What is the significance of stillness in the play

Set a timer. In my limited experience this seems about right. It is amazing how my perception of this time changes from day to day. Sometimes it seems like forever. Other times, it goes by very quickly. I use the timer on my iPhone. Relax your body. I simply sit in a soft chair with my eyes closed. I then systematically relax my body and get quiet. I also play a recording of the ocean. Quiet your mind.

This is the biggest challenge for me. Just when I get still, I have some random thought or a whole flurry of thoughts. But I am getting better. Be present. Instead, collect your thoughts and be present—in this moment.

It is the most important time you have. In fact, it is the only time you have. Learn to return. This has been the most helpful component. For me, I go back to a time I stood on the balcony of a monastery in Greece, looking out on the Aegean Sea. I wrote about it here. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers.

Scale your business. Find your freedom. Learn More. Perhaps my difficulty is an illustration of how elusive this knowledge remains, and how potent it is, once harnessed, in an unsettled world. Perhaps the difficulty lies in the fact that this subject, stillness, is at the root of all the essential values I hold in the making, teaching and study of the art of theatre. In my case, the foundation of my practice and teaching has been the Suzuki Method of Actor Training. Created by Tadashi Suzuki and his remarkable Suzuki Company of Toga SCOT , the work is widely known for its exact and rigorous physical vocabulary that gives the actor insights into basic issues of control.

As I write this I am preparing to return to Japan for rehearsals with Suzuki-san. The snows have already come to the high mountain village of Toga-mura, where SCOT centers its activities, but it was summer when I first traveled there almost 30 years ago.

Many artists have made this journey, and some of them are my colleagues to this day. Their message—that the qualities of human energy, breath and stillness could be examined together in the context of performance—reinstated the actor as the primary element in theatre.

Coming as I did from a background in the not-for-profit resident theatre in the United States, nothing was more astonishing to me than the performances, training practices and work ethic of this group called SCOT.

In the beginning, it was the challenging movement that attracted me. I had an athletic background as an equestrian, and found the heat of the work suited to my temperament. Each summer I returned, and eventually over the years transitioned from visiting student to full-fledged actor within SCOT.

I have come to understand that the real significance of Suzuki training lies in creating a vivid presence in stillness, and a sharpening of concentration to the present moment on stage. No training can address the internal differences in all actors. Each of us is psychologically and emotionally unique.

What is productive is training that helps you gain perspective into the abilities you have and cultivate those you lack, then effectively translate those abilities into expression. Suzuki training examines the things we hold in common as human beings: the use of our bodies and our voices. What happens to the body and the voice when an actor is placed in the demanding situation of being watched as he or she tries to convince someone of something?

What happens to us when we are placed in this relationship of being seen and of showing? What kinds of sensations occur? What kind of concentration is created? What kind of excitement is generated inside us? One consequence of the performance dynamic is that it becomes almost impossible to hold onto the excitement inside us and not move. The movement becomes unconscious and habitual. Breath becomes shallow, tension rises, concentration is disrupted—these effects are universal. How can we become more sensitive and monitor those effects that stand between our desire to communicate and our actual execution?

In Stillness is the Key , the book that completes the trilogy that began with The Obstacle is The Way and Ego is the Enemy , Ryan Holiday argues that stillness is the key to being better at anything you do. Today, we can add to that car horns, cell phone alarms and notifications, stereos or headphones, jackhammers, espresso machines, airplanes. The news with its narrative of crisis after crisis finds us on whichever device we happen to be staring at. Emails bombard us. Requests and obligations pour in.

How does anyone find time to think? To do meaningful work? To detach and relax? History proves that it is from stillness that new insights and ideas spawn. It is with stillness that perspective sharpens. It is by stillness that the ball slows down so that we might hit it. Stillness allows us to persevere.

To succeed. It is the key that unlocks genius, happiness, meaning. Here are our top three takeaways from Stillness Is The Key :. Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward. Work not for the re- ward; but never cease to do thy work.

Have you ever noticed that the more we want something, or the more insistent we are on a certain outcome, the more difficult it can be to achieve it? Mastery of the bow, Kenzo knew, only came from mastery of a mental skill: detachment. That state? And suppose that through letting go, we do find success? In the face of the Sublime, we feel a shiver. And for a moment, it shakes us of our smugness and releases us from the deathlike grip of habit and banality.

When the world was at war, while Hitler killed so many millions of people, and as her family spent each day at risk of joining the dead, Anne Frank looked out a small window from the attic above the annex her family hid.

Still, in the suffocating heat, the confined quarters, the unrelatable fear, Anne Frank looked out the window and could find in nature the boost she needed. A quiet child, lying on her belly, reading a book. The clouds cutting over the wing of an airplane, its exhausted passengers all asleep.

A man reading in his seat. A woman sleeping. A stewardess resting her feet. The rosy fingertips of dawn coming up over the mountain. A song on repeat. The pleasure of getting an assignment in before a deadline, the temporary quiet of an empty inbox. This is stillness. While stillness seems so rare and fleeting in our busy lives, the world supplies us with an inexhaustible amount of it.

Any of it, for that matter. Go outside. Take a walk. Look around. Pay attention. Be curious. Bathe in the beauty that surrounds us, always. Everybody should know that.