Mental Models and Metaphorical Forks

Hi There,

During this unprecedented time of cultural, social, and national turmoil, I keep coming back to this quote from author Cynthia Occelli:

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”

I come back to this quote often.

Walking towards your excellence can be brutal. It’s messy, it challenges old beliefs, and shakes you to the core.

I hope we’re walking toward excellence right now as a nation. I hope we move from a loosely held belief that we’re all created equal to a strongly embraced practice that we are all treated equally. It’s a long road, and a most necessary journey. I still have a lot to learn, and I’m committing to that work.

In this second issue of The Dialogue, I’m focusing on the power of thoughts and perspectives, including:

• New ways to see old problems
• Accessing higher creativity by not focusing
• Differing perspectives on the same craft

FYI – I just launched a brand-new ongoing class: On Camera Lab. If you’re interested, there’s info about it at the end of this email.

Be well,

JC

Then the actor walked in. Their energy was different. Commanding. Less “I hope this goes well,” more “wait till you see this.” The audition they gave was alive, dangerous: they didn’t bring a scene to life, they brought a world to life. That was the first great audition I saw.

I didn’t know it at the time, but it was also my introduction to a whole new way of thinking.

What had that actor done that was different than the forty other well-trained actors who auditioned that day? I turned to the source for all things I don’t understand: Google. While I don’t remember the exact phrase I searched, it was something like:

“Model to figure out what makes something good”

And from that wildly sophisticated search, up came a bunch of articles on Mental Models.

A Mental Model is a thought process you use to solve or reframe a problem. Problem: “What makes something good?” Thought process to solve that problem: “I’ll search Google, then read potential answers.” So far so good!

It turns out there are a lot of different “thought-process-solutions”, or Mental Models, and they can be used in different scenarios.

Reading on, I came across a model called Inversion. To sum it up, instead of trying to figure out what something is – you try to figure out what it isn’t. So instead of asking “what is a great audition?” I started asking “what isn’t a great audition?”

This turned out to be a much easier place to start.

Here are some traits I came up with for “Not Great Auditions”:

Actors in Bad Auditions

• Focus on self
• Play “at” emotions (emotive)
• Wait for cues instead of listening
• Pull faces
• Apologize or waver in their performance
• Resort to cliched behavior
• Lack a point of view on the material
• Seek the default, controlling the result
• Say the lines “naturally”

From this list, I was able to hone my own ideas of “Great Auditions”:

Actors in Good Auditions:

• Focus on the reader/scene partner
• Take actions that stir their emotions
• Listen with intent, react with meaning
• Take a strong point of view, provoking expression
• Take ownership of their choices
• Combine lived experiences and imagined circumstances, crafting unique behavior
• Form an interpretation, telling a physical/visual story
• Free themselves to react spontaneously and unpredictably
• Express a life beyond the lines, responding rather than reciting

Using this Mental Model is invaluable as a Coach, Casting Director and as an Actor. It’s hard to see something when you don’t know how to recognize it in the first place. With this tool I was able to define a “Good Audition” by exploring “What It Isn’t”.

I’ve come to rely on a toolbox of Mental Models in approaching acting work. Here are some of my favorites:

The Map is Not the Territory

When it comes to working with an actor to create a role, this model has been helpful in seeing beyond the script and into the humanity of the character. The script is a map – a representation of the role, not the role itself. The actor is the territory.

More:
http://jamiecarroll.me/the-map-is-not-the-territory

First Principles Thinking

As Shane Parrish of Farnum Street expertly sums up: There is a difference between being a cook or a chef. One creates a dish, the other follows a recipe. This is a surefire way to breakthrough your assumptions and find the right questions to ask for better answers. From there, continue to question your answers until you have boiled something down to its foundation.

More:
http://jamiecarroll.me/first-principles-thinking

Second Order Thinking

Second Order thinking is considering the outcomes beyond immediate consequences. A simple concept that can yield big results. We can often see the consequences of our immediate actions: But then what? What would happen, what could we avoid if we considered those secondary outcomes before taking action in the first place?

More:
http://jamiecarroll.me/second-order-thinking

If you’re interested in learning more about Mental Models, Shane Parrish of Farnam Street blog has released the first two of his five volume series covering the major mental models.

More:
https://fs.blog/mental-models/

Right now, New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) is offering an incredible lineup of online masterclasses, workshops, and networking events including:

• Award-winning Playwright Jeremy O. Harris (Slave Play) on tools to write in a dystopia
  https://youtu.be/KgRuJECy0Kg
• Tony-Award winning Director Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown) on her process
  https://youtu.be/8lCKDKvXuDE
• NYTW Directing Fellow Whitney White (Our Dear Dead Drug Lord) on interpreting the script
  https://youtu.be/aj6ZQ5k3iiU
• Tony-Award winning actor Celia Keenan-Bolger (To Kill a Mockingbird) on the Tools of the Artist
  https://youtu.be/E4DpzywEX98

Click here for their full list of programming:
https://www.nytw.org/nytw-virtual-programming/

Host Srinivas Rao and his guest, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School Dr. Srini Pillay discuss the creative breakthroughs that become possible once you’ve let go the need to force breakthroughs into happening.

“The focused mind is essential for strategy, I think the unfocused mind is essential for the substrate in which that strategy is placed.”

Dr. Pillay compares focused thought to a metaphorical fork — a fork that picks up only the obvious solutions right in front of you. When you’re not focusing, you gain access to a much wider realm of your own identity. Non-focused thought is a spoon, to continue on with the silverware metaphors — scooping up many pieces at once, making novel connections between old thoughts and sensory impressions.

It’s easy to draw a parallel for actors prepping a role. How easy is it to focus too much conscious thought on obvious choices, and forget to leave room for subconscious elements? This is what I call “writing a book report” of the role. It’s much more exciting and immediate to allow space for playful elements outside the obvious. Less fork. More spoon.

Listen to the full episode here:
https://jamiecarroll.me/unmistakeable-creative-unfocused-mind

Find The Unmistakable Creative on Apple Podcasts:
http://jamiecarroll.me/unmistakeable-creative-apple

Find The Unmistakable Creative on Stitcher:
http://jamiecarroll.me/unmistakeable-creative-stitcher

Or find it on your favorite podcast app.

On Camera Lab is designed to be an on-going practice for your development as an artist. This work is structured, specific, and follows a repeatable set of steps designed for actors to craft and hone their own On Camera Technique.

It’s different from any ongoing On Camera acting class out there, and I can’t wait to share it.

Actors are encouraged to return to the Lab each month, as long as they are experiencing growth and progress.

Applications are now live—and since we’re still in a time of economic upheaval, upcoming sessions are available at a special “relief rate”.

Click here to learn more about the workshop—and find out how to apply.