acting

On being ‘good’

Looking back on my experience of drama school, it seems a lot of the initial training was about getting us to focus on the right things.

There’s this thing people say about actor training where they “break you down and build you back up”.

I’ve never really liked this saying- it seems kind of negative or unnecessarily fear inducing. From my years of training it’s more about discovering patterns and building new ones.

And that’s just the learning process. But I guess people like making things sound dramatic and scary when it comes to acting.

It’s confronting, sure, but so is meeting your edge in any arena.

One of the main focuses I needed to undo in my training was this thing of trying to be liked. Of monitoring in an audience or in a director- am I doing the right thing? Do you like this?!

It makes sense, of course; my only frame of reference for learning was the school system that was all about being ‘right’. But of course acting isn’t about being ‘right’ it’s about being true.

Even that is a tricky metric- true according to who? Looking elsewhere for how truthful your work is is just another way of outsourcing your certainty.

Instead, as actors we must become experts of placing our focus. One way of doing this is to give your character an objective:

To make this person stay

To make them leave

To make them understand me

You get the idea. This is how we pursue truth; to what extent did you fight for your objective?

I love this way of thinking because if I’m feeling nervous I can ask myself, what is my objective?

And more often then not in those nerve wracking situations my objective has accidentally become “to make these people think I’m clever or funny.”

You lose when this becomes the objective, you really do. And this is what can happen if you’re not clear on your objective as an actor.

Trying to be clever or funny or attractive will always set you up for failure. Those things MIGHT come as a result of what you do in pursuit of an objective (emphasis on might, haha).

So in life, I think we should practice the same thing; give ourselves objectives that get us out of our own way. Objectives we can fight for, use our full selves to pursue them.

That’s playing big and that’s where the real magic is.

Acting is life

Acting on stage is like the ultimate life teacher.

For instance, one of the best things about performing to a small audience is it teaches you to never give up.

It also teaches you that sometimes trying harder doesn’t get results.

But the best lesson is probably that listening harder and with more accuracy is often the answer.

Every moment is an oppurtunity

My acting mentor has a great phrase:

Use everything as an opportunity to act.

He’d use it when I’d lament about a task in class or a ‘small’ role (no such thing). It was his reminder that as a practitioner and crafts-person, you always have the frame of your own practice to meet anything with.

A visiting tutor asking you to express the text from your toes? Yup, that’s your chance to act.

You’re only cheating yourself and your own growth when you pick and choose the moments to apply yourself.

Show after show

I think performing on stage is one of the most insane things to do on the planet.

Saying the same lines hundreds of times.

Light out the same story night after night.

The same lines, the same beats, the same emotional journey. It’s CRAZY.

For the person on stage doing it, it’s this strange meditation of sameness and adrenaline. 

For the people watching it’s the first time they’re seeing it.

It’s crazy to me that those two experiences sit side by side to each other. 

Actors have no other choice but to be utterly present and alive each and every night. 

Even though it’s the same for them, they honour the newness for the audience this night. They show up every single night.

I think that’s gorgeous and I’m never not amazed sitting in an audience and seeing that play out after the lights go up.