What do you do when a tool doesn’t work?

We’ve all been there.

We’re at that audition and all of a sudden the stress takes over. Our nerves and anxiety pull us out of our performance. Maybe we feel shaky, our thoughts race, our breathing gets shallow, or maybe we just freeze up completely.

So we pull in a tool or a practice from our toolbox, like taking a deep cleansing breath into our diaphragm with one hand on our heart and the other on our belly.

And….it doesn’t work. Now what?

What do you do when a tool doesn’t work for you?

When this would happen to me, when my audition stress got to be too much and a tool didn’t work, the first thing I did was blame myself. I’d think it was my fault that it wasn’t working, that there was something wrong with me, especially if the tool worked well in the past, at a different audition, in a class, or in a coaching.

If it didn’t work, I’d jump on that shame and blame spiral! Maybe if I just breathed deeper, or tried harder, or concentrated more, or did it for longer, or was a better actor, or, or, or…

What I now know is when a tool doesn’t work, not only is there nothing wrong with me, there’s also nothing wrong with the tool. Not all tools are going to work for me, and not all tools are going to work for me in every audition situation. There is no such thing as a one size fits all.

As a facilitator, I help actors build that self-awareness around their stress responses so we can focus on what tools work best when, and then leave behind what doesn’t. In order to do this though, we’ve got to address some ingrained actor habits.

For most of our work as actors, we are told what to do. What to say, where to stand, how to move through space… This plus a culture of “yes, and” can cause a lot of actors to want to “get it right,” by doing exactly what I say, word for word, when practicing a tool.

Which if the tool works for them great! But if it doesn’t work for them, more often than not, those actors will notice their discomfort and just push through it. Even if I give them an option to stop, a lot of actors will continue to do the practice until it’s over. Has this ever happened to you in a class or workshop? Cause it’s happened to me!

It makes sense why we do this: Actors are trained to participate and push through discomfort in service of our creative and artistic growth. This plus the cultural norm of “the show must go on,” means that pushing through discomfort tends to be the go-to response for most of the actors I work with. And I used to be the exact same way!

Acting can be uncomfortable (and stressful) when we brush up against our creative limits. Sometimes, we may want to use force and effort to push those limits. But that’s only one way of working! What makes my work different is that instead of forcing creativity, I focus on reducing the stress.

Stress can disconnect us from the story, and even from our bodies, so when we settle our stress responses, we actually come into connection, which allows our artistry to freely flow. It’s much easier (and more fun), to expand our creative limits from this place!

And look, the stakes are so high at auditions! For myself, it took me a long time to even remember to use a tool when stressed, so it was super disheartening when it didn’t work. But taking the pressure off myself to always “get it right,” to not push through, and to stop blaming myself for something not working, it freed up a lot of space.

So what would it be like for you to not have “to get it right?” What would it be like to not blame yourself for a tool not working?

How would that free you up creatively?

For more on this, join me here for a Free Info Session.