the power of words

okay. so for the last two weeks i have been taking the best acting class ever. like THE best. i felt like i could trust every single person in there so much, and that i could make a total fool out of myself and no one would laugh at me or judge me outside of class. plus everyone was so involved! everyone gave their all to everything to the exercises the teacher (who was one of the best i have ever had) gave us to do. i felt like i could just explore. it was fantastic, and definitely one of the best acting experiences i've ever had.


but, now to my point. We did this exercise where we wrote down words we thought were hateful, and not just like swear words. like words that connected to our lives that we thought were hateful. we gave two words from our list to the teacher, who read them out loud, with feeling while we just walked around the room,. and i didn't think it would do anything. like really, reading words aloud? but by the 6th word he read there were girls who were fighting back tears. i was shocked how much they really made me feel. and when he read the words i had written down, it just hit a chord inside of me, i was blinking back tears. really honestly, when he read my words of hate, i wanted to curl up in a corner and cover my ears and cry. and they were just words. just... words. it was amazing. after the words of hate, we had to go and hug everyone in the room. we also did words of praise, but everyone in the room was so affected by the words of hate that everyone in the class was just a little off emotionally that day. it just made me think how much words can affect us. oh and don't think he just did this to verbally abuse us all. the exercises helped me tons with my emotional recall, and also totally helped me with replicating pure emotion onstage, how just thinking of someone saying those words to me could get me into such a strong emotional state. i mean you always hear how words can hurt a lot but i never really felt how much words can hurt until that day.

xoxo,
ems