About
— D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form
It is a basic misconception of the hero story when we think that it is about success. It isn’t. It is the story of the one out of the thousand that would make it under these conditions. That is why the stories of the other 999 are part of it as well, and we must see them in their failings at the edges of the screen. The hero story is about terrible things that happen to people who realistically can expect at no moment of their confused story to become the one. It is a Bayesian plot of improbability after improbability, and the fact that one or another will come out of it unbroken must, humbly acknowledging the complexity of what lies behind the simple term “a situation”, at least as much be considered as a product of pure chance as one of merit. We don’t tell hero stories because they are what happens, we tell them because something has to keep those of us, who don’t have the ability to find their importances in the immediate, going. They give the 999 plus the one, lost in search for the story of their life, the strength to face the next obstacle, which might sometimes simply be to make it till the evening.
We can though only see things that we attempt to face and we can only know of things we have in some way seen. It is usually effortlessly acknowledged that the hero by his actions shapes the world, it might be overlooked though that the world, simply by being what makes the hero his experiences, does as well shape him. This might be the earliest prototype of the exploratory way that has so much built the Western path: Becoming who we are by radically facing what is. In that sense the hero story might be a necessity, a necessity for encountering things one will later know of. And this necessity might require embracing the risk that one will not arrive at the glorious ends of the journey but at one of the many other possible ones.
We should all stop priding ourselves for things that went well and blaming the world for things that went badly. It is for sure more complicated than that. When we think of the obstacles that come in our way, we think of our environment. What we forget is that we ourselves are the first environment we have to cope with. This first environment might pose severe obstacles itself and, as it happens to be the only tool we dispose of to reach for all further environments it will to not unconsiderable degrees determine how we will be able to reach out for the world. I would not exclude that it might be possible that we can achieve everything if we only wanted, but it shouldn’t remain unsaid that then we first would need to have the luck of a condition that would enable us to want in such a way. And the other one, who feels entitled to complain about the outer or inner obstacles he more than others has to face, should remain aware that the most horrifying obstacle of them all would be to never even be able to find one. It might not even be moral, it might turn out to be simply technical: No matter how hard things get, we must insist that there is that tiny gap of personal choice to decide if we want to stay a victim or step on the path of the hero, because our insistance might actually be what creates the gap and it might be the gap that builds the condition for a choice, in ourselves and in the other.
I seem to have been lucky to have gotten it all in generous amounts : The inner and outer conditions that would impose the obstacles and the other inner and outer conditions that would make me find a way. My stumbling way through life, built by all the things I encountered through the ongoing collision of all these inner and outer conditions, led to a moment when I felt that I might actually have something to offer, something that could possibly not have been built in any other way. I was never a human with much of the ability to be happy, but I found comfort in understanding that the same things that would make me struggle were the conditions that would enable me to see and do things others couldn’t so easily see and do.
My name is Anne Frütel. I am an independent acting teacher. I have dedicated my life to teaching acting to anyone who wants to learn it. I have taught the dentist, the mathematician, the truck driver, the social worker, the teacher, the pathologist, the lawyer, the political advisor, the wallpaperer, the poet, the soap vendour, the physical therapist, the plumber, the boxing trainer, the writer, the ethnologist, the hacker, the bike courier, the psychologist, the biologist, the journalist and, of course, the actor. If you understand how acting works you can teach whom you want.
I studied at the famous Max-Reinhardt-Seminar in Vienna, but most things I know I haven’t learned there. I have worked myself through books and research articles, have built my databases, have done my journeys through experience, have had the exceptional luck to encounter remarkable teachers, have done my experimentations. That is how I have, little by little, collected powerful tools under my belt. Meanwhile I feel that things have come in a way that I might have something of value to offer. I pick up on the paths that were built by Edvard Gordon Craig, Konstantin S. Stanislavski, Bertolt Brecht, Achim Benning, Moshe Feldenkrais & Yochanan Rywerant and John Dewey. Human Acting is my contribution to the overall endeavour of making the realm of the humans an a bit lighter sort of place.
Acknowledgements
A leader is always determined by where her followers want to go. This work wouldn`t have been possible without my students, their curiosity, their courage and their commitment. They have taught me everything. People without whom I couldn’t have kept the image alive that one needs to build a dream over years are Johannes Gleim, Michaela Satzke, Wiebke Schatz, Eva Karel and the Stark family. I thank Eva Laser for her mentoring. I thank Alba, Julius and Konstantin for their patience, their respect for my work and their deeply critical remarks. On personal behalf I owe this work to the way I process information, my ability to feel importance, a lifelong lack of self-esteem and my complete inability to live in the moment.