EXISTENTIAL VALIDATION: JAMES RANKIN

For a number months, we have been building. We have been flying and diving into our work, forcing our way through the mud with passionate fiery hope: each step, making invisible  discoveries, transient by nature, evolving with time, to the point of seeking balance. Where are the traditions and approaches that I have clung to for so long, do I even have this, am I doing the work right? I want to feel the work beneath my feet; I want to find my repetition; I want to feel the whole. It’s been a long process. Something I have always wanted: an opportunity for the new, the ideal, for something different. But like most things that we want, when we get there we cannot see it or appreciate it, because there is always more. I was starting to seek the comfortable. I was starting to fear what came next. But life has a way of showing you what you need as long as you are open to it.

I recently had the gift of the opportunity to partake in the second module of the Great Lakes Michael Chekhov Consortium, a program designed to educate actors on how to discover the tools of the Michael Chekhov technique. I last attended module one in 2018, so it has been a minute since I have been exposed to the principles of this technique continuously. I am also a very different human than I was. Having had the time to work with the technique with Our Country’s Good for as long as we have and having spent the last four years using these tools in everything I do, I was hoping that this second time through the program here would ignite my passion further. I was hoping that this would give me the fuel for Our Country’s Good, hoping that it would give me the confidence to approach the next few phases of our rehearsal process, something to reaffirm. We were going to be rehearsing for our show at the same time I was attending classes, so I was hoping that I could carry the consortium into our rehearsal room, that it would help tie things together for me. I spent the week in the day time remembering the tools and learning new ones with a group of people that - for the most part - I didn’t know. Trying to understand the core of the technique, the heart of it. Acting training can be vulnerable and sensitive work, so it takes a lot to be present with the right mindset and focus. At night though, we had rehearsals for Our Country’s Good, so I figured Chekhov all day, rehearsal at night - basic blocking for a few scenes - but with the tools we explored for our invited rehearsal towards the end of the week I would explore my last character Arscott. I was nervous about that choice. I was afraid of the product it might create.

Now, there is something truly magical to me about the concept of an ensemble of humans. It must’ve been the juxtaposition between the two that made me realize. I was spending the day learning and being a part of a brand new ensemble of humans, so when our cast ensemble first met to begin rehearsal, I felt it. When I got join the first rehearsal. I felt it. When we played, I felt it. I felt the difference between the two. I knew, the moment I walked into that room with my fellow members of Our Country’s Good, I knew we had done the work together the past eight months. Of course we still have more to do, but we knocked out some heavy steps. There was a gift that unwrapped for me to say: what you are working on alone and with a new group, you already have here. Once I felt that safety, that love, that group urge to explore, Arscott was easy to discover with them on that night. This play will be a joy to discover with them. I am grateful for every aspect of the experience of that week, but the gift that Our Country’s Good has offered, an opportunity to discover a new whole world, in whole new way, with this group that HAS set sail together ALREADY. It’s a beautiful feeling of searching for more and realizing that you already have it. I don’t care about the comfort level with these people, I care about the discovery and the art and the trust. I can’t wait to let these tools, these people, this story guide us to the possibilities. I’m grateful that our work showed me that.