“And maybe, just a little thing I like to hope, maybe he found shelter in me even though we never actually met. I think that’s what we do as actors, Amie. We hold space open for all these souls to come inside.”
-The Actor Playing Attar, in THE LOOK
TAC SHOP
The Actor’s Compassion workSHOP (TAC Shop) is a transformative concept developed in fiction, destined for the real world.
ACTING IS not THERAPY.
But the skills and tools actors use can be extraordinarily helpful when it comes to breakthroughs that let go of blind patterns, distractions and dead-end assumptions.
These skills and tools hold space within the psyche for intelligent curiosity about human nature and productive self reflection — the baseline ingredients for compassion. They enliven situations and make it possible to experience the world DIFFERENTLY (even if just for a moment) turning inner turbulence into inner tranquility, a grounded state that supports clarity and wise action.
Actors know how to do this for roles they play. They can show us how to apply the same techniques in our own self-crafted roles.
Why compassion?
Because it sets you free.
Judgment melts. Emotional knots untangle. Anger shifts more efficiently into purpose and passion. Fear loosens. Love becomes steady wealth. In compassion’s neutral field, what was muddled and muddy clarifies and begins to build stabilizing ground free from conditioned expectations and confusion telling you how to think.
In this formative phase, TAC SHOP is an open call to actors to bring your particular skills to light in this uplifting context, FIRST in service to each other AND then taking it a step forward, in service to the general public, informing the emotional flexibility of people who are ready to be free. If you’re interested in joining the conversation, send us a message.
UNBRAIDING
Unbraiding: Actor | Producer | Father: A Story in Three Strands
Actor: wildly successful by all counts. Producer: blockbusters and critical acclaim. Father to a seven year old daughter: desperately unraveled, a work in progress. Can he pull this story together after the divorce? With the help of three Hollywood hairdressers, one long night of practice and a few dozen bobby pins, he might just get it right.
In the short story "Unbraiding," a successful actor and producer navigates the vulnerabilities of fatherhood and divorce while trying to master a complex hairstyle for his young daughter.
Following the story, his struggle to balance perfectionism with emotional presence is mirrored in the prose poem, "Cast Their Whispers to the Void," which advocates for dropping the weight of gossip and external judgment.
By casting aside social projections and internal criticisms, the lyrical spell-breaking language opens to a limitless creative neutrality where authentic sense of self is timeless and accessible.
“Maybe in every large scale human tragedy, there’s just the one among us who comes through it, the one whose eyes stay open so we can look through to process what can’t be processed.
“Maybe that’s just my way of projecting myself into that scene.
“The one man is me. Attar would say that’s the point I’ve been making from the start. The whole rip-roaring story of the world is inside my willingness to receive it…”
-The Actor Playing Attar, in THE LOOK OF AMIE MARTINE