When you think of a ‘state of flow’ - what comes to mind? Perhaps an artist or an athlete ‘in the zone’ or maybe an easy going friend who ‘goes with the flow’. All of whom are deftly navigating whatever the present moment is bringing to them with a sense of ease.
Okay, now think of ‘hyper-focus’. A state of intense focus and complete concentration on a sole task.
Not exactly the same thing, right? BUT a lot of overlap. BUT the feeling around either of these sensations is wildly different.
Both of these states have many things in common. Both have the capacity to transform your sense of time. It might feel very slow or very fast. Both have an element of intense energy use. Both demand your full mental facilities to execute a specific task. Both require being in the present moment.
However, to me, as a performer, flow and hyper-focus have one distinct difference that can be intangible to the observer but feels very significant while onstage. The flow state takes a great amount of trust that you will be able to execute your skills expertly given any of the present stimuli. The hyper-focus state attempts to force the greatest possible execution of your skills you believe you are capable of onto the present situation, no matter what happens.
Performance as an art form is unpredictable and fleeting. Every time I go to sing a song - the set of circumstances are different. Even if you are doing the same show 8 times a week for months - or even years - there are always changing variables. How much sleep did you get? What did you eat today? What is your emotional state? What is the state of your most cherished relationships? What is the state of the WORLD?
Not to mention - what is the humidify level of the theatre? How does your body want to move today? Is anything sore? What is the weather like? How do I feel in the clothes I’m wearing today? — you get my point.
Now increase those factors exponentially given the fact that actors do not exist in vacuums so all of those variables are present for every aspect of the performance - the other actors, the musicians, tech and backstage crew, and…the audience.
So, in a state of hyper-focus (and there are absolutely times this is helpful and necessary) an actor might attempt to self-isolate. Tune out the rest of the world. To me, it feels like the rest of the turns black and quiet except for a distinct tunnel in front of me, with my goal in front of me. Perhaps that is 'crushing' an audition, a scene, a show, or even one note. Blocking everything else out as “noise” and relying on the one thing you feel you have control over - which is the delivery of your skill.
However, I know from experience that if you are in that zone for more than a couple of minutes - you can arrive back in the real world an exhausted mess. Everything has been stripped from you. I emerge hungry, tired, thirsty, and likely don’t remember much of what happened at all other than my general judgement of whether I executed what I set out to or not.
Alternatively - let’s imagine this in a state of flow. You are performing in a show. You warm up that day and take note of how your voice feels, how your body feels, where you are emotionally. You eat a nutritious breakfast, drink water, stretch, walk, listen to music that fills you with joy, journal a few lines of excitement and gratitude. You go through the rituals of “getting ready”. You have a routine, a process. The hair/wigs, costumes/shoes, makeup, sound check. The cues you remind yourself for tricky moments in the upcoming performance. You take a few deep breaths and you trust.
You trust, that this is not the time for practice, this is not the time to micromanage. This is not the time for control. This is the time to be. To rely on the skills you cultivate tirelessly in order to arrive at this performance. When a tempo speeds up, you go with it and change your dramatic beats accordingly, when a bright light hits your eyes, you twinkle in it, when a tricky musical passage appears you trust your body has learned the coordinations it need to execute with precision and you revel in the moment.
Now…let’s take this another step forward and bring you to my brain while ‘acting’.
Singing has always been organic to me. I’ve been singing since before I can remember and I KNOW I am exceptional at it. I have been told for 30 years that I am a beautiful singer, and even if someone important and fancy told me I was NOT a good singer, I wouldn’t believe them. When I make a mistake, it doesn’t make a dent. I could completely botch a note in a very high profile situation, and still walk away KNOWING I am a good singer, who had a bad vocal moment. I forgive myself and move on. I trust my voice more than I trust pretty much anything else in life. I talk to my voice as if she is a separate entity from the rest of my body. I’ll say things to myself like “my voice knows what to do”, “she never let me down”, and “I trust her to do what she needs to”.
However, ACTING is a different story my friend. Acting, historically has not organic for me. I often times have felt like acting was playing catch up to its exceptional older sister - singing. So what do I do with acting? I micromanage. I find ways to indicate I am a good actor, to PROVE I am a good actor.
And you know what? Sometimes it totally works. And other times I get a note like “Hmm...I can tell you’re very smart”. I used to look back with a furrowed brow and think - how on earth did they glean that I am intelligent while singing “The Lonely Goatherd?!"
What I think they are saying, is they can see what is going on in my brain when I’m attempt to display the fact that I’m a good actor. If I were to slow my brain down into a level at which I could think of every passing throught while performing in THIS state - it might look something like this:
I have analyzed the scene “The Lonely Goatherd” and have surmised that Maria Von Trapp is having fun with the children. However, with this fun comes great pressure to impress the Captain with whom she has complicated feelings towards, she is nervous to be performing in front of Elsa, whom she feels inferior towards, she wants to ensure the children are having a great time, but she feels sadness that she’s grown close to these children and they are not hers, and yet grateful for the opportunity to know them in the first place which reminds her of the intense love she has for the Mother Abbess and the deep grief of losing her parents and then OH MY GOD HOW DO YOU OPERATE THIS MARIONETTE AND YODEL AT THE SAME TIME!!!!
And in hyper-speed I would identify all of these feelings - gratitude, joy, bittersweet, anxiety, sadness and find ‘beats’ to incorporate them all. Then, I would go into the immense data dump I have in the recesses on my brain on how these feelings FEEL in my body and perhaps, more importantly, in this moment, how they physically manifest in myself and in others and THUS how they might manifest in this moment for Maria.
Well, are you tired just thinking about that?? Yep. Me too. But I do this. A LOT.
The alternative and remedy I would sometime pivot towards is just going into a deeply emotional state and living out my own ‘trauma’ via the words of someone else and the circumstance of character. Not ideal either.
But I’m happy to say an increasingly number of times I’m able to analyze a scene, a character and a scenario and just simply conjure the feelings associated, and TRUST that my body knows how to physically manifest those feelings and emotional objections. Perhaps even in a state of, dare I say, flow.
I feel myself in that world where I can take in every stimulus around me - a lighting shift, a dynamic change in the orchestra, an emotional realization for the character, and I masterfully float from moment to moment, living inside it and making decisions in real time that best support the effectiveness of my performance.
And I emerge from that world filled up, invigorated, excited and proud.
It changes the “The Lonely Goatherd” from a terrifying minefield of emotional and vocal obstacles - to perhaps what someone might identify as FUN?!
