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.
