Suzuki Seagull

I was looking over some notes I made after a Suzuki class one day when I had a particularly revelational experience The Suzuki work demands a high level of both physical and mental stamina and I decided to utilize an exercise called stomping shakuhachi to explore more of Konstantin.
As the exercise began, I chose a focus and sent my energy mercilessly towards that focus. Stomping shakuhachi requires a sense of controlled abandonment and suddenly I turned and saw Caitlin. I just wanted to throw myself at her feet, to contact her somehow, to contact my mother, just once, for the shortest time, and then I would get back up and resume the exercise. Of course, the precision of the form did not allow me to do this (aside from the fact that Catherine would have murdered me). And it was so frustrating marching to this arbitrary beat, sweating out my ass, and I realized that this should be how hard I am fighting during the whole span of the play, with this kind of desperation where every single molecule in my body is activated. And when we all fell to the floor to prep for the shokhuhachi, I had never been more viscerally connected to the exercise. When I rose from the floor, I instinctually made a gesture, holding a gun in my right hand. I knew that I would never point that gun at anyone else but myself. Fighting against that knowledge became my obstacle. Maybe I could muster enough strength to turn that gun on the people who really deserved it, my mother, Trigorin, Nina for having an affair with Trigorin. It became harder to keep myself from dropping to the floor with exhaustion, from pointing the gun to my own head until I had expended the last ounce of my strength to turn it the other way.
If I could just transport this intensity into myself internally during a scene--all of the dynamic friction between what I want and what is stopping me from getting it, I think my work on stage would be filled with so much more. Well, that’s a challenge for me!
- Alborz G-Money