When there is no presence, there is absence, deficiency, lack. This is enough to make us understand the importance of this “state of being”, presence. I remember about 30 years ago, my theater teacher, the great actress Edda Albertini, told me: “if I want to, I can go into a bar and be watched by everyone or go unnoticed”; we went into the bar and everyone turned to look at her. She was teaching me presence. Presence is everything, it’s living in the moment, being there in everything you do, it’s succeeding in every area where our pure part wants to be. It is welcoming the other, understanding not only with the mind, but also with the heart. In short, it means being there completely, being able to welcome our intuitions.
The fact that I am an actress is not decisive for the purposes of the course, except for those who wish to approach the craft of acting, but this has helped me to develop some techniques for working on the body and energy that help us get closer to presence and are useful for the stage but also for existence.
Presence helps us to:
take off that weight we have been carrying around for years
find the right balance between shyness and exuberance
be open to others and to new things
Exit from victimhood
free ourselves from mental schemes
no longer feel the need to judge ourselves and others
be able to face life’s difficulties with strength and truth.
The lessons are generally structured by providing in the first phase to simple practices of movement, related to the inner energy, to help find the presence in the scene and in life, then we will move on to real meditation, exercises in search of our most characteristic and often hidden parts that can instead be useful in every area. We will then deal with the description of the suggestions for the week, and then conclude with a moment of sharing.
During the lesson we will then use techniques of Mindfulness, basic yoga, meditations specially created and various acting techniques such as mimicry of Costa, the Method interview, sensory exercises and many other techniques without neglecting elements of diction and voice setting. Based then on the desire or not of the group of participants, you may decide to tackle the staging of a show.