All in the same playing space must be in waiting while the unfolding of the drama takes place.  Not waiting for* but in waiting*.  To wait for is past/future.  To stand in waiting is allowing the unknown  — the new, the unexpected, perhaps the art (life) moment to approach*. [*emphasis added]

This is the fundamental goal of Actors Approach.  To guide the actor, to assist the actor, to encourage the actor to wait actively in the moment of the story and in the moment of his or her partner’s behavior.  To actively await the approach of the moment.

Actors are like cancer cells.  Incredibly individualistic and unique.  What works for one of us doesn’t necessarily work for another.  There’s no magic bullet.  So aside from reading, studying, and practicing all that has come before, which is a thoroughly ex-hausting concept, what is the actor to do?  How is the actor to improve, rehearse, and
play?

Leap.  Jump. Try something.  You know it works when you don’t hit the ground.  Luckily
for the actor, the ground is a metaphor. There’s no risk of injury.  Except to the ego.  Which bruises easily and readily with alarming frequency.  At least in my limited ex- perience.  Of myself.  Perhaps you’re different.  The point is merely that trial and error is a big part of creating a role.

Leaping and jumping doesn’t include knowledge of a particular outcome.  There’s never a guarantee.  And if there is a guarantee, you can almost always be assured that there’s a more interesting choice, a far riskier option to be had.  I find myself in a lot of trouble when searching for a guarantee.  I want to know what’s about to happen.  So I focus upon one planned predictable outcome.  By doing so, I eliminate all else that might occur.  All else that might be discovered.  All else that might be revealed.

This does without doubt take time, practice, and experience.  The ability to listen to the script, to recognize the variety of opportunities that exist within it.  These are skills that
are absorbed as much as learned.  I like to compare it to playing any kind of game.
At first you’re just figuring out the rules.  Trying to make sense of it all.  Following the rules because they are the rules.  But you don’t really understand why the rules are the rules—they’re just the rules.  Why waste time asking why you can’t move the shoe backwards in Monopoly or why the bishop in chess gets to move diagonally and the rook can’t?  We just accept the rules and try to play within those designated para- meters.  Over time we learn the rules, we learn the game, we stop thinking about the rules, and we even get creative within the framework of the game, within the framework of the rules, and we begin to play!

The given circumstances of the play are the rules of the play.  At first, I don’t know why the circumstances are significant.  Or at least I don’t know how significant.  That doesn’t happen for a while for me.  I am forced to continually make a fool of myself as I try to listen to the script, figure out the rules of the text, and try to play within the layout as designed by the playwright.  Eventually – sometimes sooner, sometimes later – the game seems no longer a set of arbitrary rules and begins to make sense.  Not merely intellectually.  Physically as well.  As if it is in my bones.  Like a game I love to play.  Like Monopoly or Chess….Okay, those are bad examples, and I don’t really play them all that much.  And, to be quite honest, I am not a big fan of Monopoly.  I still don’t understand why the shoe can’t move backwards.