Director's Note: A New Way of Loving
By Ryan Perez Adame
As English speakers we are, I fear, impoverished when it comes to speaking about love. We have that one word that, while versatile, is employed to describe the bonds of family, friend, deity, nation, companion, community. Ancient Greek, by contrast, was wealthy in its trove of love words: eros (romantic & physical), philia (friendship & brotherhood), philautia (self), storge (familial), xenia (hospitality & guests - an important covenant between Zeus and his followers to welcome strangers), and agape (love for humanity, especially from creator to creation). The bounty of love words reminds us not just how many forms love can take, but all of the different ways in which we can practice it.
In All About Love, the late bell hooks, one of my favorite authors and thinkers, said: "we would all love better if we used it as a verb". I agree. It is also hard to define as one singular action. I think the act of love is the amalgamation of tendernesses, honesties, and acceptance. Loving someone is an act, it is affirmative and present. Love as action requires practice and patience. But how do we practice the act of loving someone? How do we practice the act of loving our community? A nation?
For this, we can turn to the foundations of actor training and to the characters of Anna in the Tropics. The practice of love begins with listening. Distinct from hearing, listening is not just collecting words as someone speaks, but understanding the sentiment that underlies them. In script analysis and actor training, we call this the subtext: what is unspoken.
The practice of listening requires the listener to set aside their own wants and motives in order to absorb what the other is expressing. I believe that our job as actors is to study, interpret, and replicate human behavior in its complexity. The practice of listening to one's scene partner attunes the actor to tiny shifts in body language and subtle movements in tone of voice that inspire what comes next. For us as actors, this scene work isn't just a rehearsal for a play, it's practice for life.
Think about your close relationships. Consider those moments in your life when you have felt most connected to someone, to yourself. What sparks the indescribable feeling you have when you feel a profound love and connection to another person? I suspect that those moments set upon us when we listen or feel listened to with care, which blossoms into understanding.
In Shakespeare's time, audiences referred to attending plays as going to "hear a play", not to "see a play". They, like Conchita, Marela, and Ofelia were oidores. Those who listened in order to understand. Listening is love. May you listen, may you love.
