Z Zoccolante, Author at Z Zoccolante

Acting as Therapy Part 2

Last week, I wrote about how acting can bring to the surface the ever persistent “issues” in our real life. Often, once an issue surfaces, we begin to see it in multiple places and the world conspires to lovingly punch us in the face with it until we can see it clearly. Often we have the tendency to say, “Sure, I know that’s an issue, but I’ll put it on the shelf and deal with it later.”...

Acting as Therapy Part 1

Sometimes, during my scene debriefs in acting class, I feel like I’m in therapy. The difference is that the entire class is privy to my session and I am on stage bathed in the beady yellow eyeball seeping from the back of the room. In my scene “I” have a four-year-old boy who dies when he’s hit by a car in front of my house. In preparation for the scene I thought I had done a pretty good job creating memories of him and...

The Mountain of Me

If writing is much about discipline as it is creativity, then it requires writing constantly despite the feeling or lack thereof. That’s an interesting balance for me because I have in the past pushed myself and ignored my feelings. I have pushed through pain in sports and hunger in my eating disorder. I remember sunny afternoons, forcing myself to run through the neighborhoods in the valley behind my high school. My...

What the Invisible Girl Would Do.

Sometimes as actors we come across a character that shares commonalities with us on a personal level. We relate to the character on the page, resonate with their hopes and dreams and their problems of existing in their world. In a scene I’m rehearsing, I play a rejected writer whose career is not moving forward and who is sick of taking handouts from her parents and her financially successful boyfriend. She and her “failed”...

Be Thankful For the Things You Don’t Have

It’s completely my fault. I’ve stayed up till 4am watching Netflix episodes, which results in my alarm waking me up after only 3 hours of sleep. I’m not worried though because I plan to get on the plane and pass out. My tiredness will be an asset and sleep will come easy, making the uncomfortable chairs and the fact that I can’t use the bathroom without crawling over at least one person, fade away in lieu of dreams. I am brilliant....