When I got into the National Theatre School (NTS), the first project we were working on was Clown. The teacher was Richard Pochinko.

Pochinko’s style of Clown was a mix of European Clown and Native American Clown.

I had already taken some Clown classes before.

But this was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was more about energy and magic than red noses and pratfalls.

One of our first exercises was to walk across the room with our eyes closed. And stop at an imaginary line Pochinko drew.

But he drew the line while our eyes were closed.

So, we were walking with our eyes closed and were supposed to stop at this imaginary line that we didn’t know where it was.

Half the class walked across the room at the same time. The crazy thing is most of us stopped right on the imaginary line.

I remember walking with my eyes closed and sensing a deeper darkness. It was like a shock. I stopped. Right on the imaginary line.

A couple of people walked past it. But then some people stepped backwards an equal number of steps behind. So, the net effect was that the line was balanced.

Pochinko explained that everything was energy. And our job was to learn to channel the energy.

Another exercise he had us do was about listening to the energy of one of our classmates.

He had us all close our eyes. Half of us would be listeners. And the other half would be listened to.

But the way we “listened” was by feeling the person’s face and waiting until we “heard” a sound in our head.

No one could speak.

So, I felt my person’s face and waited to “hear” a sound. Nothing was coming.

I couldn’t know for sure, but I suspected that the person’s face I was feeling was Pamela. For a moment, I wondered if I should fake it? Should I make up a sound that I would think could represent Pamela?

It would be cheating. But I was getting antsy. And I could hear other people indicating that they had heard their partner’s sound.

I decided to relax and keep listening.

And then I heard it. A sort of wind chime sound. A bit forlorn.

I raised my hand to say that I had my sound.

When everyone got their sounds, the listeners lined up.

Everyone still had their eyes closed.

Pochinko told the listeners to make their sounds. And the people who had their faces felt, had to go to the person whose sound they thought was theirs.

Now, the people getting their face felt, didn’t hear the sound we made when we first “heard” it. We vocalized it for the first time when we in line.

I still thought that the face I had felt was Pamela. So, I was making my sound, and a person came up to me. We were supposed to feel the person’s face again. To confirm that it was the same face we felt and that they recognized their sound.

But I knew the person who came to me wasn’t Pamela, so I turned her away. She came back. And again, I turned her away, because it wasn’t Pamela. But Pochinko said, she was right, and I was wrong.

The right person picked her sound. I opened my eyes. It wasn’t Pamela. It was Dana. I had been feeling Dana’s face the whole time.

The crazy thing was that everyone had a different sound. But everyone picked their sound.

And then Pochinko had us listeners do a kind of ritual, playing the sound over and over. And imagine that sound going through our body. We had to walk with that sound coming through our bodies.

Everyone has a unique gait. That’s why you can often recognized people you know from a distance. You know their walk.

The listeners were walking with their sounds going through their bodies. And, he had the people whose sound we were vocalizing walk beside us.

So, Dana walked beside me.

I was walking exactly the way Dana walked. And we were walking in sync.

Every “listener” was walking exactly how the person they listened to walked. My gait matched Dana’s exactly. Even how we were swinging our arms!

It was crazy!

It made me realize that there was a lot I didn’t know about the energy around people.

I only lasted at NTS for a year. But I always wondered if the main reason I got into the school was to be exposed to Richard Pochinko’s ideas.