I wanted to be an actress, instead I became a person.
A moment in the making of Tracy Michele Bullock
Faking it for a good cause.
‘Wait, what?! Oh fuck.’
This is circa the mid aughts and I am onstage at St Anne’s Warehouse. That Summer we were putting on a Euripides cycle and I, being the relatively new NYC uncredited actor that I was, was playing the Greek chorus lead. It was August and muggy as an armpit. The stage was outdoors, constructed on an old Brooklyn industrial shipping dock off shoot. Real spectacle, as the gang way extended out into the water. Most of the play’s action took place out there. Beyond the land and under the Sun, or stars, depending on what showtime you happened to attend.
A truly glorious effect for both actor and audience. There are times as a performer where one rises to the real time power the stage wheedles. So often, the actor is reduced to a pawn, angling for the space and attention one assumes when they take on the inglorious anvil of the profession.
Dressed in a toga, we are talking Greek here, and my task in this scene is to do little else but escort some deity, and the actor portraying them into the scene, then stand, in ancient characterization, entrapped in the action. Mid scene, and this scene was like 25 minutes long or something insane, I am to recite a stanza or two of poetry. That matters because the lyrics give a plot point and the rest of the cast, audience, and action are affected. Everything means something, you know. Well, this is where the ‘fuck’ comes into play, as I was caught doing the thing that was my actorly Kryptonite: watching the other actors and losing myself so fully in the narrative, the glory of the spectacle, that I forgot to participate. ‘Play my part’ so to speak and ‘show off’ – funny, no? It is likely no surprise I am a Fine Artist in the ‘look at me’ sense. My personality and person has that written all upon. That is a good thing, I am wildly proud of my ballet career - ABT, Julliard, and MMC shout out! I long thought my success in that space (and in modeling, too) when rent got slim came from an assumed ‘grabby-ness’- the ugliness of ego.
Yeah, I am over that. Looking deep into both my attributes and deficits as a performer highlights what I am really gifted at: listening. At my best and most “showy” I took the stage as a great assumer of scene, character, relationship and space. I loved, loved auditioning. Why? Because I got to be. Take those bozos behind the card table with their pencils and budgets to a space where I was chief. Sure, they could not join me, but I was nonetheless there: clear and welcoming. Where I failed was from the same impulse: I listened too well.
Seeing others in their glory or earnestly aiming to be - that shit is lovely and toxic. I would leave my aims by the wayside and drink deep the marvelous moment before me. Forge lines and blocking not because I was not ‘in it’, nope. What I lacked was the being ‘of it’.
I tell folkx all the time that if you live and work long enough you do a lot of weird shit. All wise souls have rag tag resumes and dance cards. Me too. If not for my artistic career, I would not know my calling of coaching. After all, coaching is witnessing and communication above all things. We stand, chins and antennae poised to our clients and community. Deftly angled towards need and worry above our desires, not dishonest, to show our talents. A good coach, and I am surely one, is a listener and a scribe, a speaker and creative. Brave and accepting – of what is possible and poo-pooing the pretend game playing of what is not.
Back to the scene on the water and my failure. So young and blind to what my screw up was telling me, I flubbed, spoke my rehearsed lines manically and muscled through the rest of the evening. I was not punished, except by myself, nor was I wiser, until much later as to the true take away.
What is that? It is this: I am not to be a mask and a hanger; I am to be the human. For as a coach I can do just that – I can step in and sway back. Talk a lot to instill “expertise” and then lightly sway away as I let the client feel that they are the lead (actually, they have always been), but don’t tell. This skill, one of many, is not something learned in a course or training. It is learned like the lessons of an actor: dirty. On the job and via rejection as much as acceptance. Leading a company, sitting through session after session, the networking gathering, and interview; you see your ills and pretties wildly clear.
What the takeaway is (outside of professional acceleration and technique), one learns a thing I am ever grateful for, and that is service to humanity. My humanity and that of my clients. So yeah, this is good. I get to forget my script and integrate yours. Share what I hear and ask, ‘What’s up?’ about what I don’t.
Before closing this origin story narrative, I want to speak to something needing of unmasking: confidence. I spoke a lot in the above verbiage about being “good” and that might be confronting. Especially in a time when we are to ‘be confident’ and assured. I speak to both topics in session a great deal. Personally, and professionally alike, I say I am good because I am. The returns speak as such and the loyalty of my community says as much. However, I certainly do NOT ‘feel’ as such. I freak out before every session and have waves of fear throughout each day. Less about failure as for ill servitude. What stabilizes my heart and gets my ass out the door is the desperate and democratic humanity of that emotion. To accept my weak knees, I participate in a dialogue across time. That is the real and I am right fucking there with you. What we have in droves are facts and in excess emotions. I am by your side, in the lead maybe and some days behind in the discipline to mitigate all that and to always remind us all that awesomeness is empirical. Reality is on our side.
In closing, I speak to context and thank you for allowing me to offer it regarding myself. May the doing of so provide insight and understanding to those of you who desire to team up with me, to those who do so already and seek background, and the few of you interested in providing coaching support yourselves someday. The conversation is a dialogue, so join in. Wherever you fall a landing, perhaps not seeming soft, yet very safe awaits.
Lights up: the audience is watching not to see what you will do, but to encourage you to where you shall go. That night it was back to the dressing room to curse myself and quickly go back out there, swiftly moving through an inventory of possible wisdom takeaways. Tell me, how did I do?
