A Zak Barnett Studios long-time student and enthusiast of all things acting and self-discovery, Ava Marilyn seeks to capture the essence of the studio in her writing through her weekly personal experiences and epiphanies and her findings about the deeper self and others. Through these diary entry-type updates from someone actively studying and working through the industry, she hopes to provide an insider’s look into the studio itself, its practices, and its impact.
I am a social butterfly (I am an only child). I make friends wherever I go (I hate being alone). No, but seriously, my friends are everything to me. I love them so much.
My favorite thing in the whole world is participating in a deep inquisitive conversation with the people I hold dear; learning new things about them, growing together, growing apart, and all that lies in the in between. With those I’ve known a lifetime, somehow finding ways to fit into each other’s lives even amidst the constant change that accompanies a full life.
I have spent much of this season reflecting on my relationships, the communities in which I am a part, and the groups of people with whom there is remarkable mutual trust.
To me, real friendship is comfortable and challenging, steady, and surprising. All of it matters and belongs. My posture in life is always to place myself in communities that inspire this unique kind of intimate and truthful interaction.
Something Zak said this week in class really stuck with me: “You guys have been working together and loving each other for a long time.” We really have.
There are people in class I have known for years; people whose art and creative minds I have admired and praised since our early days.
Yet there’s a modern take on this closeness we share… we’ve not been “in real life” much at all. I could count on one hand the number of times we have met face to face. But I consider them some of my best and closest friends. They are easily the most talented bunch of people I have met and we share a connection one simply doesn’t find outside of the acting training setting.
Some people in class I met a mere 2 months ago, but we have already shared experiences that friends who have known each other for 15 years don’t get to have.
It is indescribable, ZBS friends are a different breed; we’re often made of a calibre that above all is ready to risk… to deeply know and be deeply known.
The contribution they make – not only to my development as a person but to the progression of my work as an actor is something one has to see to believe.
Never did I think I could find such emotional safety in a space that also involves extensive risk. The stakes are too high in most any other setting of young adult relationships, to risk as freely and vulnerably and even enjoyably as we do in class.
An acting class should be a place of exploration and encouragement. It should be more than practicing a scene and leaving. When there is shared history amongst the students, there becomes an opportunity for profound, confident creativity. Zak says a group can develop a creative depth of exploration that feels safe, perhaps too safe, like you are not moving to the next level, when in reality if that safety is held right, it is the very thing that brings you to the next level; a deeper place within. He said “Just because you feel safe doesn’t mean you are doing safe work, it means you have the opportunity for an added level of risk and depth.” Great acting is the great venture into ourselves, something Zak says is impossible to do alone. Something I find to be true over and over again.
Within the walls we share together in class, nothing in my life or work feels like something I should contain with a closed fist. Everyone wants to go through life together. That brings an actor inner peace in spades.
