Dear Berlin,
Life can be scary sometimes.
Especially when you consciously choose to place yourself in an environment where you know you will have to face your fear. I guess this can be called bravery but that's not the feeling that comes to mind. I think of fear and being scared. That vulnerability is what makes someone human and I'm not afraid to feel human.
On Thursday May 28th, I experienced many emotions. In my favorite book "The Alchemist", Paulo Coelho once said “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second encounter with God and with eternity.” This is one way of saying how my psychology works when trying to face fear in the face even if I have self doubt. Since being in Berlin time has been a strange concept and the best description was told in the story told by Chunky Move's performance of "Complexity of Belonging". All that matters is place, where you are with yourself as a person and taking in your surroundings and circumstances and not fighting them. Allowing life to happen and allowing yourself to be yourself. This all sounds easy until you come across a wall, but when your wall crumbles to the ground a beautiful first step can be taken and the key is for your journey to never end and for you to choose to always keep going and moving forward, to not allow yourself to be stuck or blocked. You can take a curvy road around the path but there's usually one key that opens the door once you get there and I feel I used every key before finding the right one. The thing is there is no "right" door. Life is that not obvious because we have the power of choice. Also, life is more complex than just one door and key.
When hearing conversations about Global Theater, I heard about the confusion some students had when reading plays because there were no distinct story lines. I find there is a parallel between these plays and life because of the different layers of emotions that can't be put into words and can only be felt. The key is to not follow our literary structure taught to us in school, but to break the rules and just allow ourselves to feel and not try to understand something logically but viscerally. When watching "Richard III", I felt empathetic to the characters on stage. Regardless of not knowing the story before, and I couldn't tell you all details of "Richard III"'s plot and story, I felt every part of the story and followed it emotionally and that was a more beautiful version of the story than trying to follow the words. Now I can fully understand what my acting teachers meant about the words not mattering and for me to fully understand what I wanted and why I wanted it but more so the feeling I am getting because of my circumstance. Telling a story because of the emotions I am conveying to the audience and evoking an emotional response from them is the reason why I love acting. The emotions evoked by one human being sends out rays of energy like the feeling of the sun on the back of my black leather jacket waiting to get inside the Altes National Museum. It is inevitable to feel even if people try their hardest not to. The feeling an actor shares with the audience when telling a story is (in my opinion) the reason why people watch theater. People are looking to connect with a story because of the raw emotions actors share and I feel because nothing is precious in Berlin and actors and theaters are breaking boundaries people can think outside of themselves and not take life for what it seems on the surface but for what the human experience is. It's ok to have an opinion and it's ok to feel. Feeling any emotion is the basic foundation of human connection. No material is precious: wear a white gown on a dirt stage floor, cover yourself and your partner in blue paint, eat an apple on stage and don't clean up the peal, cover yourself in blood, and walk around naked (ok not recommending that in public), but all of this shows how life's materialism and overthinking life isn't worth it because at the end we all have a final destination called death so don't take life for granted because the emotions and human connections are precious and that is all. Allow yourself to be human. Don't be fearless, be brave.
xox
(Human) Laura
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