Don’t Fill the Silence: The Panic Box, the Idea Box, and an Improv Exercise Called Suffer in the Silence

This is the Dearing Acting Studio Podcast, where we discuss the connection between life and acting. Today I'm in the studio with my man, Matt Dearing. Today we are talking about that dreaded thing called silence. Silence? Ooh, okay. Should be a fun day. So many people and so many actors are afraid of the silence. They bump into the silence and then all of a sudden all of their insecurities rise to the top. And when I say many people, I mean probably every person, including myself. You go through this process of you're sitting in silence for a second and you have these thoughts that are rushing to your mind.

And you have to figure out, what am I going to do? And what I'd like to say is, it's better not to fill the silence. What do you mean by that? Like every word matters? Like that you're intentional with what you're saying? Or just that there's like that, that extra meaning behind it? Yeah. So one of the things that Brian and I worked on a long time ago, Brian being one of the instructors here at the studio, my big brother, him and I sat through some of our game tape and suffered through our game tape. He was worse than I was. I was really bad. We both hated the process of watching the game tape in order to eliminate our us.

On stage? On like the improv stage? No, on the teaching stage. Okay. Interesting. So this is like evaluation of yourself as a coach, as you know, trying to get better in that area. Yeah. And same thing with podcast. So I'd be sitting here and instead of trying to find the next word to say, you'd fill it with, um, and, uh, you know what I mean? And, uh, what do you think? And all these things that are passively soft and lessen how important the thing is that you just said. And as soon as you see a pattern in something that you do often, that pattern becomes something that you realize that I'm falling back upon this thing when I feel insecure. So there'll be a silence there. And instead of letting the silence happen and find exactly what I want to say, I'll try to fill it with words or sounds or something, or I'll ask a follow-up question that is really just a me trying to figure out and make sure that, that I feel good after delivering what I have to say. Yeah. One of the, one of the biggest examples of that in our teaching was ending with, does that make sense? Hmm. Yes, totally. I remember that. Like that, that's honestly just one of Brian's, like you said, it's you too, but that's one of his things. Like I grew up with that, that saying a little bit. Well, that makes sense. Of course. And what's, what's funny is I think he got it from me. Oh, totally. You know, we forget that Brian is 10 years, my junior. So we've been doing this acting coaching thing together now for 25 years or whatever. And his bad habits oftentimes are a reflection of him watching me teach and then emulating. And then me critiquing him for something that he was doing that I did. And then he's like, what the heck, man? So it turns out it was my fault essentially, you know, you know, you know, totally. And in this entire podcast, it's going to be hard not to have us think and notice these little fillers as they come up.

So imagine I was giving this intro here and instead of letting the silence hit and you respond, I say, does that make sense? What does that say to you? It, it, it almost tells you like, I'm not sure you were listening. I'm worried that what I said wasn't clear. I'm filling it with something that softens the strength and the power of the information that was delivered. That makes a lot of sense, actually, because of even just the way you put it, this idea of saying more than we need to, like, because of either fear of, like, making sure everybody got it or fear of, like, not confidence in yourself as a coach. I know I've been there plenty of times, like, trying to lead a room where you, we talked about it a little bit yesterday with the confidence in other areas, but for this specifically, like, when you speak, you can or cannot come across confident depending on what you're saying and how you're saying it, right?

Absolutely. And when you're fully present with someone else, when you and I were speaking just now and a second ago, I looked in your eyes and I could see you're listening. You can react, you can respond at any second. So I'm not worried about releasing the focus. And you saw that in my eyes two seconds ago. Totally. He's got me. At any time I want to, I could stop talking because he's going to pick up right where I left off. Isn't that fun? It's like a game of, like, catch or ball or whatever, like, passing back and forth and finding that rhythm. And I feel like it's probably different depending on who you're with, right? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Did I, did I, did I stumble upon something too early or? No, I'm making fun of myself. Oh, okay. Because I just did the exercise I'm going to take us through later. You said something, you started to say a negative almost here about maybe it's not. And then you followed through with the point. I made an assumption up front of what I thought you were going to say. And you probably noticed in my body language, a little bit of a no energy because I didn't want you to negate your point, but you weren't negating your point. The point you ended up making was very true. What I thought you were going to say was you had made a point and then you're like, but maybe that's not right. I thought that's what you were going to say.

And I was trying to clarify to you non-verbally that no, no, no, no, no, don't back off that. I totally agree with what you're saying. I love that example and I want to run with it. That's cool. So you were talking about passing the ball back and forth and that's exactly what we're doing right now. Yeah. This energy. And that's what happens in an improv scene. It's what happens on stage in a dramatic scene. It's what happens on film. It's what happens in life. It's what happens in business. We pass an energy back and forth and we can all feel it when somebody in the room is bulldozing. Yeah, totally. Especially like if you're an improviser, we've all seen it. We've all done it, honestly. It doesn't matter how good you are at one point or another. You bulldozed a scene. And you can feel it when someone hasn't been listening.

And that to me is a great affront. A great what? Affront. Insult. What? Oh, yeah. I was going to say, what does that mean? I become offended when I've been speaking and I look up and I see glassy eyes. I get even more mad when I see glassy eyes and then I see somebody trying to pretend like they really were listening. Even if they can repeat the words back, it doesn't change the fact that they tuned out. And here's what I would prefer. This is what I think is better and that most people miss. And it would be amazing if people could start to become honest.

People who are not being honest in that moment think that it would be rude to interrupt. I think interrupting in that exact moment would be the most kind thing you could possibly say. That interruption looks something like this. I'm going to stop you right there. I've heard that story before. Real quick, before you continue, you already told me this, just so you know. Ah. I'm a bad. I feel called out right now. I'm not. You're not calling me out, but I do this all the time.

Where you listen? I'll let people repeat things. Yeah. It's a problem. Because here's what happens. So now you're bored. Yeah. You can't not be bored. No, for real. For real. I think I go into it sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes I go into it thinking like maybe there's more than what I've heard or what I know already. Yes. Which is why I love the follow-up that I said.

Yeah. Before you continue, I've already heard this story, just so you know. And if that's the case, they can say, cool, you heard the story. Let me skip right to the new part that I wanted to tell you about because I was just using the story as context. That's crazy. It's crazy. For real. I also love this interruption, and I use this a lot. I say, I'm sorry I'm not listening.

Mm-hmm. Even back in the old podcast days, like you were always really good about that. As soon as I realize I've tuned out, I tell you immediately, I love this one. You know what? I can't listen to this right now because I know that I'm going to tune you out because I'm so stressed or whatever else is going on. I think that that rude interruption is the most kind, loving thing you can do for the other person because what it tells you is when I am listening, I'm listening.

Yeah. I'm giving you everything I have. You know, it's funny, I'm going to out myself really quick, and I feel like this person is totally good with me outing myself with this story. But it happened to me once before one of our main stage rehearsals with a friend, and she was telling a story that I heard once before, but there were other people there, and I wasn't going to be rude, so I just sat there and I listened to it.

And then afterwards, I said something about the fact that I had heard it before, but I listened anyway or whatever. And she was like, I always thought you were a really good listener, but she was hurt by it because I hadn't had that up front. Like, I could tell it genuinely, like, you know, she wasn't upset or anything, but it kind of took her by surprise because she had made this assumption that when Joey listens to her, she's being heard out and it's important to me.

And when I make those decisions in those moments, that contradicts that. Yeah, even think about this. We'll use this example. This girl is telling you a story that you've heard before. And while you're listening, your eyes are active and you're acting as if you've heard it for the first time so that she feels validated in what she's saying, because we do that when we're listening, when we want to let people know we're listening.

Yeah. And then she's like, you were faking the whole time. And I'm like, you're not wrong. I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't lie. Like, you got me. I mean, push me in a box. Like, you figured it out. You're right. And, yeah, it was just funny. Like, that was the moment that came to my head immediately. It was like that life example of, like, this has happened to me many times.

So, let's go back to that silence, this idea of silence. This is a full stop moment. Full stop. Whatever you end up saying locks you in. In improv, in the scene, in business, and in life. As soon as you say it, you are locked in. Full stop. So, here's the exercise. I'm going to take you through an improv exercise. Listen, people. This one's good. Because, as you said, Joey.

All of these, I don't know, all of these ideas really become loud on the improv stage. The bad habits or the things that people do. It's like, all of a sudden, it's just blown up really big. And that's why it's scary. Because people feel exposed when they're on stage. Especially if they're working in front of a coach who will tell them the truth. What kind of coach are we talking about?

Like, somebody that's radically transparent all the time and just wants to make you better. But will tell you things that other people shy away from. Yeah, that kind of coach. Ah. Definitely. That was cute. So, here's the exercise. If he's listening, which I hope he is. He'll be hearing this for the second time, but actually only hearing it for the first time. Because the first time I told him, he was falling asleep over FaceTime.

So, I'm going to rewind it. I'm going to say it again. So, on the improv stage, here's what happens often. Is we hear something. And we start to process. And while we're processing, we begin to panic. And the panic fills up this box over here. I'm going to put it on this side. There's a box over here. The panic box. And the panic box says, oh my gosh, it's silent.

Oh my gosh, everyone's looking at you. Oh my gosh, the other actor's staring at you. Just dying for you to say something. Oh my gosh, everyone's getting uncomfortable because all eyes are on you. And this panic box fills up. And then before you know it, you just start, blah, just throwing out whatever was over here in your idea box. And here's what I want to happen instead.

I want you to fill that idea box up intentionally. So, you receive information from somebody. And here's what you're going to do. You're going to think about your response. And you're going to have an idea and another idea and another idea and another idea. And we have these supercomputers in our heads called our brains. And it can do this in seconds as long as you are able to dismiss the other box over here, which is difficult.

But as long as you can dismiss this box, these ideas will stack up quickly. Then through your supercomputer, you're going to take all those ideas and you're going to filter it by saying, what do I know to be true? The other person's body language, the tone, what's already been said in the scene, etc. And are any of these suggestions negating what I already know to be true?

And if that's true, I will eliminate those as ideas. If everything in here negates what's already true, what do I do? I stay silent and I potentially ask for clarification. Nine times out of ten, when the improviser asks for clarification, the audience will reward them with a laugh or a clap or a lean in. Why? Because when you're processing and something doesn't make sense and you're trying to make it make sense and it still doesn't make sense and then you ask for clarification, the audience is thinking to themselves, we needed clarification too.

So the fact that you asked for clarification is exactly what we were doing in our minds while we were watching you and we say, yay. Yay. Thank you. So there's an exercise that I invented years ago and it just so happens to be coming up in this quarter. And the exercise in improvisation, I call it suffer in the silence. And I'm going to take an entirely new approach.

When you teach it this time around? Yes. Okay. I'm still going to call it suffer in the silence, but I'm going to rebrand it. We're getting a sneak peek here just to be… Yeah, this is a sneak peek. This is cutting edge, hasn't been done yet in the classroom, but I know it's going to work. I like it. I like what I hear. I used to say suffer in the silence, which would just mean stay quiet, don't panic, allow yourself to come up with an answer.

But what I didn't do is I didn't give you a to-do list. I didn't tell you how to fill the silence. And this time around, we're going to do that. That's cool. Okay. So it's almost instead of suffer in the silence, it's do in the silence. But you're going to do a to-do list in your brain. Like live in the silence. Yes. Well, process in the silence.

Allow this box to fill up in the silence. And boom, boom, boom, boom, and just let it happen. And you'll be shocked at when you find your answer. So. Would you say that that falls into the new, because we changed our four-step process a little bit when it comes to improv. Would you say that that falls into that category of thought life specifically, what you're talking about right now?

Thousand percent. Because that's kind of how it rang back to me was like just finding that inner thought life in our scenes and the importance of that on top of it, how it can bring, bring improv to life in front of an audience. That's, sorry, I just want to say this really quick. That's one of my, I said this at a main stage rehearsal a few weeks ago, but to me, it's important as improvisers to remember that our audiences, whether they have done improv and know improv or if it's their first time ever coming to an improv show, at least with our format, the way we do it, I've seen, and I truly believe that the people sitting in the audience are doing everything with us.

And some of them know it and some of them don't, but they're doing improv in their heads. Like you just said, they're filling in these gaps and like kind of doing the scenes from the audience in their own head, which is where that reward comes from when you say something that they were already thinking. Cause they were like, Oh, I was, that's exactly where I was at, you know?

Um, and I just think it's, that's such a cool concept that improv is this living thing where even the audience is participating, like without claps, without laughs, without anything like that, because their brain is going along with us. They just don't have as much pressure cause they don't have all, they don't feel all the eyeballs. Bring me back to private lesson cause that's where I was going to go, but I must, I must react to what you're saying because you are right with this caveat in mind.

The audience is with you. The audience is improvising with you. They are in an essence living up there with you until you break their trust. When you break their trust, they will not forgive you for that. Breaking the trust looks like this. I've created a desk. I'm sitting at the desk. I'm writing at the desk. And then I walk through the desk. No matter what I say, it doesn't matter if it's clever, if it's truthful, if it's connected, the audience, they cannot forgive the fact that you created a desk, they chose to believe there was a desk, and then you shattered it.

And they, and they say, well, now I can't believe anything you're saying anymore. Yeah. So the whole reality just goes out the window. And that's why if the desk is there, and then you specify the desk, and you feel the desk, and it feels very real to you, and you walk around the desk, that very simple motion, they may laugh, they will react, they will lean in because they saw the desk, they see you see the desk, and the trust gets deeper.

Yeah. That's a really good point. I hadn't thought of that angle, but you're right. Same way that they're playing in their heads, you can lose them as well. And that's happened to us plenty of times in shows throughout the years. Like, you know. You walk through the desk, and that's when they pick up their phone, and they check their messages. And not until you grab them again, but now you have to go through the effort of grabbing them again, will they be re-engaged fully.

But until you lose them, they're there. And that's why I am so adamant about never losing the truth. I'd rather sit in the silence, find my way to truth, and trust that the audience is going to stick it with me, because they enjoy watching me process. They enjoy watching the supercomputer work. They don't enjoy me defaulting to panic, panicking, and then saying something that makes zero sense.

Pizza. I was saying that it made zero sense. That's hilarious. I just got that joke. All right, back to the private lesson you're supposed to tell me about. Private lesson. I don't. So there was a private lesson that we did just a few days ago with a student of ours here. Yes. Okay, now I remember. Okay. And I'd love to just go through this really quick. And this, you can tell me about time.

We're probably about there, but. We're pretty close, yeah. But this example, I think, will help people, because I'm going to take them through what was happening in my two boxes. Okay. Because I'm not saying that this box, that the panic box doesn't exist, because it does. But I'm going to tell you what to do with it. So we start our scene. It's you and me and another actor.

Let's pretend his name's Garrett. And when I, and we just start by staring at each other. No suggestion. And my vibe was that the two of you had a particular energy and that I had a different energy. And so my thought bubble was trying to process, why do they have similar energy and I have a different energy? And as I'm processing that and trying to find my way through it, you snapped out of your energy into a brand new energy.

And you said something about the poker table and that bets were up and it was going to be a thousand dollar bet. So my panic bubble popped up and my panic bubble said, whoa, whoa, that's not what I expected. That's not what I saw before. All of the things I was processing are irrelevant now. Now I'm looking at what is new information. So I have to say, okay, dismiss that.

Don't, don't, don't freak out. What is now true? Well, now I have different energy than him. That's still true. And this other guy's in the middle of the two of us. Okay. Then Garrett says, he'll bet a thousand dollars. And you look at me and you say, what about you? And I sit here and I think, and I'm going to give you about the amount of time.

And about right there, about four seconds or so is when I notice that both you and Garrett start to get a little uncomfortable with the amount of silence that I'm taking. To which I can only assume you're thinking, why is he not talking? What's going on? Did I make a mistake that Matt doesn't like? Like what's happening here? Is he going to direct us or stop the scene?

I'm imagining all of these negative things are probably happening in your mind. And I have to say, dismiss that. Dismiss the fact that you can see that they're uncomfortable and stick to your process. So I get back to my process and my process is, it's a thousand dollar bet. Who sits at a table and has a thousand dollar bet? And I'm, I'm going through options of that.

And then the option I come up with in my brain is that you run this seedy poker place. Cause there's only two of us here and we're betting a thousand dollars underground. And I come up with this whole story over here of my processing that, that I actually don't even have a thousand dollars, but I'm going to bet anyway. And if, and when I lose, I'm going to be in real deep trouble.

All of that entire story is happening over here in this box. But what comes out, the words are just this. I'm in. If I try to tell this whole story, I try to get it all out, it's not going to come out smooth. You guys are going to try to figure it out. If it's not perfect, now all of a sudden we're going to be pigeonholed into something that we can't recover from.

Yeah. So what do we know so far? We know that I'm taking this game seriously. We're playing Texas Hold'em clearly, by the way, clearly based upon your space work, which is very good. Thank you. I appreciate that. And so I am fully invested in the game. And you, you ask, you ask a logical question to Garrett, which then he says, I'll raise 400. And now I'm really pinned my character.

Yeah. So I take another silence and I'm thinking to myself, well, if I don't put the 400 in and I fold, then I'm revealing that I don't have a thousand bucks. So I'm, so I might as well play. Yeah. So I put in the 400 after another long silence. This one was more comfortable for me. Your guys' reaction to my second silence felt more comfortable to me.

Probably, probably was because we weren't as panicked. Totally. And I'm going to love to hear your, what was going on in your head after this. So now Garrett looks at you and says, I'll have another card. At which point I got offended. I got really mad, which I assume the audience would get mad too. But I got mad because we were playing Texas Hold'em. I believed every ounce of your space work.

I was fully invested in the game. And you don't ask for another card in Texas Hold'em. And so I start getting mad at your character. And this is where the first naming comes in. Because we haven't named each other yet. Nothing has been stated as far as we're stuck into anything. And it's funny, Joey, I figured this out later. Because our lives, our lives will create what comes out, you know?

Yeah. And I looked at you and I was trying to think of the owner's name of the seedy poker place that was going on in my head. And I came up with Mel. Which was, I loved that name. I did too. I really did. But here's what's funny. I figured out why that name was in my head randomly. I was listening to a sports podcast and Mel Kiper was the guy talking about the Cardinals pitch.

Oh, no way. That's hilarious. And I didn't think of it at the time. But it must have just been in the back of my head, right? So I went through the process of eliminating what names I don't like, what names could work, and just thinking of something that would sort of fit this guy. And so the only reason I said your name was because I felt like it fit.

So this was Mel's place. It just kind of made sense. Yeah. So we say that. We get mad at you. And then Garrett is not apologetic. No. Totally aloof, which makes me more mad. And here's the best part. So all this panic is going on over here of like, does he not know how to play Texas Hold'em? Is Joey not going to intervene? Like, what's going on?

All this panic, and I have to say, release that. Lean into your anger. What do we know is true? Well, because I haven't said it out loud, none of the story is true. All we know is that I took the game seriously. Yeah. So then from my anger, I look up at Garrett, and I become a mafia boss. And I say, do you even know who I am?

Now that's a question. It's not me saying I'm a mafia boss. Yeah. I just say, do you even know who I am? Mm-hmm. To which he goes, I don't know who you are. You know, whatever it was. Very, what I felt disrespected. Yeah. To which your character picked up on it. Oh, right away. I was so happy when you said that. And Mel goes, Mel goes, oh, you shouldn't have done that.

Yeah. And that was confirmation. So you confirmed the possibility that I had put in my head that I was a mafia boss. Now I could tell that if I tried to describe that, tried to bring it into a tent, whatever, none of that was going to help. So instead, I decided to leave. Because a mafia boss isn't going to take that kind of stuff. So he just walks away from the table.

And in enters me as the mafia boss's lackey of sorts. Yeah. The bodyguard. The bodyguard. And I think I even introduced myself as such. Yeah. And I give Garrett very clear instructions. This is who you were talking, or you might have even, you might have even said it for me. But now it's like, he knows who that guy was. Bodyguard comes out. Now here's what's interesting. If Garrett says, I'm sorry.

Right then and there. If he changes tune, I promise you, bodyguard listens and says, don't, don't do it again. and goes back and gets the mafia boss. The mafia boss comes back out and they finish their game. They might have even become good friends. Yeah. He might have taught them how to play poker. He might have hired them for the organization and Garrett's character might have made the whole mafia business legit.

But instead, he continues his aloof, sort of disrespectful, didn't care about the mafia boss. So, the bodyguard did what he had to do and he killed him. And I felt like the rest of the scene was very funny dealing with the dead body and we just had a lot of fun with it just being very real in this seedy place where there's a mafia boss so it wasn't all that, it wasn't all that out of the ordinary.

It wasn't crazy or anything. It just felt like, you know, any other sort of mafia movie where, well now there's a dead body, that's something we'll have to deal with sometime today to make sure that it gets taken care of, right? I gotta say, I just love it when a dead body's in a seedy movie. It's just so much fun to deal with that and like, and I've been in so many scenes where there's a ton of different avenues you can go down with like ignoring it.

But you gotta be careful, right? But you gotta be careful. I even had, we even had someone recently who is a Christian who came and saw our show and thought that we handled death inappropriately. That they didn't like that somebody got shot in a scene. Sure. But my thought is, they probably, it's probably not the actual death that they found disapproving. They probably didn't like the way that we handled it because we handled it in such a way that made it feel unreal, made it feel light, made it feel like it was no big deal.

Yeah. And there's gonna be a line there that we're gonna have to figure out as a troupe of exactly what's the line and why and when and whatnot. But yes, so here we are. So what I wanted to help everybody understand was I'm listening intently. I'm having all the same panicky things happen and I'm choosing to dismiss. I'm telling it, go away and I'm filling up this other packet over here.

As I fill it up, I'm making a choice but then when I make a choice, I'm trying to say as little as possible so that I can just add a small puzzle piece that we can build upon. Something that is true, that makes sense, that leads us forward and now each time somebody else talks, each time something else happens, in real time, this story's changing over here.

All of the truths are changing over here and now all of the answers will have to be filtered and changed and filtered and changed. So I think sometimes what happens is we either tell ourselves don't have a story in our head or we try to force our story that's in our head and both ways you're going to sort of get stuck because you're not allowing yourself to be fully present but if you're fully present, it's not like you didn't have something in your head but as soon as it changes, you've got to be able to let it go and move on to the next thing.

And here's how we help each other is not being specific when you didn't really know. So here's an example of what Garrett did excellently. When I said, do you even know who I am? I didn't want him to say, yeah, you're my neighbor. Yeah. I didn't want him to say, yeah, you're George Clooney. I didn't want him to even say, yeah, you're a mafia boss. Any of those things would have negated my emotion.

Yeah. would have negated my point of view. The only thing he could have said that would have been an affirmation would have been something like, oh, I do actually, I'm sorry. If he'd have said that, that would have been a yes to my idea. What he said was just as good because he said, no, I don't know. So he maintained character point of view which further insulted me which moved the scene forward.

So if he went through his process and he would have forced out, let's say he had those ideas and he would have forced one out, that would have really hurt the scene. Yeah. Imagine he now endowed me with being his neighbor. A whole new set of panic goes, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr. Right? And now I'm going, okay, can any of this still be true and is it true and if it is true, okay, I don't know and what combines and all of a sudden it's like, and that's how we get in crazy town really quick.

Yeah. Okay. I took up a lot of time there, but I, Oh, you're good. I would love, I would love to know at least what was going on in your head in that first moment. Yeah. Well, at first, so I saw you two faced off kind of profile so I saw the card table in the middle immediately and decided to be the dealer and then like you said, I kind of got into the space work of like really believe in it because we played a lot of cards in our family so I'm familiar with that but I was definitely like freeing out at the beginning of the scene just because I didn't know how to balance the two of you and be a mediator like without bulldozing the scene completely and making it about my character.

So, so I, and I'm also like whenever I, I choose to be a worker of sorts like in that scene I was the, you know, casino dealer or whatever. I, I try to walk the line of like when to and not to talk about the thing that you're doing. You know what I mean? Because in some aspects like for this scene I think a couple of those moves where I was like, you know, bad or, or check or whatever like that type of stuff does add to the reality and is cool but if I'm sitting there talking about like that's a joker of hearts and this is a spade of, of eights like nobody really cares unless it matters on a deeper level.

so they don't care unless that's what really happens top of your intelligence which I don't think it does. I don't think the dealer calls out the cards but if, let's just say they do, let's say in a, in a casino they do where they flip them over the, the, the river or the flop. they flip over the flop and they say, they say each card out loud.

I'd have no problem with that. What I, what I would have loved for you to have done would have been you react to him asking for a card. Oh, yep, yep, that probably could have. And that would have told me that you were starting to, you were starting to figure out that what could be true and you're asking yourself the same questions which is why am I dealing cards to two guys who are betting a thousand bucks each on the opening round?

Where are we? What's that? I mean, it's either going to be some sort of world series of poker or the highest stakes at a casino or, or medium, like pretty high stakes or at some seedy place in the middle, in the middle of nowhere. Totally. Right? It's one of those options. And so as you start to see it, what will happen is the cards will take on a reality to you.

Are they brand new cards that you got from the floor manager? Are they kind of, are they marked? Is it your place? If it's your place, you picked out the table that you're dealing at. Yeah, totally. And you start to see the fabric and what color it is and as all that stuff comes to life for you, when he asks for a card, it will offend you the same way it offended me.

Yeah. I think I panicked. That was one of those panic moments for me. I didn't know what to do because I didn't want to blow up the scene by calling him out and making him like feel like that. But you're right. The reality of it is like if you're in Vegas or anywhere and your dealer sees that, he's gonna like, say something about it and do something.

And then the other thing that I got pigeonholed with that scene was like, I couldn't quite figure out your character's point of view when like after he had drawn the card because to me, I was like, so you're just getting free money because he's gonna like, he's not gonna win without knowing the rules or playing the rules. Like drawing this extra card isn't gonna help him because I'm not gonna count it anywhere.

any way. Sure, but I didn't know you wouldn't count it. No, that makes sense. But either way, it worked out perfectly because you said to me, don't you wanna take his money? To which I said, yeah, I'll take his money. I'm happy to take his money. Yeah. But I'm offended at the fact that you even let this guy into your establishment because I take this game very seriously.

And so you didn't keep fighting me after that. No. So we found a common ground and we're like, yeah, this is a serious game and this makes sense. This point of view makes sense. So it wasn't, it wasn't a loss. All I'm saying is it was clear to me that the game was less real to you than it was to me or you panicked and didn't know how to react.

Yeah. And this goes all the way back to the very beginning of this podcast because what did you just say? You said, I was afraid to blow up the scene. Yeah. And I'm gonna tell you, I want you to be honest as quick as possible. You're not trying to hurt him but you're trying to say, I'm sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about. You, of course, cannot take a card.

This is Texas Hold'em. That's not how this game is played. You get two cards. That's it. You get two cards and there's gonna be a flop and then there's gonna be two more cards and that's what's gonna happen and that's gonna be your hand and you've already bet a thousand. Then you might look over at me and go, you're lucky, pal, because this guy didn't know how to play.

It's gonna be a good day for you. Yeah. So, but what hurts the scene is if you let him take the card. Because then you've, you've, you've, we, the three of us have lost the trust of the audience. Yeah. Because they thought we were playing Texas Hold'em and now they're like, you guys don't believe you're playing Texas Hold'em. Do you even know what Texas Hold'em is? Right.

And my, and my panic mode move would be, well then I'll take a card too or I'll take two cards or whatever and now it becomes this silly game of silliness and how silly can we get and then the scene will just blow up. We might get a couple laughs along the way but there's nowhere to go. Yeah. Yeah. It goes away from, from what you were talking about this whole time which is like on the improv stage if you're trying to find that truth and if you're playing from that truth you'll get rewarded for it.

It'll be more interesting. The audience will be engaged because they believe it. And that totally makes sense. Like when you really boil it down and simplify it like that concept is so, so strong. Curious. Did you, did you see my brain processing just now while you were talking? I did. Oh, was it, was it, was it wrinkling? Yep. Do you want to know what I was thinking?

Just a wee bit. Yeah. I was, I was thinking that I, that I wished that halfway through that you would have stopped and said full stop. Full stop. Full stop. Because it was so good. Yeah. It was so good. I appreciate that. Yeah. I would like to, you know, we, part of it is because we printed it on the second half of the sheet but normally we would start with our Bible verse but let's end with that today and then, you know, close, close up final thoughts and get ready for tomorrow.

So our Bible verse today is Proverbs 10, 19 and it's when words are many, sin is not absent but whoever holds their tongue is wise. I'll read that one more time. When words are many, sin is not absent but whoever holds their tongue is wise. Proverbs 10, 19. What'd you think of that, that one? Well, it connects perfectly. I, I was thinking the same thing. I flat out am using the language that when you speak too much, when you over talk, when you say things you didn't mean to say, do things you didn't mean to do out of panic, the audience can't forgive you for it.

They cannot let it go and so they will not reward you for that but if you are silent, if your words are less and then you say what you intend to say and you do what you intend to do, the audience will reward you and that same reward and same punishment will happen in life as well. Hard good stuff. Thanks for listening to the Dearing Acting Studio podcast.

For more information on classes or our programs, visit www.dearingstudio.com. We hope to see you in the future. Thank you.