THE Y SESSIONS
November 9th - 28th, 2021
Free Fake Therapy with Anthony Drazan
In April 2020, early into our first Covid lockdown, David (Gersten) began a series of weekly Zoom chats with members of the ALN community that included family, friends, friends of friends. Under the wide umbrella, of “the pause moment” participants would gather virtually to share their experiences, suspended as we all were from our normal day to day activities. It was a healing experience — intimate, esoteric, and diverse. Any given meeting was part bull session, prayer meeting, meditation, rant, riff, communal kvetch.
Coincidentally, I had begun Zoom recording improvisational acting sessions with a group of actors and non-actors for a film/serial about a boundary crossing therapist, his patients, and their shared sense of emotional and existential crisis, an unspecified dread. There was no script and no direction. I only asked the actors to come up with a name for their character and a reason (question or concern) for a one on one consultation with the fictitious healer. We would then meet for a one on one (sometimes group) Zoom session and improvise our way through a 45 minute encounter.
The objective of creating character and conflict for a developing script became secondary to the experience of the session itself. Each session would stand alone, loosely connected to the session before but with its own movement, cadence, flow. The power of the improvisation sprung from the actor or non-actor’s personal narrative fusing with the character being created. I was Tony. And I was my character, Yitz. Of course, this is what actors do but without the safety of a script, we would ask ourselves if it was the character or the actor talking. In those moments, the line between reality and fiction was erased.
The screen, the virtual reality, the mode of transmission was like a mask that we each wore and shared between us. We weren’t thinking about it as we were playing, but we were inside and outside simultaneously, and that was liberating and safe, brought together and held together by the virtual link.
The ALN “Pause" meetings and virtual "Shrink Rap” improvisations paradoxically created an open, intimate environment for exploration of our shared experience. Last week I gathered together in person with the other actors for the first time. I had never met any of them in person. I can’t speak for them but I felt a wee bit inhibited, shy, even a little embarrassed by my openness with the...remotely. And that awareness was sobering. It made me laugh. And they did too. There was a sense of community, and an expressed desire to move forward and continue our dialogue.
