Now, more than ever, I believe we need actors, creators and storytellers to accept the burden and joy of vocation - the drive to create, and insist on creating what AI can’t compete with.

That starts with a desire to put the old rulebook of “good enough” to the side and joining a community dedicated to creating living characters that you can’t look away from, in scenes that you remember for years. Nothing less. 

Because in a world increasingly beguiled by AI synthesis our job is to beat AI by becoming more human,

The casting was like any other video game audition. Two scenes and a note: "Feel free to use the environment." The part was for Hondo Ohnaka, a much-loved Star Wars character already established in the animated series Clone Wars. Fans knew him. They knew his voice, his swagger, his particular brand of pirate charm. It had to be done right. There was a problem.

Claude Response: “Human creativity isn't redundant in the face of AI — it becomes more visible, more necessary, because suddenly you have to articulate what the living thing is actually doing that the pattern-matcher isn't. The fear of redundancy is really a failure to look closely enough at what's already there.”

We are now only three sessions away from our private show-and-tell. Much has been learned from the writing retreat weekend and the resulting decision on the first piece we shall work on.

The exercise revealed something common amongst actors and increasingly common in everyday life: a short tolerance for psychological discomfort.

Sitting in discomfort is a skill that appears to be increasingly avoided. Whether that be emotional or physical pain, or even the discomfort of being challenged, wrong or just different. Perhaps it’s social media and the increasingly divided world we live in?

The main thing to share with these bold actors was that we must hold on to the idea that we are in a process. That even if we show our work to an invited audience in April, it will be showing something that is in process. Marketing and Audiences must be reassured they will have a finished product - as finished as possible. To my mind that isn’t helpful - as when it comes to acting you are always in a process of iteration and discovery - at least that it a better aim. Even when it comes to TV and film, maintaining that sense of live discovery, even within all the constraints, makes for a living performance.

I am not sure a what point an GAP Acting Atelier became an idea. Perhaps it was after reading Alison Hodge’s “Acting Technique” or perhaps it was watching students use the technique for fast work in a Mocap Vaults class in Montreal? I do know that it struck me enough, in the middle of the night, to force me to get up and write it down so I could free myself to sleep again.