Saturday, March 21, 2015

I Allow Myself To Be Free

Today, we had a Saturday rehearsal for all of the principals in Seussical. Before rehearsal started, we did some warm ups. The last thing Mr. Kirkpatrick had us do was to look into the eyes of another person and say, "You are beautiful. I allow you to be beautiful. I allow you to be free."We said it to each other and meant it. We then laid on the ground, put our hand over our heart, made a wish, and then released the wish to the universe. Mr. Kirkpatrick then told us to tell ourselves that we are beautiful, that we allowed ourselves to be beautiful, and that we allowed ourselves to be free. By the end of the exercise, we were all in tears and felt a huge release.

This exercise that Mr. Kirkpatrick had us do reminded me a lot of the scene in Beloved where Baby Suggs leads a ritual in the clearing that focused on the self, the body, loving oneself, and freedom of the self. It also reminded me of this quote from Beloved: "Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another."

2 comments:

Unknown said...

On Friday in rehearsal, he has us do a similar project. Seussical is about accepting everyone for who they are, even if they think differently. KP kept trying to get us to be more expressive and into our scenes, but a lot of us were still holding back. He stopped rehearsal, made all of us turn to the person next to us and say that you loved them. It made everyone feel more connected and everyone was so ready to get working again. It made us feel more connected with everyone else, and the cast was so much more happy and expressive. Like Baby Suggs did at the Clearing, KP united us at rehearsel under one cause: loving ourself and one another.

Sri Korrapati said...

KP == Baby Suggs
Paul D =/= Pauly D