Life Quality = Work Quality = Acting Quality

"It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important." 

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I was watching the latest Sherlock Holmes film recently and marveled at how brilliantly the game of chess was written and conceived at the film's climax.  It reminded me though of a discovery I made about myself years before...

Recalling how I used to play chess, back in the day, it struck me that I always played pretty much the same way.  No matter how often I told myself to hold my queen back, think a move ahead, secure defenses and retain control of the middle of the board, I didn’t.  I’d see a hole in the opposition's defense and drive my queen right into it.  Depending on the skill level of my opponent, this would either provide the element of surprise (and my victory) or prove the death of me. 

More often than I would have liked, it was the latter.

From this experience though, I began to look at the rest of my life.  How did I clean up my apartment?  Make a meal?  Write a letter?  Prepare for an audition?  I began to be appalled that I was approaching pretty much everything in the same way.  Initial excitement, send in the big guns, win or lose based on the strength and experience of the opposing force.  Think about it.  Cooking for someone who has a sensitive palate is far harder than cooking for someone with no taste at all.  Writing an application letter to become a plumber is going to require less formal writing prowess than one to become an English professor’s research assistant.  Cleaning your apartment for a visit from a friend is less stressful than cleaning for the queen.  And so on. But because you so often can just 'get by', doesn't mean you should just get by....

Quality is entirely controllable and should never be compromised. Unless you are aiming for a career of mediocrity, that is. 

What though, of preparing for an audition?

When I examined my preparation habits for auditions, I found that I would pick up the script at the last minute and read the lines in many different ways.  I would yell and scream and whisper and cry, and eventually…. become bored.  Just like cooking.  Or cleaning.  Or writing application letters.  Or playing chess.  Even in situations where I had ample time to prepare, I didn’t know what to do and yet, I blamed the game, the recipe, the job or the audition.  Never, did I think, to blame my lack of training or experience. 

So what do I do now?

A lot.  When I get an audition I do a lot.  I do not have enough time to do everything I need to do but I still try and get it done.  I build across, not up.  When the first layer has been set, I build another layer across, not up.  Always resisting that persistent urge to shoot up, into the sky.  Build solidly and build across.  Towers topple.  Structures don’t.  Build a defense in chess, even though this may take half an hour.  Build flavor in the cooking process, even though you may need to marinate overnight.  Build a relationship with the HR department, even though this may take five written applications and plenty of research.  And build the character, connection with the text and emotional life, even if this means you don’t sleep the night before your audition.  Make your choices memorable, even it it means saying no to that party or dinner with friends or episode of your favorite show or hours on the internet.

In time I realized that each activity in life was a microcosm of the way I approached life in general.  And if I honed in on perfecting just one of these, then, like altering a microscopic strand of DNA, I could alter the whole being. 

How do you approach things?  Bull at a gate or slow and steady wins the race?  How do the smaller activities in your life illuminate your work and acting lives... ?