The space between us
Once upon a time, I wanted to be an actor.
I had recently embarked on the rollercoaster of puberty, and was still touring the carnival of pharmaceutical wonder-cures for Attention Deficit Disorder… So give or take, I was 12? Then I met the catalyst who changed that.
He, who shall not be named, was an actor. He’d moved to my town with his toddler, and incorporated a theatre for young audiences. My hometown was about as culturally generous and arts friendly as a flat tire, so it couldn’t have been an easy quest... But there he was, writing and directing plays from fairy tales and literature for children, presenting performances in the cafetorium of a school on weekends.
His company’s next project was an adaptation of Pinocchio. I auditioned, and I was cast as Pinocchio’s little cricket conscience buddy.
Rehearsals came around, and like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the friendly fellow I'd met with his toddler in tow disappeared, and the version of himself he considered the director took his place…
I stood around with about 8 other actors, wondering what we were meant to be doing. Groping his pockets, he lunged out of a rickety chair with an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth and told me, “go find me a fucking match before I kill myself!”
Rehearsals with him were full of smoke, despite the room's noticeable No Smoking poster. You couldn't get away from it.
I remember a rehearsal, trying on the cricket costume for the first time, when he choreographed me for one of my scenes...
There I was feeling fucking ridiculous in green tights and a green sequined vest, running in circles and leaping onto an unstable stool, then onto a shaky table, then to another dinky stool, and finally the safety of the floor. I raced through it quickly as I could while the little stage pieces wobbled underneath my feet. I wondered what would fall down—the ramshackle stuff I was jumping on, or me.
“FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, FASTER!”, he barked behind his plume of smoke. “YOU HAVE TO SELL IT! JUMP! HIGHER! YOU'RE NOT FUCKING SELLING IT! SMILE!”
After enough unsatisfactory effort from me, he decided to cut the little jumpy number. I couldn't tell if that as an act of mercy or some kind of punishment.
I knew that I—personally—did not trust or respect this man. I thought he was rude. But what I was trying to process was something else. A feeling of threat. I felt it in the air around this man. Not necessarily the man himself, but the presence he brought into the room.
Finally, the weeks of rehearsals I spent being shouted at were over. It was April. The time for performances had come. The man gathered all us troops together for a talk. He apologized to everyone. “If you think I've been harsh, if I've been hollering, you need to understand, I am pushing for excellence!”
Then he apologized for hitting the nine-year old boy who played Pinocchio. I hadn’t seen it happen, but there he was, and on he went...
I remember looking at this figment of a director making his grand, public display. He was grovelling. He was cagey. He was out of his depth. He was alone.
Something inside me shifted there and then. The voice of my mind said, “I'll bet I can do what he's trying to do, better than he can do it, and without making people feel like shit...”
After that moment, all I wanted to do was become was a director that actors choose.
Flash forward twenty-two years. It was April, and I facilitated the first Monday of The Monday Night Acting Lab. In the four years of Mondays since, The Lab has been called “a safe space” more than once.
It feels really good when I hear that. It may be one of the best compliments I could receive. Those words, “safe space”, weigh so heavily right now as society challenges its consciousness and practices around so many issues like identity, race, trauma, and more.
And yet, even as society churns with resources to help facilitators like me educate ourselves to the myriad ways people might be harmed, overlooked, or triggered in group settings, I can’t help but brood, and feel overwhelmed.
A space is safest when it’s empty. Once we go inside, it is no longer neutral. People are lots of things, and neutral isn’t one of them. How can we maintain the safety of a ‘safe space’?
I ponder The Monday Night Acting Lab.
What is the space safe for? What is the space safe from?
What I am proud of, is that The Lab is a safe space for actors and acting-curious souls to try, play, practice, and unfurl.
The Lab is a space safe from pressure for excellence.
The Lab is a safe space to experiment, struggle, discover insight, and expand our resilience.
The Lab is a space safe from competition.
The Lab is a safe space to say ‘fuck it’, and make big, bold, messy choices.
The Lab is constantly evolving, changing every time someone new ventures in.
Ruminating over what ‘the ultimate safe space’ might feel like to encounter, my mind searches my memories for examples. For much of my life, the safest space I’ve known has been solitude. The most volatile questions and emotions exist in the space between people.
We can do some learning alone, similar to the way squirrels stash nuts. Eventually, we need other people so the richness we’ve stored can blossom, be appreciated, and so our work can contribute to someone else. This is particularly true of artists and actors.
In daydreaming about ‘the ultimate safe space’, a place where anyone and everyone could set down their anxiety and fearlessly be the most natural version of themselves, I wonder what steps we can take to get there.
We could easily scrub the space clean of reminders of the world outside—the politics, the sex, the ugly, ugly sadness... But that wouldn’t be making the space safe, that would be making it sterile...
The north star of ‘the ultimate safe space’ is a question worth daydreaming about passionately. We could learn so much in there.
Yours in curiosity,
-J.P.
© Jeffrey Puukka, 2021