Listening into Being

ABSTRACT

Drawing on my work as an actor, I make a case for the importance of a dialogue between actors and analysts about the aspect of an actor’s creative process I experience as listening a character into being. It’s my contention that, since actors and analysts both extend an invitation through our listening, there is vast territory the two professions share in common with far-reaching implications.

KEYWORDS:

• Listening
• recognition
• role
• third
• character
• attunement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robin Weigert

Robin Weigert, MFA, BA, is known as a film and television actress with exceptional range and versatility. Most recognizable from her Emmy-nominated portrayal of the iconic gunslinger ‘Calamity Jane’ in Deadwood (the series and the recent movie revival for HBO), Weigert played therapists in the box office hit Smile and opposite Nicole Kidman in the much-lauded SAG 2020 Best Ensemble contender Big Little Lies, attorneys in the popular cabler Sons of Anarchy and Jay Roach’s biographical drama Bombshell and strippers in Charley Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York and Steven Soderbergh’s black-and-white period drama The Good German. She was nominated for a Gotham Award for her portrayal of a housewife turned prostitute, the central character in the award-winning indie Concussion, and will soon be featured prominently in a miniseries for Hulu as the matriarch of a Polish Jewish family that survived the Holocaust in We Were the Lucky Ones. Series regular roles include Dietland for AMC with Julianna Marguiles, NBC’s Life with Damien Lewis and the upcoming CBS show Tracker with Kevin Hartley for exec producers Ken Olin and Ben Winters.