.
GET ON WAITLIST: tobeornottoact.com/waitlist
