Claire Chitham

Transcription

I have studied at a variety of different schools and studied a variety of techniques in classes as well as sort of reading the books and auditing classes here in Los Angeles as well as back in New Zealand and Australia and I did some classes in New York. None of those techniques that I studied were put any emphasis into developing your character and putting the work into character and owning the fact that you get to pretend to be another character. So I am not sure if that study is about you know drawing on all of this inner pain and it is like I am not a painful person, I live a pretty happy life. The challenges that I would kind of face when working in television on a sort of regular basis were the challenges that you come up against when you are working against the clock or when you have that sort of pressures of shooting a scene 10 times in a day and you are supposed to be in some kind of deep well of emotion and overwhelming tears or pain or something. And the exhaustion and the complete beating myself up with regards to staying in that place or attaining some level of amazing performance when really I am just kind of swimming around in this pool of upset depression or you know unlike my character supposed to be depressed but now Claire's upset because I am not really giving the performance that I want to give and so those are sort of the challenges that I guess I would find and that I was facing with my television work and things that I didn't really know I needed to look at, things where you kind of think, "Oh, I'm getting away with this. I'm getting away with this performance and I am using— I got my little tricks that I use for certain things." But that's no fun, that's me being an actor, whose been in the business for a long time and knows that I only have to do this much in order to get what is required and I am not interested in doing that. I am interested in performing and experiencing the joy of performing and you know giving the audience and the director what they need from this character in order to believe this story. Somewhere part way through my study here, I had that experience of completely giving over to being this character and completely being in this moment and letting that world show up and skipping out and lasting for a couple of minutes and skipping out the other side and sort of looking back and going wow, what was that. And that was I think that little key—where I went, oh this is that magic stuff and this is that moment that I am kind of constantly chasing with what I do that you stumble upon maybe once a day if you're lucky on theatre you know maybe once a week, maybe only a few times during the course of a part of performing a role and through drilling and through these exercises and through moving through them, I've started to experience that every single time where the goal is always just to give over to playing and being that character and that is where the freedom and the fun lies. The main difference between what I have learnt at the acting center and how we are being taught at the Acting Center compared to any sort of other classes that I have done or any other study is that in all of the other classes there is fundamentally a teacher in charge of the class that sits there and facilitates the class and maybe teaches you some technique and some ideas and at the end of the says, "That was great, but you could have done this better" or "I will tell you why that is not quite right" or "Yeah that was fantastic, but I don't really believe you." And the Acting Center has none of that. And that is amazing and helpful and again revolutionary, to not have that in a class, but to have people who are feeding ideas and feeding exercises and feeding practices to you in the room, but to know you are not being judged was at first incredibly strange and uncomfortable and then very quickly as I got used to it so freeing and powerful and that is literally what is handed the power of me trusting myself, trusting my choices and trusting what I am doing back to me because I kind of don't care what anybody else thinks now genuinely. We always like to say that we don't but god, we are actors of course we do and I genuinely now kind of go no no you know that voice has got a lot quieter so it was a strange thing to get used to it first but I really got to think I could go back to having it any other way now. I didn't realize how critical I was of myself before until I had come here. I was amazed when we first started doing the drills and you know we're sort of taught how to not criticize one another. I was amazed at how loud the voice was not negative criticism just questioning just going what did you do that for. When you did that what happened and like this constant little voice and it was the voice of the sort of what I used to call the watcher whenever I was performing on stage you know there is always that person that sort of higher you that is watching you perform and going you know making, it was like making sure are doing everything right and I used to think that that person was really necessary, that their needed to be three of you and how ridiculous is that because I need to be putting every single amount of you know energy and attention into being the character doing what I am doing and Claire getting out of the way so it has been very revealing for me to sort of feel how loud that voice was and it is amazing how fast that little judge woman has shut up. You know, I've got her pretty quiet now. Yeah. Soon she'll be gone. She'll never come back. What being here and what studying here at the Acting Center has done has given me this expanded toolbox where I now know exactly were I need to start when it comes to when a character turns up when I get an audition or when I know that I am doing playing a role in a theatrical production or a show and I know where to start. I know where and how to research and develop this character and I know the work I need to put in to that part of it and then I know how to release and unleash and let that character kind of come to life. It has also taught me about collaboration with directors and teachers and script work and all of the building blocks to what an actor kind of needs to work with them what I have always worked with, but now it has this shape and I have a confidence in it because I have experienced using this technique and I have experienced what performing is like whilst using this technique and it's like that achieving that in the moment place every single time. One of the things that I am most grateful to the Acting Center for is giving me back the power of A, being an artist; and B, respecting and treasuring and remembering that I am an artist because I have been trained to think that I was a lowly actor who just get's employed by other people to turn up and do this thing and the Acting Center has reminded me that it is an art form and that I need to respect the art form and I also get to command my art form. And I feel like I have much more confidence over my career than I ever had before. I feel like I don't really care about whether you know whether an audition comes or whether I get a job. It is like well whatever I have got some stuff to do and I am in charge and I am going to head off and do it.