Hello, everybody! First of all, my profound apologies for not getting back to this topic sooner; my side gig (more about that at the end of my “About the Author” page) and having some Pride fun in my home state sidetracked me. But I’m back, and I’m ready to talk about something that’s been nagging at me for some time: practical advice for actors, starting with a no-nonsense approach to the profession itself. So, you wanna save money on acting classes? You’ve come to the right place. Pull up a chair.
Don’t Be Fooled
Ever looked into an acting class, and seen just how many there were for different types of acting? Look up ads for acting classes; you’ll come across workshops and learning opportunities that run the gamut from stage acting to film acting, from sitcom acting to commercial acting. It creates the illusion of many different kinds of acting; it’s enough to, in the words of Oliver Stone’s JFK, “confuse the eye and confound the understanding.”
Let me dispel the myth: there’s only one kind of acting in existence, and it’s called… drum-roll please… acting. These teachers, especially in America, primarily make bank by convincing people that they have something to teach. They need you to believe there’s some secret that you aren’t in on unless you pay hundreds for a workshop to learn about it. The only thing you’ll ultimately learn, same as from this free post, is that acting is behaving as if what’s in the script is happening to you. That’s it, boiled down to the barest essentials. It doesn’t ultimately matter to an audience how you got there, as long as you’re convincing and/or entertaining, preferably both.
“What? It’s got to be more complicated than that.” Only if you make it that way. But fine. I sense some hostility from those who paid good money for these workshops and courses and don’t take kindly to being told that they wasted their hard-earned pay, and it’s important to address that. So let me break down what’s wrong with most of these classes.
“Be Real”? Get Real!
One thing today’s acting classes seem to have in common, aside from over-emphasizing the use of “the method” (I’m getting to that, don’t worry), is teaching it to actors in a manner that’s false in many ways. For example, one of the most commonly used buzzwords or phrases in classes like these is when the teacher asks the actor to just “be real,” or to “be yourself.” Not all characters are you (more about this in a moment), so how could simply asking someone to be real and bring the reality of their own life to the part possibly be the main objective of acting? The answer is, it’s not. It’s a snake oil scheme to make money selling acting lessons.
Think about it. If a teacher bases their class enrollment on talent and/or reasoned likelihood of success, if it’s rooted in the reality of the acting profession (of any field, really), their class will be very small. How does that pay their rent or put food on the table? But broaden the criteria, and say the goal is to “be real”? They’ve just set a requirement anyone can fulfill; I mean, we’re all real. We’re not cobbled together from aluminum foil and glue (in a literal sense, at least). Everyone, even somebody with the most superficial “front” in humankind, is real. If a trait every human being possesses is the only qualification, they can sell acting lessons to anyone they want, even if they haven’t any talent. (Not what I call talent! Talent for the deaf, dumb, and blind, maybe! …sorry, where was I…) And then they tell you, “Oh yes, you’ve done well, you’re so much more real. But you can get even more real if you take another thousand-dollar class.” Sound fishy to you yet?
Reality is boring. It’s repetitive and mundane. The reality of the stage and screen, on the other hand, is curated; it’s carefully selected, edited, and shaped, by writers, directors, designers, etc., to be exciting (yes, even in “reality” television; you haven’t seen the hundreds of hours of raw footage on the cutting room floor, and believe me, you’ll never want to). Reality is twenty-four hours a day; the scale of time on stage or screen is different, usually about two hours. If all you do is “be real,” you’re not doing your job.
Other Venial Sins of the Acting Class
Speaking of getting real as opposed to “being real,” let’s talk about another harsh truth: acting classes in themselves are a useless, false environment that doesn’t prepare you for the reality of acting. If you’re very, very young (I mean that, by the way; if you’re 21+, your brain’s developed enough that you can learn what you need to learn like everyone else, and I’ll get to that shortly) and need to learn the absolute basics, sure, sign up. But once you’ve learned that, any other acting class is inadequate preparation at best and setting you up for failure at worst.
Don’t believe me? Let me ask you this: if acting class prepares you for the reality of acting, how come your audience is always and only, with very rare exceptions, the same classmates that show up week after week? That’s hardly preparation for the reality of a random and fresh audience every time.
I’ll give you another example: many American students – and teachers – treat the class as though it was a form of psychotherapy. Explain to me how that’s meant to be useful. To quote a colleague who was younger than me in the final days of the great American acting teachers and caught the last of them, “I had several acting teachers who practiced pseudo-psychology on us as young people, many of whom are dead, and who I would gladly dig up and kill again because of it.”
And that’s assuming the teacher knows what they’re doing aside from that. In my college days at CCRI, I met and bonded with a talented woman who’s explored many avenues throughout her ongoing academic career, acting being one (she has a natural artistic flair), and she kvetched to me one day when discussing the business about how a teacher had turned her off of acting forever. We grew up in the same city, and I’ve known her most of my life; if ever there was a natural, in every sense of the word, for performing, this girl was it. There was no question of stage fright, even though she attended a high school in our area that was probably the roughest audience anyone could face; hell, she seemed (and still seems) practically fearless in the face of many life struggles she’s endured. But one teacher changed everything, and unfortunately, this wasn’t one of those positive “Hallmark movie” changes.
When she went to school, in hopes of honing her craft, she took a course in stage acting with a professor who was the worst thing she could encounter: a frustrated Hollywood hopeful. The one minor difference between stage and film acting is that stage acting involves “projecting” (physically and metaphorically) your performance outward to an audience, you’re playing for anywhere from 1 to 10 rows beyond the “fourth wall,” whereas film calls for subtler, more introspective, “small” acting due to its “up close,” personal nature. This instructor ignored that difference, teaching them essentially how to act for the camera instead of cheating out. More than that, he dealt very abrasively with his students, which left a massive negative impact. (Some folks can be ball-busters — that’s part and parcel of the business — but there’s a very thin line in entertainment between constructive criticism and bullying, and my experience with acting teachers has largely leaned toward the latter.)
My friend, who’s bravely handled situations that would stagger the mind of the strongest individual, left that course afraid to get up in front of other classes to give oral reports or speak for even a few minutes about a topic (i.e., ask questions, etc.) from her seat. Is that the kind of help an acting class is meant to offer? Oh no, wait, they also engage in peddling that most obscuring of exercises: “the method.” For those who haven’t caught up with the rest of us, I shall endeavor to explain.
“The Method,” Improperly Applied
Various acting styles have been developed throughout theater history, from the classical era in Greece to the modern day of multimedia acting, incorporating the stage, screen, and television. But as I said above, all acting boils down to the same thing; the only difference is how real it looks. And before it becomes clouded by method or colored by technique, acting is just a simulation, playing pretend for money. The performer conceptualizes the character they portray as a conveyance, not necessarily a naturalistic or realistic depiction of a person one might encounter in life. Let’s say you’re supposed to be playing sadness, but you’re not sad; pose, put on a facial expression, and convey the emotion without necessarily feeling it in reality. That’s just basic acting, right?
Before the dawn of films and TV, there was only the stage, so simply pretending was coupled with adapting to the characteristics of that environment. For example, audience members were often distant from the action, so to hammer home the point, one had to emphasize physical expression and projection of a character, orating with declamatory force, designed to be “read” even from the back row. This required thorough speech/movement training. Over time, through the long history of stage acting (and live performances of music and dance), this was honed into a highly formal style, specific brands of which became very popular.
For example, a French actor/opera singer/teacher named François Delsarte believed a character’s emotional state could be projected to the audience through a formal set of gestures, postures, and physical attitudes. His ideas formed the basis for the 1885 book The Delsarte System of Expression, by a student (of a student) named Genevieve Stebbins, and went on to be used at the end of the 19th century in actor training programs at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and Emerson’s School of Oratory. Though his method was reportedly meant to help its user connect their inner emotional experience with the use of gesture and was only formalized into a system by later disciples, the study allegedly regressed as it grew in popularity and ubiquity into empty posing with little emotional truth behind it. (You can see this formal, conventional, often melodramatic style in silent films like the Lon Chaney Phantom of the Opera, and its influence can still be felt in American modern dance today.)
Enter an actor/director named Konstantin Stanislavski, who noticed in his work at the Moscow Art Theatre that some actors connected better with the audience than others. He decided to figure out why, and for better or worse, we’ve been dealing with the results ever since. What Stanislavski learned from his performers was that they weren’t just recreating the external signs of the character’s emotions without becoming emotionally involved (later known as the “mechanical” approach). Some were doing internal work (later known as the “psychological” approach), becoming personally involved with the character and letting it “grow from within them.” Rather than merely impersonating the character developed by the playwright in a dramatic presentation, they seemed — by comparison — to be turning the character into a living, breathing human being.
He felt that when an actor truly experienced what the character was living (under imaginary circumstances), the play’s many layers of meaning would be revealed in a way that rid it of cliches. He contended this method of acting was more effective than illustration or indication of emotion by calculated poses and tricks of voice and gesture. If the actor believed in imaginary circumstances, revealing the subtleties of the text by truthful action rather than rhetoric, the audience would see things in the play that were hidden previously by poor or lazy acting.
Stanislavski’s method has been expanded into several variant present forms, such as the Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner techniques (some or all of which are heavily pushed by the Actors Studio in NYC), Michael Chekhov’s “psycho-physical approach,” and the David Mamet / William H. Macy-conceived “Practical Aesthetics,” and the antithetical Brechtian Method has been developed in response (an “epic drama” style relying on the audience’s reflective detachment rather than emotional involvement), but the original seven steps of the Stanislavskian approach were as follows:
- The actor needs a trained body (a physical instrument sensitized to respond appropriately to the emotional or attitudinal changes within one’s character) and voice (the ability to control one’s instrument and produce volume and/or change timbre, resonance, or pitch without injury).
- They must know “stage technique,” the skill necessary to adapt everyday life to stage conventions. (There are techniques for walking, opening a door, sitting in a chair, firing a gun, eating food, etc.)
- They must be a skilled observer of life, one’s primary research tool, and be able to recall what they observe, the better to build a character from their observations. This may involve emotional recall — the ability to recall an experience and relive it onstage — and asking oneself the question “If I was this character, what would I do?”
- They must analyze the script to determine their character’s motivation (the major goal or objective, the internal force which drives the character’s choices). Most importantly, they must find the subtext behind the text (i.e., the meaning behind the lines written by the playwright, the “action” which is implied rather than stated).
- They should become emotionally involved with the character they’re creating onstage, immersed at a level that allows them to make choices, rather than respond in a way predetermined either by themselves or by their director and makes them respectful of the choices made by the other actors in the ensemble.
- They must concentrate on the character they’re creating, pushing everything else out of their mind. It is the actor’s concentration that makes it possible to ignore everything else that is happening on stage and focus their attention on creating the character.
- They must continually work on perfecting their art and craft.
The overall goal, as you might’ve guessed, is for the individual performer to identify and internalize the character they portray to better discover the reasoning behind that character’s actions and mindset, and to draw on recognizable human traits, personal experiences, and emotions that’d cause an audience member to (hopefully) identify with the character, to create a convincing performance. Returning to the example I used earlier for basic unemotionally involved acting, the actor using “the method” might rely on “stimulation” through techniques like “sense memory” to truly generate the emotion that the character is feeling; if they’re genuinely sad, then the desired pose or facial expression will appear more or less naturally from that.
So, how well is “the method” passed down by its present adherents? In my opinion and experience, in American acting classes today, step 3 is loosely encouraged, albeit in a rather adulterated form, and steps 4-7 are gospel (though the last is more or less a necessity of the profession, and steps 4 and 5 are taken to extremes by some who, when playing real historical figures, do in-depth research to “become” the character, to develop the mindset and emotional reactions they think the person would’ve had), but 1 and 2 are frequently ignored, to a stage actor’s detriment.
This deficiency isn’t helped by endless acting coaches who make loot touting specific techniques, saying such-and-such delivers the best results and should be used to the exclusion of all others. Conflict, of course, breeds conflict, with each respective technique having its set of proponents who thinks other styles are bogus. Like any good rivalry, people rooting for either side even go so far as to draw lines in the sand.
Well, I’ve already had a fair amount to say about most acting coaches, and the hidden motives behind classes that stress “the method,” but let me get one thing straight: flawed as it can be, I’m not against method acting. I’m against relying solely on method acting, because a) most of the “immersive” stuff required of you doesn’t factor into your performance in a noticeable way, and b) using the internal technique — and anything related — to the exclusion of the mechanical never happens in real-time. (Search your feelings; you know this to be true.)
The Usefulness of “Sense Memory” and Field Work
Some who preach “the method” (Lee Strasberg, during his lifetime, was a good example) insist “sense memory” involves finitely recalling — and using — past emotion to inform your performance. They might even argue your character research can back up these emotional impulses. But there’s a limit.
Tell me: have you experienced everything in the world that there is to experience? Impossible, right? Being worldly — or even world-weary — is one thing, but you’d have to live a million lifetimes to experience every possible milestone, emotional or otherwise, that there is to experience in life. You have never experienced — and will never experience — everything. Maybe sometimes you’ll internalize something you’ve seen (like when you see a movie that’s so effective and absorbing you walk out thinking and feeling in its rhythm like you were a part of it), but, not to unduly introduce reality to things, that’s about as far as most performers can stretch.
On a related note, research ain’t the equivalent of a time machine. No amount of homework will take you back to Roman-occupied Jerusalem or the streets of New York in the 1950s and put you in that situation, and even if it did, drawing on a time when you were experiencing a vaguely similar emotion doesn’t guarantee you’re accurately portraying the character’s emotional reaction to circumstance. Let’s give that latter example some thought: you can learn enough to be a qualified expert on juvenile delinquency in Fifties New York, but it won’t prepare you for Arthur Laurents’ patronizing, woefully dated, often naive view of these youngsters in West Side Story. (He occasionally grasped at truth, but as is frequently pointed out about the sharp contrast of the 1961 film’s “theatrical” style with reality, he wasn’t much closer than Rodgers and Hammerstein were to depicting Anna and the King of Siam truthfully.) Or take Tanz der Vampire – maybe I’m squeamish… okay, I am for sure squeamish… but I’m pretty sure the only thing one gleans from researching what happens when someone sucks the blood out of a person’s throat is an upset stomach.
Lesson number one: not all characters are you. You haven’t experienced – and won’t experience – everything. If you think contextual research will help “take you to ‘that place,’” do it but don’t feel that it’s something you have to do; often, it ultimately won’t matter to the task at hand. You’re not making a documentary, and no amount of research will magically turn you into whoever or whatever you’re trying to be.
So, what can you do? Start by relating to what is part of your emotional truth. If one is playing, say, Elphaba in Wicked, they may not have hidden superpowers, but they can probably relate to being unpopular or picked on in school (indeed, a lot of actors probably can), and a person of color will surely relate to being discriminated against for an immutable trait, such as their appearance, that they can’t change.
But that’s only good for what’s within your range of experience. What about what isn’t? Simple. Remember when you used to “play pretend”? That’s it. That’s all you have to do, and Stella Adler’s “imaginary memory” work (for my money, one of the best techniques besides Meisner’s) backs me up on it 100%. “Sense memory” is about a suggestion to the imagination: putting yourself in the context of the new, imagined situation and letting yourself react fully – as yourself – in the fantasy situation, like today’s gamers playing a committed fantasy game, or kids who play make-believe to the utmost and then some. It’s not real, but it calls for that level of commitment to make it appear real.
After the fact, when I looked back with finite introspection on the moment I finally got the emotional “method” technique to work for me, “playing pretend” is exactly what happened. I wasn’t back in a prior reality from my life; I was reacting at the moment to the new situation, as though it were part of my life. Your job in rehearsal is to put yourself in the character’s shoes, while also conveying the particular circumstances of what’s in the script as filtered through the director’s concept (which may be mostly communicated to you non-verbally). “Sense memory” and field work will only go so far in helping with that; it’s more in what you bring to the table as a performer.
It’s Okay to Get Technical
I’ve attended loads of acting classes in my time, mainly to observe, and I’m not altogether thrilled with what I see. Generally, these days, I see a lot of performers, usually American (not to stereotype, it’s more a reflection of the true motive behind the acting class itself as discussed above), who are sloppy, have no vocal/external technique (I call them “mumblers” or “peepers” because they can’t project to save their lives, resulting in an inability to hear them while sitting 10-15 feet away at an audition), and are ignorant of literature and history. They’re like an oafish audience member that somehow wandered into the world of the play, and is bumping into things/people as they make their way around it.
This is a reflection of what I stated above: priority is not being placed — at all — on steps 1 and 2 of the Stanislavskian approach anymore. What folks forget is that the Russian actors with whom Stanislavski first developed “the method” already had superb training in the external/mechanical approach. They already knew how to work a stage; they were just incorporating the internal “method” as well. I don’t care how much you “feel” it — if you mumble into your shoulder and have no knowledge of the historical period, or rhythm, or what poetry or genre is, you’ve lost me.
Cinema allows a lot of this to slide because it’s a different medium with different demands, but if you’re going to use a method acting technique for detail and individual differentiation onstage, your external technique — and your command of the language, character, mannerism, poetry, intonation — has to be outstanding first, so that when you give yourself the emotional triggers, the instrument the response goes through is phenomenal technically, and can project and articulate excellently. Unless you’re first superbly trained externally, which is perhaps most important in live theater, any internal technique you use might as well be worthless.
That’s the big secret, kids: you have to use both internal and external approaches to be a truly effective stage actor. It shouldn’t be a big secret; there’s no sharp division between them like these self-styled “coaches” insist, and it becomes more obvious the more one speaks to performers. Indeed, it’s entirely possible to arrive at one via the other. The very best external performers often wind up feeling something emotive while using the external technique (sometimes they’ll call it “having a breakthrough,” especially if they’re used to relying solely on external technique for results). “Internal only” proponents frequently find that assuming an external posture and expression can help them trigger an internal emotion. (Psychologists have known for a long time that our external appearance can affect our internal mood – for example, if one is forced to sit in a slouched position, head down, chest caved in, for a length of time, it’ll affect their emotional state negatively. Studies have proved this.)
The best examples I can find, frankly, are the British. This is partly because American acting teachers aren’t nearly in the same league as the Brits. Not to generalize too strongly, but the British are generally much, much better because they come from an oral culture where everyone is literate. By contrast, American culture can be woefully ignorant, and performers bred in it don’t necessarily have a natural drive to educate themselves. The proof is in the pudding: otherwise “method” practitioners like Vanessa Redgrave have superb external technique/actor’s instrumentation.
Since this blog entry is already making many unpopular assertions, I’m gonna go out on a limb and make another one: in America, I’ve seen the best contemporary stage acting, by and large, from rappers who have diversified into acting. They’ve already mastered rhythm, emotion, and most important of all, in their way they’ve already mastered speaking clearly, distinctly, and with volume, which is the most important – should be the first – stage acting lesson. They may be inexact at times, but they’re never bad at it.
To reiterate: learn external/mechanical acting inside and out, master it, and then add “the method.” If you use this approach to get there, your stage work will either be brilliant or improve ten-fold if you’ve already been using one and not the other.
The Ultimate Truth
The ultimate truth acting teachers are afraid performers will wise up and learn one day is this: beyond the absolute basics for beginners, acting isn’t learned in a class. Acting is learned – and perfected – by apprenticing/interning with a more experienced company, by doing and observing, like a trade such as being a jeweler or a blacksmith. Can’t find a group? Get a group together with your little friends, chip in $100 apiece, strike a deal with a local venue, and start.
And then what, you say? How do I learn? How do I get better? You work, and more specifically, you note the audience’s or onlooker’s reaction. The audience will teach you what to do. Do they fall asleep, or worse, are they moved to an emphatically negative response like throwing fruit? Better not do what you just did the next night. Do they respond in a manner where they’re rapt — they applaud, they laugh, they’re touched — or do you have a real breakthrough? Good work! Keep it up, expand on that. Trial and error, “guys, gals, and non-binary pals” (sorry, Thomas Sanders, it’s too inclusive – and cute – not to use), it’s all trial and error.
An acting class will cost you thousands of dollars. Interning with working professionals costs you nothing. I did the latter, and I had a better résumé, was working more, and was more in demand than the vast majority of the acting teachers I knew by the time I was 19. Take the hint.
Well, that about wraps it up, for now, folks. I hope to resume a more regular posting schedule; tune in over the next month or so for audition advice, ground rules — and helpful techniques — for effective rehearsal, tips for the first-time touring performer, and at least one more episode apiece of “For Your Consideration” and “Hello, Dumb Ass!”
Until then, as we say in the theater, ciao!
