How am I doing today?

Breathe.

Grounded closed yesterday, its initial run anyway. We got home after a 4-hour strike, I put the flight suit and boots away, shirt and socks into the laundry. I slept very, very soundly last night, which hasn’t been the case for the last two weeks. This morning I got up, and went through my full morning routine.

Read a chapter of Zen in the Art of Archery. Since the new year, I have started my day each day by reading 15 - 20 minutes of eastern philosophy, which has been incredibly calming and strength-building.

I spend a few minutes seeing off my husband and daughter as they head to work and school. 6 minutes of balance exercises. This six minutes every day is a great opportunity for me to check in with my body and my mind. How am I doing today? Am I steady? Am I grounded? I unroll my yoga mat, and stretch for 10 - 12 minutes. Breathe into those muscles, those joints, those hard-working tendons that need breath. Today was a return to planking in the morning. How am I doing? Do I feel strength and can I balance the tension and find relaxation?

I roll up my yoga mat, and bring up a guided vocal warm-up on my i-phone. I have been doing this vocal warm-up for almost six years now. In 2010, my husband pushed me to go to an actor training program. He researched summer programs and sent me the information on the Atlantic Acting School and said, “this is the one you need to go to.” He was right. I come back to the vocal work I learned there almost every day. I spend 10 minutes, 20 minutes or more if I have the time, breathing and generating sound. How I am doing today? Where am I feeling vibration? The warm up is different every day because I am different every day. Sometimes I spend my vocal time in the morning focused only on the breath, with very little sound. I am grateful for this time to breathe and nourish this very basic starting point for everything.

Make sure the water is heating up for my cup of tea.

I turn to another practice: speech. Working the muscles of my mouth. Tuning in to vibration and sound waking up the full range of my voice. Articulation, clear pronunciation, strength and freedom of movement to shape breath and sound to clearly communicate. How am I doing today? Am I here in this moment or just going through the motions? I spend about 16 or 17 minutes on this speech practice.

Brew a cup of green tea and let it steep.

Meditate 10 - 12 minutes. Breathe. How am I doing today? Am I here in this moment? Am I grounded?

Drink my green tea. Eat breakfast, face the day. Carry the work from the morning into the day.

I was terrified when theatre KAPOW chose to put Grounded into the season. There was a time I said, “Find someone else to do it. I won’t be able to do it.” 100 minutes on stage, just me. Lean into the uncomfortable, face the fear. I know that the only way I was able to do it was because of those daily practices. My voice did not give out, my body did not give out. Voice, speech, and most importantly breath.

I am grateful for those practices. I am grateful.

Breathe.

~Carey Cahoon

Back to basics

My daughter’s dance school posted this thought a few weeks ago: “Beginning dancers prefer to take Intermediate Level classes; Intermediate dancers prefer to take advanced level classes; Advanced level dancers take private lessons to work on the basics.”

This quote stuck with me and I have been thinking about it a lot over the last three months. The process of studying, learning, exploring, and creating our production of Macbeth was incredibly daunting and humbling. I often felt myself lost in the complexity of Shakespeare’s language, character and story; and having to keep up with my fellow ensemble members.

When I finally had time to catch my breath between the first production and the re-mount, I pulled a book off my shelf to re-read: The Practical Handbook for the Actor. It doesn’t take long to read the book, but I have underlined so very many things in it. I pulled out the notebook from my summer at the Atlantic Acting School, and laughed to look through all the attempts to analyze the short scenes we were working with in our classes.  Pages and pages of Literals, Wants, Actions, and As-ifs; crossed out, re-drafted, written over again with a different word choice. I scrapped the analysis I had settled on for the performance of Macbeth, and started the process all over again, only to go back to what I had before.  It is so complex, but so simple.

Around the same time, my mother-in-law gave me two books by Cicely Berry for my birthday. Coincidentally, Voice and the Actor is on the list of recommended reading at the back of Practical Handbook. Somehow, I had never read her work, but am finding as I read that it really resonates (pardon the pun) with me right now. For several weeks during this very busy fall, I had gotten away from my routine of daily voice and speech practice. Even when I had been doing those practices, I found myself going through the motions and not working with awareness and attention. For the last ten days, I have allowed myself the luxury of at least five minutes every morning just to breathe. With all of my energy and attention focused on just that.  It is so complex, but so simple.

I’ll slowly start a return to my full vocal practice, getting into more detailed work, playing with new-to-me texts and exercises.

But for now, I am more than happy to take the time to work on the basics.

~ Carey Cahoon