What is presence?

Presence is to be with the self, consciously in the moment. To be aware of the impulses within , as well as the impulses from the outside. When we are present, time and space expands. It is our closest experience to timelessness. It is when the body, the human body, is in its full capacity. It is when the body experiences a natural collaboration and connection between body, mind, and emotional engagement. A state of being that allows us to access instinct.

Maintaining presence is highly technical work. To be in presence is not about waiting to be touched by a magic stick. And when applied to performance, being present is a real tool for authenticity.

The experience of that inner space and time offers us to be a maestro, a technician, where you get to be aware of your impulses and the choice to embody them.

I say “the choice to embody them” as there are many layers of presence, and this is a conversation and a research that can take an actor very far.

However, as an attempt to stay practical and keep the core concept applicable to performance, I would like to focus on two layers of presence.

One layer of presence is to bring conscious awareness of one’s impulses and to experiment with fully embodying them with conscious movement, use of language, and emotional engagement. An invitation to fully commit to what feels real in the moment. That is a layer that can lead to an authentic performance grounded in a real sense of honesty and that is rooted in the present moment.

Another layer of experimentation with presence is a state where the actor is investing in the creation of an inner dialogue as part of their experimentation. An inner dialogue that can exist in the present moment, where one gets to be aware of their impulses, and at the same time you get to choose which impulses you wish to follow and which impulses you wish to release. This process can take place within milliseconds and can be a great challenge to discover more possibilities in performance. This challenge allows the space to sit and study your impulses and to choose, perhaps experiment with, an impulse that might be less familiar— road less travelled.

This inquiry can be a real tool to discover more of your own artistic essence—in other words, to experiment with impulses that you do not usually give space to or may not typically be attuned to. It is an invitation to be playful with different possibilities, perhaps in contrast to the ones that you might normally choose out of habit. This process also offers an additional insight into tackling one’s acting habits, and to see what other possibilities there are for performance if one was not to tap into their usual tricks.

But first, let’s get a better understanding of what habit actually is. Habits are usual ways of performing—or ways of making decisions in daily life—ways that we have inherited/employed from our culture, education, family, acting training, religion, or while watching other actors performing and making our own conclusions of how perhaps they got there, or even asking people how they got there, and then employing their ways as our ways.

Some of those habits might be helpful to us and they might get us to perform effectively and they might be offering some good solutions. Some other habits though might be restricting us from performing freely and effectively. And some other habits might be helpful, but they’re not perhaps taking us to an authentic place of performance. It can feel almost as if I am forcing something to happen.

And so, there is a research that we can take on this topic and discover further possibilities in performance, and that research is an invitation to experiment with choices beyond to our usual pathways or in other words our tricks.

Bur before going further it is important to address the questions of what is my goal here. What is it that I am working on achieving with this research?

In my experience, and in my personal interest for this research, the goal is for an artist to seek their artistic freedom, an artist and a human being to seek their personal freedom. I believe that each person is an ecosystem, a culture of their own. And so I am passionate about each artist, each person that I’m working with, to raise the right questions in order to open up the pathway to discover their very own artistic essence, their very own human essence. And this goes as far as to discover their very own ways of diving into acting, to research, discover and own their very own acting technique.

I personally do not believe that there is in one acting method that works for all of us. I believe that each one of us, being our very own culture, our own autonomous ecosystem, has their very own way into performance. Has their very own way of experiencing and dealing with life, their dreams and aspirations. And so my task is to support this discovery, this artistic discovery, this self-discovery.

The pathway to this discovery is the creation of a dialogue between the actor and myself as a coach. A dialogue is rooted on this one goal: What is your way into performance? What truly works for you when it comes to acting? What gets you going? What gets your imagination going? What gets you to connect emotionally with what you’re doing? What is your very own way to be free on stage, on set, in rehearsals?

This inquiry leads to artistic freedom and to personal freedom. To meet, understand and own the self, the artistic self, your very now technician.

And so – to go back to the topic of habits – a part of this dialogue can be invested when necessary – in exploring an actor’s deconditioning from habitual or inherited ways of performing, thinking, talking and moving. A process of landing in their own innate ways of experiencing performance.

The inquiry of discovering one’s artistic essence can feel like an experiment in being in the unknown. And as uncomfortable as it might sound, it can be equally exhilarating. What we gain is the discovery of more of ourselves. The free self that might be waiting to be embodied beneath our cosy habits and tricks.

My goal is that this dialogue between myself and the actor eventually becomes their inner narrative, their inner dialogue, and one of the key foundation for presence in the moment. And as mentioned before, when we are in conscious presence, time and space expands, and so this dialogue, this research, this invitation to be in the unknown, this playful decision-making, can take place within seconds. And like with everything in the human body, it is a matter of practice.

If this journey of presence and the quest for personal artistic freedom speaks to you, rest assured that it grows with practice. The more time we spend practising and experiencing that state of presence, the more we cultivate this inner dialogue, this inner narrative, as our foundation.

Both the muscle of presence and the muscle of this inner dialogue become stronger. And the stronger they become, the easier it is to access that state, to listen and respond to ourselves within the moment.

And the deeper we dive into presence, the deeper we dive into our freedom — where our personal artistry, our personal essence, lives.

If this journey of presence and the quest for personal artistic freedom speaks to you, remember that our capacity for presence grows with practice.

The more we practise, the more this inner dialogue becomes part of us: a way of listening to ourselves, trusting our impulses and making conscious choices in the moment. It becomes a foundation for presence that we can return to with greater ease.

Like a muscle, this capacity strengthens with use. And the deeper we settle into presence, the more freedom we discover to express our personal artistry, our personal essence.