Dancing With Bears

We have allowed someone else to determine our worth, and then we are angry at being undervalued.

Julia Cameron
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Hello Geo
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We should never be in a position where we have to evaluate another person, and, hopefully , never be the object of someone else's evaluation of us. You know there is more to you than anyone knows. The other person must be as complicated as you are. No one knows everything about you. You can't possibly know everything there is to know about another person.

There are times when we must make an assessment of someone, such as Election Day. How well we choose a candidate will have an effect on our futures in one way or another. Choosing a friend is even more difficult and important to our lives.

If you go looking for a job you will probably have to be interviewed, or if you're hiring then you have to measure someone else on very little informtion.

Actors are being evaluated all the time, by audiences and critics. But the most crucial measurement comes from the audition. You usually audition for the director and maybe one or two other people. If you're in good company you're reading for an artist of talent and experience, Sadly that is not always the case. I have auditioned for people who had no idea what they were doing. Maybe they were fresh out of Drama School somewhere with a pocket full of theories and no imagination. But sometimes they were older and shouldn't be trying to do what they can't do.

Twice I did a scene for a directing class and could very well see where the bewildered beginner was coming from. The professors were not teaching directing. They were teaching how to insult actors. It's a shame they were teachers, but thankfully not directors.

In or out of theatre you sometimes get an interviewer who says "Tell me about yourself." If you don't have a pat answer you're thrust into a whirlpool of information from which you have to draw no more that one minute of talk. That question is usually from someone who isn't sure of himself. I was stunned once by a director, there was no one else in the room, who said "Tell me something about yourself you don't want me to know."

Whatever the manner is of the interview or audition the result is probably going to be that either you are undervalued or overvalued. That's bad news in either case. Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you.

One of my Vagabondisms says "Underestimate me and you hurt me. Overestimate me and you hurt yourself."

Dana Bate - Vagabond Journeys
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