On rising in the morning, I sit on my floor, facing the sun, feeling its warmth across my face, breathing deeply, and clearing my mind. In my morning commute, I slip between and among the throng of New Yorkers in a rush to their places of work. At work, my teammates and I catch road cases as they slide down the ramp of a truck, and run heavy, unwieldy cables long distances across pipe, and truss, and ground. In the evening, exiting the chaos of my journey home, I meet with a good friend for coffee and we discuss our fears and insights into the path unfolding in front of us. A core concept that I will always come back to from my time in Sweden is that of “listening” because it existed in all of these situations, and in every performance ever.

At its core, “listening” is more than just one of the five senses. It is more than just a summation of all of them. When a person is “listening” at their best, they are using sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing to be in tune with their surroundings. In martial arts and stage combat, we coin this term as “awareness.” I move to say that the two are still not yet synonymous (which is a misconception many newcomers, including me, made during the Scenkonst physical theatre program). They are not quite the same, as “awareness” is only perhaps half of “listening.” The other, more vital, half I found in my experience and interpretation of our education was communication. Because, at the end of the day, while having this information is fantastic and being more aware of your surroundings and other people is most necessary on or off the stage/camera/mic, if you are not using it to converse with your partner, having a meaningful exchange where you both give and take, the information you gather may as well not exist at all.

I like “listening” used as a word to encompass all of this, however, better than “communication.” I feel that communication is too easily taken as “talking” “to” or “at” someone, rather than “with” them. “Listening” encourages you to wait, embrace the stillness or the silence, the state of things as they are, before you try to affect them, and then to contribute. It is a practice that I try to exercise in every part of my day, with traffic, with strangers, with friends, with lovers, with partners, with stories, with characters, with choreographies, with postures, and with knowledge. I do not claim to be a master. I do not claim to be consistently good at it. I do claim to be fascinated with it, and convinced that one can absolutely improve one’s craft by investing in their “listening” skills.

But first, what are some things a performer specifically can listen to? My key “partners” that I make sure to always keep “listening” to are:

• First one’s easy because it is the most straightforward. Also quite easily forgotten. My scene partner. This could be the other half of a singing, dancing, fighting, clowning, or acting duet. This could be the other principal characters in a scene with me. This could be the rest of the dance, acting, or choral ensemble that I am a part of. We learned in our program to be aware and to communicate with our partners on the stage, no matter what we were doing. Work together with them. Make them look good. Read what they need and give it to them (even, or especially, if it’s an obstacle). A body cannot exist in any story alone, and a player who works with the whole, “says yes” to them, and converses in the moment with them, will always keep the audience interested.
• Second one’s a little more meta, but also straightforward, I think. It’s the audience. Even with the fourth wall in tact, you better believe communication with the audience needs to be open and alive and fluid. Maybe this means a Shakespearean character has cast each member of the audience as his brothers in battle, and he must rouse them each, personally, to victory! Maybe this means the cell phone that goes of in the middle of a clown show gets the full attention such a bombastic, clear interruption deserves. But, also, maybe this means the performer raises her focus to higher seats in the house, so that everyone can see her expression, or practices her diction to make each word land clearly even to the back of the house, or clearly executes her choreography, allowing each move to finish fully before moving to the next so that the audience has enough time to absorb all that she is projecting out. To follow the story being presented, and stay with the character so that they experience the journey together. The audience is insanely important to keep listening to. Without them, there is no show, and no one to “listen” to the story being told.
• Third and finally, a player who can be forgotten and drowned in the efforts to listen to the first two “partners.” A performer must “listen” to himself. Impulses are always around us, and with the constant stream of information from our senses at our fingertips, we should be at a loss for what to do. Even in nothing, there is always something. Our struggle comes with saying “no” or prejudging our ideas before we try them. In improvisation, I refer to the “yes and” rule. In order to support your partner and keep the flow of the story moving, you should not shut down their ideas when they present them. This applies to yourself as well. At the same time, you are you, there’s only one of you, but also, we’re all human. That means, one in the same, you hold an entire story inside of you. Every urge, every impulse, is a new chapter to unfold. It is exciting, fresh, and relatable. A performer who listens to themselves — who cares for themselves — will find the other members of the conversation (the story) that are “listening” caring for them as well.

So, there you have it. The wide, all-compassing, all-healing core concept of “listening.” Does it seem unattainable? A little too much like some magic sixth sense? By this point, you’ve probably realized that we all naturally have it. It’s with us, and whether we consciously know about it or not, chances are, it’s always growing and improving. But here, I’d like to share with you all some key practices that will directly affect your “listening” as a performer:

• Breathing exercises. Whether it’s yoga, improving your cardio, meditation, diaphragm work, or Navy Seal-trained focus tactics, breathing right is your best friend in “listening.” Oftentimes what can close us off, or freak us out, and make us unreachable is when we get stressed, tense up, and forget to breathe. Maybe then, we go too fast, and the “conversation” becomes fuzzy. Even champion breathers cannot always guarantee that in stressful situations (physically or mentally or both) they will keep breathing, but if you set time aside to give special attention to this absolutely essential human skill, I promise your thinking will clear, your nerves will settle, and your communication and focus skills will go through the roof. And all of those are parts of “listening.”
• Meditation. I mentioned this above, but it deserves its own bullet point. Meditation, prayer, quiet time, focus time, however you choose to practice it, helps the performer to concentrate mentally by accepting all inputs and allowing them to “be.” You can read a thousand articles on how daily meditation helps to improve your mental state – well, it turns out that good performers need good mental states too. In my personal experience, I have found that meditating has helped my ability to accept impulses and specify them when playing a scene, while also managing to keep up attentiveness towards my partners. I try to get in twenty minutes a day, but even five can work wonders.
• Social Interaction. Interacting with people and all the parts they play in our lives. Strangers, acquaintances, friends, loved ones, coworkers, the list goes on. Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone has something they can learn from another’s story. It boils down to life experience, but really, as portrayers of life, we also have to be observers and influencers. Sometimes this means sticking your neck out for someone, asking them an extra question or two about themselves, or working to understand a perspective that is different from your own. They all work to up your social game, and that bolsters “listening.”
• Improvisation. The most directly-performance-related practice. Whether it’s music improv, dance improv, acting improv, singing improv, martial arts improv, or poetry improv, nothing fuels listening better than boosting your improv skills. And the ONLY way to get better at improv is by doing it. It’s cool to just do it around fellow artists if you’re shy, but do not underestimate the power of doing it over and over again in front of an audience. Putting yourself on the spot is the fastest way to discover your impulses, form close bonds with all your “partners,” and keep the excitement of the story alive (because none of these “partners” know exactly what’s coming next). One of my primary goals in my education was to keep the feeling of improv alive even in my rehearsed pieces. It makes sense. You’re playing a character in a story that is experiencing everything for the first time, even if you, the actor, rehearsed it. If you get to know the experience that is improvisation, it will improve your choices and communication onstage. Our program focused HEAVILY on this practice, encouraging us to improvise dance anywhere from one to eight hours a day. At Scenkonst in Linköping, we were a physical theatre program, and our foundation was movement, so dance translated to everything else we did together pretty easily. I like it best as an exercise, though for many, it might start out as the scariest. That being said, any improvisation will get that imagination flowing and up your play, which feeds your “listening” and breathes new life into the story you tell.

As these posts go up, I will be referring to “listening” more and more often, especially when retelling old stories or explaining new concepts. I hope this post has clarified what I am referring to in the future. I dare to hope that next time I find myself in a rut as a performer, I remember some very simple advice: “Take your time. Breathe. And remember to listen.”