In this masterclass interview, we discuss one of the most important aspects of the work that any seriously committed actor/artist must pursue. That is our ability, commitment, courage, and heart to intimately connect and communicate with another human being. Now I know this may sound like something that is common sense or even elementary…but truth be told…it is a real issue that we are facing…not only as artists…but as a collective. We are losing our ability to humanly share a piece of who we are…as we are…in any real given moment…in front of another…just as we are losing our ability to hold space and witness another having a genuinely authentic experience in front of us. This day and age does not require us to connect on a real personal level. We don’t hold ourselves or others accountable to communicate. Everything, for the most part, is now existing behind a little blue screen. It does not call for an immediate exchange of personal human interaction and connection. We text…we email…we Instagram…we Facebook…we Tweet…we Snapchat…we barely pick up the phone to call anyone anymore. And worst of all…we ghost each other when things require us to get real and honest. If this triggers you, you know it’s an issue. We are more intimately connected to our cameras in our phones than we are to using our phones for their original purpose…which was/is supposed to be to communicate and connect. Rarely are we choosing to sit down in person and connect…communicate…speak…talk…discuss…share…listen…and commune about our lives and our experience and our story. We have gotten addicted to the ‘one-way‘ way of communicating. Why? Because it is convenient, safe and does not allow for any discomfort. We don’t remember…or maybe even know…what it is like to just BE without having to watch and edit ourselves. We pick and choose what we want to share by what fits into a square box that is socially brainwashing us to believe that we are only supposed to be this idea of perfect…or having it all together. All the rest, we hide. And so we Face-tune our lives to morph into a dangerously inaccessible and unrealistic dynamic. We don’t talk about our difficulties. We don’t share our struggles. We don’t open up about those things that are complicated and weighing heavy in our hearts. We have allowed ourselves to not allow ourselves to sit in the discomfort of what it means to be who we are in front of another and be open to another being who they are in front of us. You know, being a human. So we choose the easy-safe-adopted-present day way. And that’s what is dangerous for the artist…because we don’t have to really reveal ourselves…we don’t have to really show up…and therefore we don’t really have to hold space or expect others to do the same. We just accept trivial inauthentic impersonal connection. But it is crucial to remember that all those things that we have difficulty executing in our every day lives, are going to inevitably show up in our work. If we play an idea of ourselves in our everyday lives, we are going to play ideas of the human condition in the work. If we cannot just sit with another as we are and allow them be as they are, we are not going to be able to do that kind of required “intimacy” in our our work. We are limiting ourselves and we are quickly weakening that invaluable human muscle of what it is to be ourselves, to be imperfectly perfect human and to allow others to be imperfectly perfect as they are…and then allow that and all of us become worthy of being witnessed and shared without apologizing for it. The more we fall into the quicksand of not connecting and not communicating, the more we lose that muscle as artistic instruments responsible for sharing the complexities of the human experience…to live our most private essence of who we are in relation to the safety of given circumstances in a public way. We just become robots trying to fill moments with inauthentic ideas and/or actions of what we think a moment being human in relation to given circumstances and another human is supposed to be. Plain and simple, we have to continue to exercise our ability to intimately connect and communicate with others and take the risk to experience the discomfort within that authentic interaction. And we have to fight for a tribe willing to do the same. We have to start and keep sharing our stories.
I hope you enjoy this interview.
Much Love,
Mario
#MarioCampanaro
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