An interview with Peter Goldfarb from the book, "Voices
from the Heart" (Edited by Deborah & Edward Shapiro)
I
first began as a performer when I was quite young; when I was
just eighteen I started directing and, at twenty-two, I produced
my first play. When time came to make a decision about my career,
I looked at what the life of an actor was like and found it
uninspiring. I saw what I would call "poverty mentality":
everything from literal poverty, in which actors scrape and
struggle from one job to another to survive, to the psychological
realm of poverty, in which actors feel an external dependence
for a sense of fulfillment or satisfaction. I also saw a lot
of ego - a quality of being both inflated and defensive at the
same time. I saw this in myself, yet I also felt very insecure
and that insecurity was part of the vulnerability that nurtured
me as an actor. If I thought I was wonderful, where was I going
to go or how could I grow?
The ostensible
dependency of an actor comes from the fact that you have to
audition and, either somebody has to like you and hire you,
or you are not liked and refused the part; who you are or how
you are is rejected. So much of our culture is conditioned to
feel incomplete, as if something is absent inside, and therefore
we have to focus on getting it from outside. Prodded by commercials,
some people seek completeness from the right deodorant, car
or designer label. Actors seek someone to approve, accept, or
acknowledge him or her. Everywhere I looked I saw this programmed
dependency. If the assumption is that it is just the way it
has to be, how is it possible not to be dependent?
Later, I
began to understand that performance, for me, had nothing to
do with either building myself up or feeling dependent. It had
to do with manifesting a sense of generosity: if this is my
gift, if this is what I am most capable of doing, then it is
also the way I can most touch other peoples' lives. Within the
context, I experience myself as a kind of vehicle through which
something flows and manifests. Something happens when we follow
our passion, and the result is this expression of generosity;
if people receive it that way, it is a gift that touches their
lives. It isn't about constructing and solidifying ego; it is
about manifesting compassion and generosity.
The answer
to dependency, I believe, lies in shifting from the conditioned
allegiance to dependency, to a conscious allegiance to the process
of self-empowerment. Through my experience with many varied
disciplines not related to acting, I began to synthesize a process
of creative empowerment which, at the very least, redressed
the balance between external dependency and self realization
or creative fulfillment. For instance, an actor thinks he/she
has to go to school to learn how to speak or move properly,
how to learn technique, and so on. In almost all our educational
systems, there is a hidden dependency: I can't be a good actor
unless I learn how to do this or that. But true education in
acting comes from discovering our organic sense of movement
and speech, our authentic way of being in the world.
By facilitating
each individual to access his/her own personal and very extraordinary
uniqueness, there can be a transcendence of the habitual through
the fruition of authenticity. When the individual begins to
have an experience of his/her authentic self and of the creative
resources at his/her disposal, that, in itself, is transformation.
As such, I don't see performance as a need to be seen; I experience
it more in terms of my willingness to allow my being to be seen.
This means that I open in such a way that, what is supposed
to come through me will come through. The process of preparing
a role, to me, is one of gradually, but insistently, removing
myself as an obstacle. If I go into a situation believing that
I know something, then this inhibits my spontaneity; I have
a prior reference point and I am not there in the moment with
the situation as it is. So, I am both committed to the search
and to not knowing.
Rather than
define the creative process, I prefer to respond to its continual
challenge to remain open and fresh. One such challenge I set
for myself, as a teacher, was to see how far I could go without
teaching my technique whatsoever. The amazing thing is that,
appropriately nurtured and facilitated, each actor's speech
or movement emerges fully formed. So, it isn't even a question
of bad or good. It's like Venus coming out of the water, or
Athena being born from the head of Zeus, fully formed. If a
performer is coming from something that he/she himself/herself
has engendered, then it is a given that his/her commitment is
total because he/she is not struggling to imitate any kind of
model outside himself/herself.
I work with
guided fantasy and dreams, experiential exercises that bypass
the cerebral and the conceptual mind. There is an exercise I
do that begins as a guided fantasy, in which you imagine yourself
as a member of the opposite sex. You imagine how your body feels,
what you are wearing, what your occupation is, and what you
are doing. You ask if you have hobbies, if you have a boyfriend
or girlfriend. You become the person. This isn't difficult because
you already know everything you need to know about this person;
you have created the person directly from a place where you
haven't had to think - the creative unconscious. It is remarkable
to see the characters that people come up with and to witness
how we all walk around with these characters inside ourselves.
I believe
that becoming oneself is the true transcendence, because what
one is transcending is the limited view of oneself, the self
that is defined by ego. That is not the same as throwing out
the ego. The problem with ego comes when we think that's all
there is and identify only with it; we buy into the result and
start to believe our own image. That is what causes so much
suffering and confusion with success, whether as an actor, or
as something else, such as a spiritual teacher. There is a difference
between how we are and how people respond to how we are, particularly,
if the response is conditioned by dependency. If I resonate
with someone and say, "Yes, this is an appropriate model
for me," that helps me in my own process. But if I say,
"This person is going to save me," I am perpetuating
that dependency. Then I will begin to project qualities of authority
or enlightenment onto that person. And sometimes, depending
on who he/she is, that person will believe this projection and
buy into the image of savior.
Everybody
has a practice; some people practice meditation, some practice
neurosis. If we are suffering, then our practice is suffering;
if we come to a point where we understand we are not suffering,
then we cease to practice suffering and move onto a more self-nurturing
practice. I am not attributing to practice something either
wonderful or not wonderful. Why would I be great by practicing
meditation and not great by practicing piano playing? But we
tend to associate practice with something spiritual and special.
I think that the sooner we understand that everyone is practicing
something, the easier it is to move toward the kind of awareness
that leads to more self-empowerment, to compassionate and generous
practice.
I've had
the opportunity to observe and experience the enormous richness
of the human spirit, to watch people transform as they begin
to understand that all they need to do is be who they are, be
their authentic human self. The word spiritual seems to engender
duality because it implies there must be non-spiritual. To me,
being is about understanding that we do not have to worry about
getting this and that or learning this or that, because there
is no this or that; it's just about getting in touch with our
own inimitable and infinite creative resources.
There is
a tendency to resist the understanding and awareness of our
authenticity because it seems so simple, but the creative experience
is there in every moment. It's simply a matter of shifting our
allegiance, our identification, to see that there is very little
we need to do, and that judgements or comparisons are futile.
The difference or distinctions are only those of form. There
is the form of the theater, of the play, of the character, and
of the act, in the same way as there are all the different forms
of our life. We change according to the form: if a bomb were
to drop into my living room right now, my behavior would change.
I would respond to that form. However, these are only forms,
and we don't have to confuse the form with the process, the
content with the essence. There are forms within which it is
possible for us to manifest more fully than within other forms.
I can express myself more fully as a performer than I could
driving a bus, but for some people it's the opposite. There
are some wonderful characters driving buses because they have
found the form in which they can most manifest themselves.
We need
to bury the illusion that we even have a choice of being anything
other than what we are. Rather than all this confusion of "what
should I do with my life," I feel we need to ask "what
am I truly passionate about, where is my passion?" When
we respond to our passion then we can never be anything other
than who we are.
