One of the classes I teach at NYU's Graduate Acting Program asks students to go out into New York City and find strangers willing to talk to them for up to an hour. When my colleague, Mark Wing-Davey, and I explain the exercise for the first time I see the panic and anxiety sweep through the room. The questions they ask after that introduction fall into two categories: How can I avoid actually doing that? How on earth will I get a stranger to even say 'hello'?
We forget that everyone we know was a stranger. My wife was a stranger for most of my life. Now that seems impossible to imagine. Of course we meet most people because of work or mutual friends or interests. Those friendships form because the circumstances present themselves and our focus is on a shared task or event rather than the meeting itself. It leaves space for greater emotional closeness to sneak up on us while we think we just happen to be sharing proximity. As I prepare for these summer trips, I pick up the phone and cold call numbers I find online for businesses and people and organizations to try and get some sense of these places and who to meet when I visit. While I punch the numbers and listen to the ringing my stomach turns over and I force myself not to hang up. A stranger answers. I stutter out who I am, why I'm calling, and a little bit about my project. Then, to a person, they embrace the idea and take time to tell me about their town and all the things I have to see when I visit. The conversations - ten minutes, thirty minutes, sometimes an hour long - always end with a promise to meet up when I come to town. A moment later I'm back in Brooklyn. In the planning and research of this trip I try to take the advice I give students to soothe their fears: People want to tell their stories. That helps settle my stomach as I set out to turn some strangers into something more.
1 Comment
Sathya
4/29/2017 10:00:03 am
so excited to read your conversations and about adventures! truly inspiring work.
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AuthorScott Illingworth is an Assistant Arts Professor in the Graduate Acting Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and a freelance theatre director. Archives
July 2017
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