Getting out of Your head

In my time at Agents I’ve seen a few workshops pop up geared toward (but fail at) tackling ‘being in your head’. For those of you not familiar with this term, being in your head, it’s the state of thinking so much in a scene it hinders your performance. It occurs when you realize you don’t know what to say and panic, or when you know what you’re going to say ahead of time (for shame). The effects are obvious and visible: lowered response time, lack of scene progression, and horrible jokes that will feel like you’ve been robbed of your innocense. Quite the catastrophe.

The first common problem with trying to get out of your head is that you try to think of ways to get out of your head. Suddenly, you realize with horror, that you’re still in your head and thinking about getting out of it is only making it worse. Then you try to think of a way to stop thinking, but curses you’re back inside your head! Before you know it, your scene is over and it sucked. The cycle will likely continue for the rest of your practice/show.

Now every workshop I’ve been to about getting out of your head all dealt with mental techniques to get you out, but if you follow Einstein (he’s a pretty smart guy) you know that a problem can never be solved on the same level it’s created. So the only way to get out of your head is to do something. Anything. It’s doesn’t matter what it is or what you say, I can guarantee you it’s better than doing nothing .

Want more specifics? Fine. Make a sound. It can a gargle, a chortle, a wang-dang-doodle, the exact sound doesn’t matter. Keep it going and it’ll form itself into a sentence. Again, it doesn’t matter what. I’ve started scenes with “Mmmmmmmorning!”. A pretty shitty opening, but it doesn’t matter because at least you have something to work with. Usually that alone is enough to get you going. If not, try reaching out for an item. The way you move your hands (the angle of your wrists, shape of your grip, whether you are using one hand or two) will cause your brain to give you the first logical choice. It’ll be there, right as rain. You can even do it now. Go on. See, that wasn’t so hard was it? It’s even a nice color.

There are a million (more like ten or so) exercises out there that will help get you out of your head, but they all come down to getting you to do something, because if you’re busy doing something you won’t have time to think!

Contributed by Jake Lucas