Damien Ng’s Experience (Participant) [he/him]
As a freelance actor, I always knew that the work on the self was important. I knew it was important to understand ourselves and our bodies and how we work. And it is through understanding ourselves where we can truly be authentic in the work that we do - whatever that means hahaha!!
I knew that I have always found it difficult to access my memories. It was almost as if I had shut out a lot of my memories or like I chose to forget them… I don’t know, I always found that weird. My past is always a bit murky.
During my time with the training, I feel like I tackle things that I didn’t think needed tackling. I feel like during this process, I learnt a number of things about myself through the memories that I associated with certain words and themes. I wanted to focus on the theme of acceptance. Growing up I think I always had problems accepting myself. I always felt like I was useless, that I was always doing things wrong and I guess in a way, I felt misunderstood. And being a part of the queer community, that didn’t help either, In fact, even within the queer community, I didn’t feel enough. I felt like I wasn’t “gay” enough or I wasn’t masculine enough either. So yeah, acceptance was always rough for me.
When I first started training, I thought I knew what to expect but at the same time… I didn’t. I came in ready to work, but ended up finding myself struggling during the process. I was so focused on what I wanted to work that I didn’t realise that what I was working on also stems from much deeper things. I remember there was once when I was creating my score during the process, I felt stuck and didn’t know how to develop it. It wasn’t until Darryl, our facilitator, pushed me to copy somebody else's movement and make it my own, that my perspective changed and somehow I managed to dive deeper into my own piece, opening my eye into one of the roots of my theme of acceptance. That day felt very fulfilling.
In my piece, I reference a memory I had about a relationship turning sour. I remember the hurt, the pain and all of the so called “trauma” that came with it and channeled it into my piece. It was definitely one of the roughest times of my life. I think my perspective on that incident changed when Darryl told us to shift our perspective to do our pieces as something that had already happened and how that incident had changed us. In doing my piece with this prompt, my associations of pain and hurt shifted to the aftermath of the incident and there I saw how much it changed me, how much I’ve grown and I realised if it wasn’t for that incident, I might not have been the person I am today! So… in a way… I guess it wasn’t that bad after all… #growth hahaha. I felt a lot better about myself that day.
I also realised through this training that I’ve grown more patient with other people. I’ve learnt to care for others. We did this caring exercise during the training where we went around giving care as well as receiving care for us. It felt confusing at the start, I was guarded. I did not like receiving care from somebody else. It felt weird. But after doing it a few times, I soon noticed that it was easier, I learned to resign to the process. I’m not fully resigned but it’s a process hahaha.. I noticed that I could be in the space and I would feel like I forget when I was giving care because I felt like I was giving and receiving at the same time which felt really great and pleasant!
If I was asked to describe this process, I would say that it can be difficult, tough, tiring and revealing… but I also feel that if you are truly there to work on the self, you are going to feel liberated, it’s freeing! The work on the self is important. Before you can care for someone else, you got to care for yourself. And by the end of the training, will you 100% know yourself? Possibly not… but it is definitely a step forward. It will be a process but the process is something that can change you and your perspective for the rest of your life. It’s not just about tackling our inner demons, it’s about being one with them. And being okay with that.
