Welcome to my little corner of my website where I delve into the ethereal middle-ground between the craft (or art) of acting and the theories of psychology. This is the headshot I'd use for my psychologist character.
I have always studied these two areas side-by-side, starting in my undergraduate and maturing into my master of sciences. My undergraduate involved doing my drama training alongside studying psychology and statistics as though they were two separate degrees (which in some senses they were - running between lecture halls and dance studios certainly felt like being in two different degrees).
I was never quite sure where I wanted to end up, always juggling between wanting to be an actor or a clinical psychologist. Hence the decision to study a master of sciences in Psychology, thinking that would open the gateway to completing a doctorate and qualifying as a clinical psychologist. However, I went through a series of experiences working in the psychology industry which helped me to realise that being a clinical psychologist was not the way I wanted to go, and in fact the skills that drew me to psychology as a career in the first place were much better suited to acting, which I had started to find myself engaging in once again.
And so as I headed towards the second half of my masters where ultimately I had to make a decision as to what my thesis would be about, I decided to combine what had previously been separate and dive into the psychological underpinnings of acting. I was fascinated by the possibility of understanding imagination, fantasy, empathy and memory through the lens of an actor's experience. I wanted to try to figure out if I could explain what was going on psychologically whilst we actors went through the process of creating and performing a character. I found myself investigating the popular idea that 'The Method' produces a kind of madness that subsequently results in the tragic suicides of so many high profile actors that we see. More on this to come.
As a result, a fire was lit for me with respect to the connection between psychology and acting and so here we are with my website and my blog! I hope to take you with me as I go along a journey, writing as I read and following my nose as to what interests me and what could potentially help us as actors through an understanding of psychology, and what could help psychologists through studying such a fascinating (as we would certainly consider ourselves) group of people as actors.