This week’s advice comes from the lovely Ellie. I met her at Guildhall summer school where we both did the Shakespeare and Contemporary Theatre course. We were in different groups but we hung out in my dorm kitchen a lot and we’ve been friends ever since.

A friend of mine just got the job to direct our next musical and so we spend a lot of time talking about ways to get people to act, to get them to open themselves up – to the part, to their feelings and to each other.

I told her about a wonderful little gem they had us do at Guildhall Summer School. I don’t know what it was called or if it had a name at all but it went down like this; You get paired up with someone, a guy, a gal, whoever and you stand opposite each other for two minutes, just looking at each other. You can look everywhere, all over the face, trace every single line you can find on the other person’s face, study it and – most importantly – find that one thing you really really like. It’s probably the one thing you’ll keep coming back to, the shape of their lips, the slight frown as they study you, the cute nose or the expressive eyes.

You’ll find something you like, so much is sure and then, when the two minutes are over, you tell the other person in detail what you like most about their faces and you explain it. And then they’ll do the same for you.

As you can imagine, staring at someone like this is incredibly awkward the first few moments but it’s also a challenge to find beauty and I think this can be an important lesson, not just for actors but for everybody.

You can find beauty in everything if you look hard enough.

Each setback has something good to it, somewhere, each horrible person you have to deal with has some beauty to them, somewhere. Knowing this helps, knowing this can make so many things easier. If you try your best to find the good to what happens to you, you will lead a brighter life and you will find hope where many give up. Especially with people. Nowadays we hardly see each other anymore but if you took two minutes to study someone, to learn of them, figuratively or otherwise, you can learn to notice again and to understand where other people come from and what makes them beautiful – and through this, learn what makes you beautiful!

So come next fall, when we’ll start our new production, I will suggest this game. Then, when everyone is curious about each other, we can take the time and space to really learn to appreciate each other. I think that’s important. I think I will do this outside of the production too.

I think it’s time to start seeing people again.