An Actor Arrives: Elena’s Journey From Ukraine to Impulse. Part 3.

Beginners Call

As my first acting teacher said: “You cannot teach someone to act, but they can learn”.

Briefly, that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life. And if we are talking about the acting profession (and I believe any other creative profession) – learning has a beginning, but no end. I never feel like I know enough, I never feel that I have reached a level where I can stop developing. And the great thing is, that even when I develop as a person, I develop as an actor. Because I am my own instrument in a way. In the same way that a pianist has a piano, a painter has his painting equipment… actors have themselves.

And that’s both the good and the bad part.

Act 1

I learned a lot. In university, I, like most of my fellow students, were taught Stanislavsky and Chekhov’s methodologies. And I always wondered: why does the world have so many acting techniques, yet we are limiting ourselves with these two? I mean, we all aim for the same result, but still.

I worked a lot. I starred in films and TV series; I did theatre: physical and improvisational, and I worked in touring theatre for about four years. And then Covid hit and spoiled everything. If only I had known that those were the good times, right? All of us had quite a big pause in our creative work and I definitely felt like I wasn’t in my best acting shape. And then I saw that Ivanna Chubbuck’s Studio had opened in Kyiv, so I headed to learn there. The best part was that my teacher there had studied the Meisner technique, so we talked her into teaching it to us.

I felt like I was learning to walk again. I got to discover the simplest yet hardest things – following my impulses and not correcting them. It was like coming back to my real self. Not filtered and shaped by society. I felt free.

Intermission

And then the war started. I was so afraid that everything was over and that I might never have a chance to do what I love again. But even then, almost unconsciously, part of me analyzed everything that was going on with me and those around me, so that I could put it into my scripts or my acting roles.

Act 2

It’s different now. I work at two non-creative jobs, sometimes I write at night and I feel such a terrifying lack of acting. It’s almost unbearable. I do realize that I’m lucky, because I have actual jobs and I earn money to live on. But, sadly, it does not fulfill me. I don’t feel whole. So I started to search for a suitable place to practice. I didn’t care about fancy names or star coaches. I wanted to develop, I wanted to find a safe place, a real place, where I could make mistakes and explore myself, I wanted to feel alive. And more – to be alive while acting.

At one of the networking events I attended, I overheard people discussing The Impulse Company. Of course, I googled them as soon as I heard the name and it hit me: this was exactly what I needed. Meisner! The perfect path to my true self. The perfect path to feeling alive again. 

After another grey and tiring day at work, I was so desperate that I wrote a huge letter to The Impulse Company and sent it straight away. I thought: I will dare to do this. I will take every chance I can, because I cannot exist without creating. Yet still, I expected nothing.

So imagine my excitement when I got an invitation for a Zoom call from those beautiful Impulse people and the invitation to start learning in January! The thought of coming back to acting keeps me going.

Now I repeat to myself:

Dare, always dare.