Dr. Bloom and I have now been meeting for 18 months, nearly every Monday, for at least an hour.  I have a 43 page journal documenting these meetings from the first one in June of 2012 when the idea of acting as movement work was an experiment and we were not sure if it would ever happen again all the way to now, January 2014.  The experiment continues.

Sometimes we do great work together.  We examine Shakespeare’s text and discover something new, like all the ways that the word “green” is used; from the character Iago as a green eyed monster in Othello, to green as in new or green as in young.  Some days our Yes/No Exercise leads to funny looks and exasperation as one of us accidently gives in.

Other days, Dr. Bloom feels energetic and tells me stories from dental school and the name of the muscle that extends from the upper lip through the nose, the levator labii superioris alaeque nasi, as he touches his lip, nose and eyebrow.  That is some feat, Dr. Bloom’s hand going that high!

Then, there are the other days, when we do the Yes/No Exercise and it’s just the Yes/No Exercise.  We sing in our fake opera voices and forget about our fake opera and go back to speaking the lines.  There are days when we go through the motions, the lines, the exercises and that’s it.

Yet, we need the days of the ho hum.  I know we do.  Without those days, the breakthroughs would not come.  None of us are brilliant all the time.  That is why we need to practice.  A pianist plays their scales. Dr. Bloom practices his lines.  We need to show up and do the work every time.

When we keep showing up, something shifts.  The Shakespearean line “Well, forward, forward! thus the bowl should run, and not unluckily against the bias,” makes sense.  We know exactly what is happening with the character.  The right gesture, inflection, and intention comes to us and we leap ahead in the work.

Could the leap have come without the seemingly same old, same old?  I think not.  The creative process, as chaotic and random as it may seem, relies on us showing up.  So, during these gray winter months, even when things might seem so-so, let’s keep at it.  Spring will return. The tulips will bloom.  Don’t we want to be there to see what else might happen?