What Do You Need To Do Your Best?

I was at a bar with a couple of actor friends the other day, and the conversation turned to different rehearsal rooms in which they had worked.  They swapped stories about good experiences and bad...and what impressed me was how clearly they were both able to articulate what they needed to do their best work.  They needed slightly different things, but simply the fact that they could both say "I need X to be true for me to be able to bring my best game to the room" -- pretty powerful.  And sometimes they got those things from a director and a process, and sometimes they didn't.  And the things they needed were pretty simple...maybe not things that could happen in every process, but nothing crazy.

I asked them if they'd ever had a director ask, on day one, or in the audition, what elements they needed in place to do their best work.  Nope.  None.  Not once.

And I realized I'd never asked that, when I jumped into a workshop with actors.  And that I'd never really been asked myself.  I'd sometimes offered some pieces of "how I work" if I felt like I wasn't going to get it otherwise, but I'd never really sat down with collaborators to say "this is how to get the best out of me."

And I thought: what a missed opportunity!

And I thought:  that's it, I'm gonna ask every potential collaborator that question from now on.

And I've gotta give some thought to what I need, too.