Archive for April, 2009
Tips for Ensemble Playing
You are one actor in an ensemble, the chances are that unless you have experienced Viewpoints training, you have little understanding of how to connect with your fellow ensemble members. Viewpoints is a unique technique for developing ensemble creation and is a primary ensemble building tool for companies of actors. It is still overlooked in the United Kingdom, it is however taught in Ireland and the SITI Company who derived the Viewpoints as a theatre tool often visit Dublin, but rarely come to the UK.
I am offering some Viewpoints-inspired tips for ensemble ‘playing’.
- Listen with your ears and eyes, pay attention to tone, gesture, movement and sound.
- Develop 360 degree awareness of your play mates
- Play together
- It’s NOT about you
- Surprise yourself
- Give into what’s happening
- Get out of your head and into your body
- Work outside your comfort zone
- Play safely, but play at the edge of extremes
- Play with danger, play with fire
- Trust
- Commit Everything
- Don’t Hold Back
- Respect individual boundaries, broaden the boundaries of your ensemble
- Find the Fun
The exercises from Viewpoints offer the ensemble some incredible tools for discovering self and other, they suit the needs of the actor using Practical Aestehtics. Of course, the tips above are just words unless you commit to making them part of your habitual way of working and it’s almost impossible to build an ensemble in the short time that professional productions are thrown together in the UK. However, if you have the time, if you have the people, make these your guidelines for group/ensemble work and you will see your ensemble blossom.
To You, the Best
Mark
To You, The Best!Looking for Acting Classes in Glasgow? Mark Westbrook is a Professional Acting Coach and runs Acting Coach Scotland, a private acting studio offering acting classes in Glasgow, masterclasses, workshops and audition coaching for actors at all levels. His acting studio is based in Glasgow, Scotland, although he teaches all across the United Kingdom. All Blog Posts © Mark Westbrook 2010
FIVE Things that WONT help you Play the Scene
Much of what we are taught as actors is nonsense, it amounts to little more than well-meaning hippie crap. It’s fake work that lets the actor feel like they are doing something useful, whilst instead they simply waste time that could be better spent rehearsing the play.
Here are FIVE Things that WON’T help you Play the Scene:
1) Character History/Back Story: A well-used tool to fill up the notepads of many an acting student, and some professional actors too. When I’m working, I’m too busy WORKING to spend time on distractions. Many teachers and directors believe that this utter waste of time helps you to gain closer knowledge of the character. But these tasks are a WASTE of your time, they do not help you to act, they are a lesson in creative writing. Everything that should help you play the scene should be in the scene. The writer isn’t trying to con you, it’s all there and if it isn’t, it isn’t your job to fix it, it’s your job to find what’s there in the scene to help you play the scene effectively. Many teachers ask you to write fictional accounts of the character’s history based on what you read the play. I say that task is not one for an actor, it is one for a writer and whilst it is fun, it will not help you play the scene, it doesn’t help you understand what you have to DO in the scene, it helps you get lost in irrelevant details.
HOWEVER, it is useful to look at the script, to understand the given circumstances of the play, to understand something of the epoch or historical setting in order to understand the writer better. You can read other plays by the same writer, you can collect together all the details of the character FROM the play, these are useful tasks that will help you to understand the play, help you play the scene and bring the character to life for the audience.
The difference to me is clear, search the script for clues, don’t make up fictional accounts of character’s past. One is essential, the other is fake work, fun to do, but entirely unnecessary.)
(Thank you to David for ensuring that I clarify this point)
2) Books: There is only one piece of literature that will help you to play the scene, it is the script of the play or film you are working on. A rudimentary understanding of the play, the scene and the moment is more useful than a library full of books. Books are great for ideas, but in the end, acting is action.
I’m not saying don’t read books, I’m saying they don’t have the solution to your scene. Only the script.
3) Talking: Okay, there must be some period of discussion, some shared understanding of the scene, some basic scene analysis. After this, get on your feet and start acting.
4) Your Performance Monitor: Some schools teach that you can ‘monitor’ your performance and ask yourself ‘how’s going’ while you’re playing the scene. BUT, your attention needs to be on your scene partner and what you want from them, that’s the only goal, that’s the target, that’s the only thing you are monitoring. Asking ‘how’m I doing?’ will pull you out of the scene, make you self conscious and harm your performance. Learn to leave it alone.
5) Your character’s colour and other insults to your intelligence: There are many fake acting teachers out there that ask their students to come up with their character’s colour, piece of music, food, or other ridiculous crap. It’s fun to play the game, but it will not help you play the scene in a month of Sundays. The aim is to make you think about the character, if you can work out the colour of the character, you can say something about their characteristics. Instead, read the play, work out what they want, work out their action and you’ll know what you need to know. Your character is not a colour and the charlatans that teach this crap know it, why did they know it? Because they don’t know how to teach any real acting technique, so they rely on Voodoo and mysticism. They turn acting into nonsense.
FINALLY
I recently found an ad on the internet for an ‘acting coach’ that offered the following ‘essential principles of acting’.
*Triangle Theory
* Sound and Aural Impact
* Power zones of the body
* Fear based Psychosis
* The role of the mind
* Light and colour
Sounds like fun, where do I sign up to throw my money away at these charlatans?
To you, the Best
-Mark-
Mark Westbrook is a Professional Acting Coach based in Glasgow, Scotland.
Private Acting Coaching in Scotland
I am an acting coach. My job is to prepare actors of all levels to better do their job. But levels of experience really matter when it comes to private coaching. For instance, if you’re looking to LEARN to act, a class is probably the best solution for you. Acting coach, which is one on one by nature requires that the coach have something to work with. If you do not have any experience of acting, private coaching can be difficult, not impossible, but it is harder than working with someone who has not got something to offer the coach to improve.
Coaching, unlike teaching is about helping the actor to improve and refine what they already have. It’s about building upon an existing level of experience. Coaching isn’t teaching, teaching isn’t the same as coaching.
Coaching for drama school auditions is slightly different. We have a target, a goal to achieve and the acting coach can assist the actor in improving their audition skills. This is precisely the point of acting coaching, coaching requires a goal, you need to define what you want to achieve and let the coach help you work out how best to achieve it.
If you go to an acting coach for private sessions, you need to have a clear goal of the desire outcome that you are aiming for. You cannot learn to act in a private one to one session, acting requires the presence of others. When you approach an acting coach be clear about what you want to achieve and a good coach will help you put in place the steps to attain your goal. If you don’t have a goal, how will you know if the coach is helping you?
To you, the Best
Mark
Mark Westbrook is a professional acting coach based in Glasgow, Scotland.
Everything is Easier than Being an Actor
The acting profession is tough. Perhaps the toughest element for many is that it offers very little security. Sir John Gielgud was practically ancient before he reached a level of financial security enough to relax a little. This puts off many, this makes many parents put their children off.
Everything is easier than being an actor. Okay, I don’t mean vascular surgery and translating Mandarin into Gaelic. What I mean is this: Being an actor, particularly a jobbing actor or an out of work actor, is hard. It’s hard on the pocket and its hard on the self-esteem.
At many times during your acting career, especially in the first five years, you will be tempted to do other things. Office jobs are a favourite. They look harmless enough, but they offer a stability that’s hard to knock. Teaching is another favourite, school teaching is a firm favourite, drama teachers are awash with those who were actors, but needed stability for whaever reason.
Know this BEFORE you go into the profession. It’s tough and you will be tempted at every stage. It is much much harder to ignore the well intentioned but ignorant wishes and advice of your family, it’s harder to give up the idea of a big house and a car, it’s harder to buckle down and start putting every possibility in front of yourself. If you’re an actor, you should act. You won’t be happy otherwise. You will sit back in your comfortable lounger by the pool in Malaga or Florida and say to yourself ‘I could have been an actor’. ‘Could have been’ buys you zero credit, with yourself and others. You will regret it, if you don’t give it a proper go and a proper go in acting means fifteen or twenty years.
IT IS NOT A SIGN TO STOP JUST BECAUSE YOU DO NOT MEET SUCCESS EASILY.
Even the most successful actors have periods out of work. Some great jobbing actors that I know in Glasgow still struggle to feed their family.
You are the brave. You are the courageous. You did not place material concerns over spiritual ones. You are the brave souls that refused to give up because you knew you could do it.
Do the thing that you most want to do. Do it for nothing if you must. Because doing it makes you feel whole.
To You, the Best
Mark Westbrook
Failure (for Actors)
Failure is the best teacher I’ve ever had. My successes massaged my ego, but my failures taught me huge and important lessons. The trouble is that although failure is an excellent teacher, it is also a vicious pedant, unremitting and unrepentent in its criticism. And sometimes, it is almost too much to bear. It is harder to come back from your failures than your successes, even though you are probably better prepared.
But failure is a brutal word, it is harsh and clinical and if I am truthful with myself, I prefer not to use the term failure at all when it comes to actors and acting. Some things go well, some things do not go well and there is a thin line of grey in between.
The focus on failure will certainly cause failure. But focus on success will also often cause failure. Focus on ‘getting it right’ will probably also cause a lot of failure. Focus on the pursuit of excellence (not excellence itself), on detail, on honouring those things under your control and those things that are under your care and responsibility, that’s the best way to avoid failure. BUT you may still meet failure on that road too.
Failure is indiscriminate, it visits the Oscar Winner and the Amateur alike. Some might say the Oscar Winner has further to fall, but tell that to the broken heart of the Amateur, after all, the original meaning of that word is someone who does it for love, not money.
Failure can be hard to come back from. It often makes success feel impossible, but it is not. Failure is a step on the road. That’s all it is. Failure is a step along the way. You will meet it always. But you must learn to recognise it for what it is, it is temporary. It is exceptionally painful, Mamet calls it ‘devastating’. Failure is your teacher, it will keep you ‘real’, it will keep you ‘grounded’, but you must not let it stop you.
These are many types of failure that you will meet in the acting profession, failure to get into drama school, failure to understand the training, failure to stay in drama school, failure to get an agent, failure to get auditions, failure to get cast, failure to
The potential to fail is there all the time. Constantly failure makes us label ourselves. What kind of person fails all the time? A failure.
Instead, let’s go back to the original meaning of the word ‘fail’ which in Latin means to disappoint or deceive. Well, failure deceives. Failure deceives you into thinking that you should give up if you fail. You are disappointed and failure deceives you into believing that if you don’t get into drama school at the first attempt, you should just give in, cos you can’t be that good. Dustin Hoffmann got into the Actors Studio on his NINTH attempt.
Do not let failure deceive you. You will be disappointed. If you fail, it is a sign that you haven’t achieved what you seek just yet, just for this time, just in this moment.
In the words of Samuel Beckett:
“Fail. Fail Again. Fail Better”.
The Other
“The best way to be in contact with the audience is to be in close relationship with the other characters in the play” Stanislavski
The Other is the most important person in your scene. For Stanislavski, the Other was the other characters, but for us, the Other are the actors in your scene. By placing our attention lightly on our scene partners and by seeking an action from them, we develop a less selfish type of acting, self consciousness dissipates and your engagement with the Other makes you engaging to watch.
Stanislavski himself believed that we should show ‘limitless attention to our scene partner’. When I teach acting, I do not ask the actor to imagine or pretend that the Other is someone imaginary or fictional, I ask them to deal with truth of the moment, deal with the person in front of them in that moment, not in rehearsal, but in every moment. This means every moment is different and every moment is truthful. In this case we mean that the actor responds directly to what they see from the Other. They do not make up their response based on something they did in rehearsal and project it out regardless of what The Other is doing.
In my acting masterclasses for professional actors, I constantly repeat ‘It’s NOT about You’. It’s an important lesson to remember, one that actors find quite funny since they know their habit for self-absorption. Taking your attention off yourself and placing it in the pursuit of a goal through action is the best way to relieve stage fright, to develop captivating action and to give the performance you wish to give.
The ‘Other’ is the key to a spontaneous and improvisational style of acting. By improvisational, we do not mean that you make up the words, but that you spontaneously react to what the other is doing. Each moment is different, inside the sandbox of the circumstances of the play. The other person in your scene gives you one of the most important elements of acting, something to react off, a way to behave, a way to act, the ‘HOW’. The Other is the fuel of the scene. Whatever the other fellow in your scene does, it provides you with material to work from in the scene, even if they do nothing. If the other actor is being difficult or pouts or rolls their eyes, you immediately have something to work off. How do you know HOW to deliver the lines? You don’t. You deliver your lines based on what the OTHER is doing within the given circumstances of the play.
Seek your goal from the OTHER, commit to your tactic and the truth of the moment will be your guide. But it takes bravery and courage.
‘You may play well or you may play badly; the important thing is that you play truly’ Shchepkin
The truth of the moment, the truth of the scene, the key to truthful acting is DOING REAL THINGS to REAL PEOPLE.
Acting Studio in Glasgow?
Usually my blogs are help, advice for actors etc. Today’s is something different. Today I’m considering something aloud and in public to see what happens. I am considering setting up the Acting Studio as a full time space of our own. Having our own space for classes and rehearsals and a space for other people to hire. It’s a big move, renting a space when we need it and having a full time space are TWO very different kettles of fish. This requires some bravery on my part, but it would be tremendous for the school and SPARTAN to have our own space. We could also cut all ties to institutions and begin running our own intensive courses.
But is there space in Glasgow for an Acting Studio? Is there enough call for it? Perhaps not initially, but it’s a matter of chicken and egg. Without the space, we can’t make the most of it, without the trade we can’t afford the space. I’m wondering what to do. SPARTAN could use a home, a place to grow and prosper, ACS also needs the same opportunity. Finally a place to hold the maxims I had at the conservatory where I used to teach. It all sounds like it should happen, but I have trepidation. Should I, shouldn’t I?
I guess the only way to know is to go for it. It means becoming a charity, it means a lot of things, but the only way to know for sure is to go for it. All easier said than done.
-Mark-
Tips for Beginners Who Are SERIOUS about Acting
Arrive Early - there is no reward other than gaining a good habit. This good habit however will be appreciated by all teachers, directors, producers, choreographers, and musical directors that you ever meet. Learn it early in your career. Nothing demonstrates your lack of respect for these people like being late.
Always Be Prepared – Come prepared, bring your script, bring pen/pencil and note pad, the excuses you make always sound like poor excuses, even if they are genuine reasons. Be prepared.
It’s not a DREAM- It’s not a dream you have to become an actor, you’re beyond dreams now. Dreams are intangible and cannot be touched, therefore they cannot be achieved. So, stop thinking of it as a dream, and see it as your target, your goal in the near future. Then work out the steps to get there and start taking them. Many small baby steps make one big giant step.
It’s Easier to Give Up than get Better – this is highly challenging environment and profession and at times, you may be challenged to the point of wanting to give up. Those who give up can never succeed. Those who refuse to give up can defeat the odds. Those who give up, will harp on in life about how they could have been an actor. When someone gives up on becoming an actor after the first few rejections, they didn’t want it. If you don’t get into drama school on your first attempt, and you decide to go off and do something safe, well, again, you didn’t want it.
Learn to Listen To Criticism: No one and I mean NO ONE wants to hear criticism. We just want to hear how good we were, of course. HOWEVER, the only way to progress is to listen very carefully to the feedback and criticism and respond to it positively by putting it into action. If someone says that you need to organize yourself better, that’s what you need to do. If you trust the people offering criticism, then trust the criticism, they only have one goal, to maximize your chance of improving. Don’t you want that too?
Casting Isn’t Fair- Whether you like it or not, you may never play a lead role in your life, you may also never own a Ferrari, date a rockstar or sleep with a supermodel. Life ain’t fair, get over it and get on with making the most of the opportunities that you do get, rather than dwelling on what you don’t.
Work out what’s in your control – The Stoical philosopher Epictetus teaches to seek out what is in out control and what isn’t. Graft as hard as you can to change the things that you can control, forget the things you can’t. Don’t waste your time on the things outwith your control, but be sure to honour those things you can control.
Mark Westbrook is an Acting Coach, his studio is in Glasgow, Scotland.
Anne Bogart on Resistance
Today’s blog is just an inspiring piece by director Anne Bogart, it always makes me want to work smarter and graft harder:
‘Your attitude towards resistance determines the success of your work and your future. Resistance should be cultivated. How you meet these obstacles that present themselves in the light of any endeavour determine the direction of your life and career.
Allow me to propose a few suggestions about how to handle the natural resistances that your circumstances might offer. Do not assume that you have to have some prescribed conditions to do your best work. Do not wait. Do not wait for enough time or money to accomplish what you think you have in mind.
Work with what you have right now. Work with the people around you right now.
Work with the architecture you see around you right now. Do not wait for what you assume is the appropriate, stress-free environment in which to generate expression. Do not wait for maturity or insight or wisdom.
Do not wait till you are sure that you know what you are doing. Do not wait until you have enough technique. What you do now, what you make of your present circumstances will determine the quality and scope of your future endeavours. And at the same time, be patient.’
Anne Bogart – A Director Prepares
This post is for Ian and Karli, you are sufficient!
Mark
i OWN Stanislavski/Stanislavsky
A few years ago, I was teaching a Stanislavski-based introduction to acting course in a university far far away (in a land before time). I remember asking if any of the students had ready Stanislavski’s books, I myself had been given the main books for my 16th birthday and had become besotted ever since. I remember a student raising their hand and speaking these immortal words ‘I own Stanislavski’. I think they meant they had the books, although I believe they followed it up with ‘but I haven’t actually read them’.
I’ve become interested in this idea of late. Often when I’m talking about Stanislavski on the blog or elsewhere on the internet, I get corrections and updates and messages and yes, a fair bit of abuse by those ‘in the know’, that is those who possess knowledge beyond knowledge, that is, the truth.
But a pattern is emerging, a vision of Stanislavski owned by the speaker (that includes me). There is something about ownership that comes over in the tone. Invariably the messages have the tone of ‘I know and you are mistaken’, but more commonly the messages have the tone of ‘this is the truth about Stanislavski and you are wrong’. Every message (I don’t publish all comments) has a tone of ownership about it, an ownership of the truthful knowledge of Stanislavski, the real Stanislavski, which lead me to believe that there is in fact, a Stanislavski for all Seasons.
Carnicke makes illusions to this in her recent book ‘Stanislavsky in Focus’, she suggests there are two Stanislavskis, the American Stanislavsky who followed the route of emotion and the Russian Stanislavski who followed the route of physical actions. But actually, there are many more Stanislavskis. If you like, he’s a Man for All Seasons. He is appropriated by each side of any debate on acting in order to prove their point. And I think that’s perfectly okay, well it would be, except I get attacked by all of them for calling Stanislavski’s work a series of pointless Parlour Games 
) (Irony Warning) There is no perfect Stanislavski, there is his fabulous, confusing, time-separated, contradictory contribution to the world of acting (and its translations, interpretations and extractions) and what we can each draw from him.
I know that DG wants me to consider the whole of the system, but I’ve always thought that we should use the bits of any system that work and junk the bits that don’t. Of course, it’s a presumptive and personal subjective decision on my part and that of my teachers to choose which bits to keep and which bits to junk. Imagination for instance is very important to the actor, but the way that each technique or method deals with imaginary circumstances or stimuli is one of the ways that we can tell them apart.
There is NO ‘correct’ Stanislavski, there is no perfect Stanislavski, no one, no matter how experienced, educated, or opinionated can claim ownership of ‘the real’ Stanislavski, you can own the books, you can know passed on knowledge, you can have suckled at the tit, but you still don’t own the truth of Stanislavski, he’s too complex and he’s dead.
Now we need to move forward, make progress, carry on, none of this can be done with the ‘deadly’ frozen statuesque Stanislavski of a single defintion. To me, Stanislavski’s work is a point of departure, I don’t claim to teach his work, Practical Aesthetics is based in Stanislavski, but it’s an evolution as Macy said, it’s a progression, and in every progression, stuff gets left behind, stuff gets added. Like it or lump it, it works and we speak from our perspective.
Those who believe they are in possession of the truth, talk of facts, but these facts are simply used to supporttheir own argument, or the argument of their people/genre/system/country/group. If you read any confident author ( I suggest your read David Strasberg’s great blog on Method Acting), or listen to a competent teacher, they speak as if they are in possession of the facts, and the truth. Yes, but Yes but.. save it! Those of us who believe we are in possession of the truth (that’s you and me) aren’t going to change our minds because you (whoever you are) believe you are in possession of contrary facts and at the end of the day, since the man is dead, we’re going to meet a continued stalemate. What’s more he contradicts himself at various stages of his life in art, he’s badly translated and NO TWO experts on systematic acting agree with each other, unless they do so to support their mutual membership of a group. How do we know the REAL Stanislavski and his REAL thoughts? I would say, as Smelianski once said, he is a SACRED COW.
Writing this blog has taught me that fact and truth, are simply claims to ownership, and I’m not sure that it’s useful to anyone of us. All the Adler people use Stan to support their view, all the Strasberg theirs and I’m sure the Meisner people do the same, I’m sure I do the same too, or have in the past, but this is something I’m going to watch out for in myself.
Some thoughts, likely to incur comments, but just my thoughts.
To You, the Best
Mark
Mark Westbrook is an Acting Coach based in Glasgow, Scotland (that’s in the UK).
GUEST BLOG: KARLI EVANS – PILATES AND ACTING
Today’s blog is a guest blog from Karli Evans, an actor and Pilates instructor, and one of the students in our advanced scene study class:
Practicing Pilates is hugely beneficial to actors. It gives you more awareness of your own body, a stronger core and better posture.
Many actors feel a disconnection to their bodies when they get onstage. This is largely due to the sense of vulnerability felt. When we feel vulnerable we use familiar movements and stances to defuse tension. Because very few people have perfect posture and alignment all your bad postural habits surface which distracts the audience and detracts from the performance. Most people are not even aware they have these habits until they are pointed out.
Pilates is a mind/ body exercise program that focuses on the way we use our bodies in order to get them functioning more effectively and efficiently. There is a range of different reasons why someone’s posture is not perfect, but when the body is out of its ideal alignment some muscles are held in a state of tension, while others are stretched. This means the muscles cannot function properly. For every movement we make there are a group of muscles responsible for making that movement and an order or sequence in which they engage. When a muscle is held in a state of tension or if it is over stretched and cannot function properly the balance of that group is disrupted and other muscles need to step in to take over the job. That makes that particular movement less effective and less efficient. The chance of you knowing this is happening in your body is very slim, so more often than not, the faulty movement pattern continues until it becomes habit.
Just as bad habits develop over time, so do good ones. With consistent Pilates practice you can change these bad postural habits and faulty movement patterns.
Pilates brings your awareness to what is going on in your body, and attempts to correct these bad postural habits and faulty movement patterns by working the deep core stabilizing muscles. These muscles are generally under used and are intrinsic in keeping good posture and safe movement. As the name suggests, they support and stabilize all the joints in the body. Once these stabilizers are working correctly the body is then able to relax all the over working muscles that cause tension, and as we all know, tension is an actor’s worst enemy.
The results from consistent Pilates practice are exciting. Many people feel a taller and more supple and have increased muscle tone and better posture. For actors, it is one of the best forms of exercise you can find. Once you feel more connected to your body, have more confidence in your movements, have better posture and are moving effectively and efficiently you should find an increased sense of confidence in your movement onstage as well.
Karli Evans
Karli Evans is an Actor and Pilates instructor, and an advanced student at Acting Coach Scotland.
Acting Coach Scotland – Mark Westbrook – Glasgow 2009.
Definitions of Acting
Hi to All Blog Readers
One of the first exercises that I ask new acting students to do is to come up with a definition of what acting is. I’m always fascinated by the wide ranging results from this exercise, it inevitably includes the words ‘emotion’, ‘portrayal’, ‘become’ at some point. These are logical, even without any training in acting, the students on an introductory acting class have innate presumptions about acting that have been passed on through our culture.
I find definitions useful because they often reveal the basis behind the approach to acting the person is proposing.
“falsehood, pretense” - (my least favourite from a dictionary).
“to be in the process of doing” (my favourite from a dictionary, the closest to my own understanding of acting, and the way that I find it’s best to start beginning actors thinking about acting, it strips the idea bear of emotion, portrayal, becoming and of course, belief and imagination’ I understand that those readers that subscribe to Method based systems will not like this but I’ve added one underneath for you too.
“reacting to imaginary stimuli’ Lee Strasberg (this comes from Carnicke, so if it’s wrong, tell me please someone) this doesn’t suit my purposes, because it is too focused on the imaginary.
“Acting is living truthfully under Imaginary Circumstances” Sanford Meisner
I’ve also heard and seen this written as:
“Acting is living truthfully under the imaginary given circumstances”
AND
“Acting is living truthfully under the imaginary circumstances of the play”
AND
“Acting is living truthfully under the imaginary circumstances of the scene”
Whilst I was at Atlantic, we were asked who said this, I said ‘Sanford Meisner’ and was told that I was wrong, that this was a quote from Stanislavski, but I still doubt that. I still think of it as Meisner’s quote. If there’s someone out there (as there invariably is) who can point out when and where Stanislavski said this, I would be grateful. I’m sure NAME DELETED or ANONYMOUS or someone will know. Actually, I’ve even seen this quote in someone’s book on acting attributed to the director/producer Bryan Singer… hmmm.
For what I teach, I would like to play with the definition a little, I would like to take the basic Meisner structure of the sentence and add to it:
“Acting is living truthfully under (both) the immediate circumstances of the moment and the imaginary circumstances of the scene”
If you have any of your own, please add comments and I’ll acknowledge you and add them into this article as an update.
To you, the Best
Mark
Mark Westbrook is an acting coach in Glasgow.
Help! My Scene Partner is UNDEAD!
This is a blog post that relates to a recent email from MICHELLE in Kansas City, I really need to start offering classes in the US, I’m wasted here at home )
It’s true that no matter your training, nothing can prepare you to work with one of those actors that gives nothing. Like the undead, they show up for rehearsal by they offer you nothing. Michelle says it’s like the ‘ball isn’t being hit back’. Actually, I say, screw them, there is something you can do, but it requires a bit of bravery and a strong commitment to changing their behaviour.
First, you need a very strong achievable essential action. This is something that can be achieved from your scene partner, and is the essence of what the character in the play is doing during the scene. Don’t try to attain the character’s goal, they’re fictional, and you’re unlikely to fool yourself long enough to believe that you can actually share their aim, WANT or objective. Read my Blog on Essential Actions to get a better idea of how this works, if you struggle to come up with your own essential actions, visit my UK or US bookstore (link is down on the right) and buy A Practical Handbook for the Actor, because it’s the best guide to creatiing one.
Anyway, the simple answer is this, once you have something achievable to do in the scene, you can try to get it from them no matter what they give you. So for instance, you choose the essential action of ‘To Get Someone To Back Off’, well, whatever you do in the scene, focus on changing their behaviour. The harder you work, the more engaging you’re going to be, and it will be eventually impossible for them to stay unmoved, or the director/acting coach will surely say something to them. So in order to get them to back off, choose tactics that make them back off, regardless of what they’re not giving you, focus solely on them and trying to change their behaviour through the scene. Take your focus off the words and place it on the Zombie Scene Partner from Hell, and if they make you mad because they don’t give anything back, that’s fine, there’ll be real emotion in the scene from your annoyance with the idiot you’re acting with.
You see, whilst your scene partner is the fuel for your scene, it’s your attempts to engage with achieving your essential action that will make the scene successful for you, no matter what they do, even if they sit still and bleat like a sheep, you will have some form of stimulus to work off. This can apply to auditions or casting where someone blankly reads the other character’s lines, you still have something to work off, if they’re quiet, you’ll need to make them loud.
When you do real things to real people, you get real results.
To You, the Best
Mark
Mark Westbrook is a former university lecturer in acting, a former conservatory acting tutor, banana packer, demolitions worker, and is now a director, writer and acting coach living in Glasgow, Scotland.
They Call it Text Analysis…
They call it Text Analysis, but I always think that sounds rather academic. In Practical Aesthetics, we have some clear concise questions that we ask to help us understand the scene of a play or film. The question that really helps the actor to begin unlocking the scene is this:
What does your character want the other character to do as a RESULT of their actions?
We call this THE WANT. (and you won’t find it in the Practical Handbook for the Actor because it was added after that book was published)
Sometimes it’s known as a:
- Objective
- Desire
- Need
- Goal
- Target
Characters want things for themselves, but they usually want them from other people. David Mamet says ‘The character’s got to want something specific’. No matter what they say, they’re after something, they’re seeking a goal, they’ve got an objective. As Mamet says:
‘People may or may not say what they mean, but they always say something designed to get what they want.’
The essential part of the WANT question is what does the character WANT the other character to ‘DO’. Your character wants the other character to do something. Your actions on stage must aim to glean a response from the other actor to parallel the drive the character feels to achieve something from one of the other characters, occasionally themselves. This can range from my character wants the other character ‘pay them attention’ to ‘lend them money’ to ‘do their dirty work’. It’s important to keep it very simple and write (in order to identify it, to articulate it) it in physically achievable terms. See how I was able to write the WANT in THREE words each time. Try to keep it minimal. I sometimes change the tense to first person so ‘pay me attention’, ‘lend me money’ or ‘do my dirty work’ – thinking from the perspective of the character, but as a recent anonymous commenter pointed out it’s probably better to have the WANT in the 3rd Person.
The WANT compels the character to action. Having a strong WANT will give you a very big clue as to how to construct an effective ESSENTIAL ACTION. Using a strong want to create a strong ESSENTIAL ACTION will compel YOU to action.
By answering this question with the ‘DO’, it makes the WANT something tangible. However, remember that the WANT is something that the fictional character desires, something that drives them, their motivating force.
The reason that other actors look silly asking ‘What’s my motivation for this scene’ is that the motivation is provided by the playwright for the character alone. You will never have the same desire as the character in the play. The WANT is not yours, it is a target for the character and although the audience may be aware of it through the writing of the script, your job is to find a strong and fun ESSENTIAL ACTION that aims to capture it. In the pursuit of that action, you will create become compelling and come to life, you will begin to live truthfully.
Your character’s desire is the reason that they are in the scene in the first place. All character’s have a WANT. Your job is to discover the most practical WANT for the scene and find the strongest universal ESSENTIAL ACTION for the scene.
WANT offers a way to help you to bring the character to life by bringing yourself to life with something concrete to do, but it is not your want and so the essential action is what converts it into something simple and truthful for you to do. Others can’t understand how simply this works. Life is goal and action, so it is in the scene, without goal and action there is pretense and entropy.
To You, the Best
Mark
Mark Westbrook is an acting coach based in Glasgow, Scotland.
The SIX Rs of Acting by Mark Westbrook
These SIX Rs are at the heart of acting, of course, there’s more to it, but these SIX Rs are very helpful.
Resistance
One of the actor’s greatest enemies is their natural resistance to change, to new things, to unknown, to things that threaten their basic instincts. On the one hand, we all have boundaries to protect us from the ravaging Sabre Toothed Tiger (biologically) and (more recently) sleazy producers, but resistance is generally problematic. Sometimes resistance prevents us from experiencing something new, often it prevents us from releasing ourselves, making ourselves vulnerable and going to new places as an actor. I have met many great actors crippled by resistance, resistance can occur in learning new things, experience new things, accepting ideas or changing.
Resilience
Parents constantly ask me ‘what does my child need, what’s the one thing they need to make it in the arts’, and I always say the same thing and it refers to all of us, ‘resilience’. You are going to have sand kicked in your face, you will have a crisis of confidence, you may go months or years without earning a living from the art you love, only resilience will see you through it. Otherwise, you’ll give up and become a high school teacher, cos it’s easier and it’ll be closer to other people’s vision of you as a ‘grown up’. At every point on your journey, it will be easier to give up than to keep going, resilience means to keep going. As you get older and it becomes less and less socially acceptable for you to be broke all the time, it will get VERY hard. That’s when resilience will really come into its own.
Repetition
Repetition is a vital tool that is still NOT regularly taught in the UK Drama Schools. How they could begin to teach acting without the core skills that are developed through this exercise is beyond me. You can really learn to ‘adapt’ in the Stanislavskian sense to your scene partner if you are not used to it and faking it (which is what you do if you can’t do it for real) just doesn’t match up to it. The ability to take action based on the truth of the moment and based in what the other actor is doing, is an essential skill. The fact that it doesn’t come into three years of most British actor’s training is remiss to me. Simple repetition is unusual, scary, uncomfortable, and hard to relate to acting, but later as it develops, it becomes essential. Find a good repetition teacher and you have won half the battle.
Risk
Risk is difficult and especially hard (well, okay, impossible) if you are already resistant. You don’t want to look like a fool, you don’t want to make a mistake, yet without making mistakes, without willing to get it wrong, then you will never really reach any truly spontaneous moments in your acting. As Joseph Campbell said ‘where you stumble, there you shall find your treasure’. It’s so important to allow yourself to stumble. Stop thinking about getting it right, put your focus on the right things and let everything else take care of itself, with time and efficient practice (under a good teacher,) you will start to allow risk into your work and risk’s reward is spontaneity. A truly spontaneous moment comes as a shock to the actor. Take risks, as Sanford Meisner said ‘If you’re afraid, give in to it and be wrong’.
Rehearsal
Traditionally, rehearsal is a time when you repeat something over and over until it sticks. Rehearsal suffers from the terrible etymological relationship to the word ‘recite/recital’ which means ‘repeating from memory’. From this, we lose the need for our rehearsal process to be about exploration, experimentation and discovery. Rehearsal is a terrible term for what it is that we do. It reminds me of the Mamet quote ‘what you practice, you will perform’, so if your rehearsal is the ossifying process of setting in stone everything you are going to do in performance, you are making concrete those things that need to live spontaneously in front of the audience. How could you possibly convince an audience that this is the first time you’ve said these lines if you’ve said them hundreds of times in the same way? You may do it sometimes, but you are working against the grain constantly, you are defying the truth in every moment.
Instead, rehearsal should be about learning the actions to take, so that you tactics can remain fluid and based on the actions of your fellow stage/screen partners. In essence, as Megan, one of my students mentioned in class this week, we are preparing to work by instinct. Again David Mamet offers us a great quote for this occasion, rehearsal is preparation for performance, so to learn to be immediate, to learn to live truthfully, ‘we prepare to improvise’.
Reviews
There are many reviewers that know a lot about acting and there are many that do not. You must ask yourself what value you place on the opinion of others. A reviewer works for a newspaper, a newspaper needs to maintain (in this climate) circulation. Their desired outcome is different from yours. But many reviewers offer very fair, very enlightened reviews, and some are just plain rude. I don’t think I’ve ever received an inaccurate review, when it was bad, they said so, and I agreed. Mamet offers a great quote on reviews without trying to attack the reviewers and it’s something we can all learn and grow from as actors:
“The great reviews are never good enough and the bad ones are devastating” David Mamet
Decide long in advance of your first reviews how you will deal with them, read them or don’t read them. Decide what value you place on them. And then take action.
To You, the Best
-Mark-
Mark Westbrook is an Acting Coach based in Glasgow, Scotland.
Miles Wide: Criticism of Practical Aesthetics
A very interesting thing happened this week, I found a fascinating article from an acting coach in San Francisco. In it, he claims to have found the location of a weakness in Practical Aesthetics, a flaw in the Common Sense approach to acting. So I set a task for my advanced students to evaluate the article and let me know their thoughts. Ironically, on the very day that I published the task for my students, I received an anonymous message from somewhere out in the blogsphere asking me if I thought the author of the article had got the criticism spot on. Well, it is an interesting article, but I’m sad to say that like bad artillery, it’s miles wide of the mark, miles wide.
I thought that for my students, the unknown commentator and anyone interested, I would respond.
Andrew Utter runs Mother of Invention acting school, a great name for a school, and it also sets out his stall, necessity and need being vital to his way of thinking. He says he finds ‘plenty of good things to say about Practical Aesthetics’ but believes that he has discovered its limitations. Whilst he spends 220 words establishing his credentials, he doesn’t mention whether he has trained in Practical Aesthetics or just vigorously read A Practical Handbook for the Actor and perhaps True and False (has he read Robert Bella’s chapter on Practical Aesthetics in The Training of the American Actor? (UK Link).
He doesn’t mention any training in Practical Aesthetics, which leads me to believe that he has not studied it rigorously or intensively. It’s clear that he is experienced and well qualified, but not in Practical Aesthetics, at least not so that he acknowledges it. If he has, I’m not sure he understood it.
He rightly acknowledges that Practical Aesthetics is a ‘problem’ based approach to acting. This is in line with Stanislavski’s own practice of using the term ‘zadacha’ which can be translated as ‘problem’. In fact, when you read through the blog post, Utter’s only real criticism of Practical Aesthetics is that they ‘neglect what I call the sources of true urgency within’. Utter’s real problem with Practical Aesthetics (or his misunderstanding) comes from his belief that Practical Aesthetics is lacking ‘a strong way of addressing the precise WAY in which it is urgent to solve these problems’.
Firstly, the problems that he suggests for imbuing ‘an actor’s work with clarity, lucidity and credibility’ aren’t universal enough. They are concrete, but they don’t offer a universal enough way to connect character’s want with actor’s action. ‘Getting someone to marry you’ or ‘getting someone to lend you the car’ will NEVER initiate the actor to care, because these things don’t compel them.
Utter says that the trouble is that Practical Aesthetics doesn’t compel us to CARE about the problem. That’s true, his examples of the problem, do not compel us to care, because these involve the WANTS of the character and not the universal essential actions that Practical Aesthetics uses. Essential actions help to connect the actor with the character’s problem/desire/goal. Stakes are certainly important, but if you do not phrase the problem in a way that the actor can take urgent action from, you simply make it impossible to care about it, so Utter is right, actors do not CARE about the WANTS of their character, but they must find a way to care, and this is achieved through the universality of an essential action.
In Practical Aesthetics, we connect to the problem, or in our case, the Essential Action by way of an ‘As If’, we work out what ‘to win an ally’ means to us by saying ‘It’s As If…..’ and we work out what it means to us by using an analogous scenario that connect us to it. This provides a level of care by asking two questions, why now and what if you don’t. This guides the actor to the compulsion of care and also automatically sets the stakes.
I’m somewhat confused by Utter’s belief that his teachers invented the notion of objective and super objective, because essentially that’s what he’s describing. Or let’s be more precise, he suggests that there are two types of objective, one is the problem, and the other is the need served by the solving the problem. Interesting, but any Practical Aesthetic actor would now be pointing at their copy of Aristotle’s Poetics and pointing out that this was given to them on their first day of Script Analysis class when told that the second question you ask when analysing a script is ‘What is the character’s underlying need’. Sorry, your teachers didn’t invent this. Aristotle wrote it down 3000 years ago.
Utter suggests that the actor needs to connect to the underlying need. But the character’s underlying need only compels them to take action with urgency, they simply cannot be in an attempt of solving the problem AND be thinking about the underlying need at the same time. Furthermore, the underlying need is the character’s, not the actors. But more importantly, the current problem always outweighs anything else., even the higher need. In Meisner’s words ‘that which hinders your task IS your task’, or in other words, we focus on the task (another translation of the word zadacha) at hand, because it’s immediacy demands more focus than the long term goal.
Utter believes that As-Iffing is similar to Uta Hagen’s ‘substitution’, which she later renamed ‘transference’ just as Utter does, but it isn’t the same thing. It simply provides us with a way to compel us. I think this is where Mr Utter’s lack of Practical Aesthetics training shows, because this is where his actual practical training is lacking. The actor uses ‘As If’ exercises to develop in the body the habit of performing the action with the size, speed, tempo, rhythm and compulsion provided by the As If situation. When this is habituated, the actor does not need to care for the character’s cares, they are imbued into their actions through habituation in rehearsal.
You do not need to care about the scene, you need to habituate the necessity, the need, or what the care/stakes DOES to the way that you perform the actions of the character. Once habituated, it’s not something that you need to worry about any more.
The problem is that the actor NEVER need care about their character’s needs, we do not need to care about the needs of fictional people, since they do not exist, but what we do need to do, as Utter suggest is to compel the actor to how the ‘care’ drives the character’s actions, and therefore their own.
The final part of Mr Utter’s problem with Practical Aesthetics is a little bit vague, so it’s somewhat difficult to dechiper. It attends to Utter’s solution, and essentially, it lets the reader know why his school, and his way of working solves this problem and is therefore more appropriate to the actor than Practical Aesthetics. Having not really understood As Iffing, not really understood Practical Aesthetics, his solution may well work, but it has nothing to do with a criticism of Practical Aesthetics. So whilst Utter’s criticism of Practical Aesthetics is wrong and misguided, he doesn’t really explain how he resolves it, it’s something to do with finding, naming what it is that the person gives you that you cannot do without. Why you care about the person enough to want to achieve the goal. These are taken care of in the ‘Why Now’ and ‘What if You Don’t’ of As-Iffing. The As If is a point of departure, a reference point or a way of understanding the content, I can make head nor tail of Utter’s vague technique for naming ‘what a brother means to you’, nor can I see that it has anything at all to do with the scene you are playing.
If Mr Utter reads this sometime, it would be great if he could go into more detail, his criticism is quite well thought through, it’s just a shame that his conclusion is weak and difficult to make any sense of. It seems the least practical part of his entire very articulate and intelligently written blog post is his solution.
To you, the best
Mark
Mark Westbrook is an acting coach based in Glasgow, Scotland.
Matrix of Acting with Tactics and Tools
Many people ask if there is a simple way of identifying tools or tactics, what some people call ACTIONS. There is a great book by Calderone and Lloyd Williams called Actions – The Actors Thesaurus, UK readers can find it here, US readers can find it here. BUT for those that don’t want to buy it, although it’s very good, I have provided a small matrix of tactics that you can use to get started. Remember, in order to use a tactic, you really need to be sure what your task, problem, objective or essential action is.
Remember, it helps if a tool or tactic can tested on the other. Tactics and tools initiate a spark of psychophysiological action, engaging both the body and mind, and helping to create truthful acting. Of course, no matter what tools you have, if you haven’t correctly analysed the scene, all the tactics in the world will not help you.
Some Actable/Specific Tactics:
Challenge Condemn Berate Confront
Beg Warn Goad Mock
Dismiss Lecture Coax Teach
Dare Entreat Plead Assure
Kiss Hold Attack Comfort
Touch Avoid Deflect Tease
Bully Guilt-Trip Arouse Nudge
Punch Pinch Flirt Elevate
Lower Poke Prod Nip
Nuzzle Evade Hug Deflect
Threaten Bribe Stroke Needle
Interrogate Coach Elbow Kick
Demand Befriend Pull Push
Force Worship Inspire Destroy
Hope this helps.
To you, the best
Mark Westbrook
Mark Westbrook is a professional acting coach, writer and director based in Glasgow, Scotland. He offers one to one tuition, acting masterclasses and regular weekly acting classes.
BOOKS EVERY ACTORS SHOULD OWN
This is just a shorty today, apparently, it’s the weekend. I thought I would answer a number of emails from my own students and from actors and acting students across the world with what are the TEN books that I think you should have all read and in fact, own.
Click on the Title to Find out some more about each of the books. Our AMERICAN readers should CLICK here to see the books suggested for their region.
1) A Practical Handbook for the Actor (Handbook of Practical Aesthetics) – Bruder et Al.
2) True and False – Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor (Mamet’s Manifesto on Acting) – by David Mamet
3) Actions – The Actor’s Thesaurus (A tool EVERY actor should own) – Caldarone & Lloyd Williams
4) Actor’s Art and Craft (an exceptional book on Meisner Technique) – by William Esper
5) The Monologue Audition (the only book you need on approaching Monologues) by Karen Kohlhaas
6) Viewpoints (an excellent guide to this amazing technique for the creation of theatre) by Tina Landau and Anne Bogart
7) A Manual for Living (a philosophy of living that’s great for all actors) by Epictetus and Sharon Lebell
A Whore’s Profession (a great chance to see Mamet at his best) David Mamet
9) An Actor’s Work (A new translation of Stanislavski’s first two books, a good replacement for the old books) by Stanislavski & Benedetti
10) Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
To you, the best
Mark Westbrook
Mark Westbrook is a professional acting coach, writer and director based in Glasgow, Scotland. He offers one to one tuition, acting masterclasses and regular weekly acting classes.
Who are you in Rehearsals?
My experience of rehearsals is that actors tend to fall into various categories in their behaviour. Sometimes an actor is a completely different person in rehearsal from the person they are in life. Some turn from lovely to living nightmare, and others pleasantly, vice-versa. Of course, this is a generalisation, but I hope that by identifying any problems you may have and you may use it to improve your professionalism and your profession.
THE CREATIVE is probably more at home ‘devising’ than with a script, they ignore the script because they want to create, unfortunately, it has precious to do with the script.
THE OLD SOLDIER has worked with everyone from Johnny and Larry to Joan. Every piece of direction is met with an anecdote.
THE BAD METHOD ACTOR never really trained in any method, but holds onto some generalisations about living the role or becoming the part. Most real method actors would turn pale and die at what this Ham thinks is Method acting. They wander around in the character’s shoes, trying to find the part. They struggle to bring the script to life because they’re too concerned with themselves.
THE REPLACEMENT DIRECTOR believes the director isn’t up to the job. They take every opportunity to resist the director and any direction that they offer. They often let their fellow cast mates what they think of the director, and undermine the directors every turn.
THE REPLACEMENT WRITER believes the script is rubbish and could have easily done a better job and let everyone know about it. They always making small suggestions about how to change the script to improve it. They actively ‘struggle’ with lines that they don’t like in order to pressure the director into looking for a re-write. They’re not afraid to tell others how little respect you have for the script either.
PRIMA DONNA knows it’s all about them, it’s always been about you love, yes it is. Regardless of whether they have the lead role or not, they dominate the time of the director, relating everything back to themselves time and time again.
THE TALKER - (Many directors suffer from this too) likes to talk, often very intelligent and very interestin, but it means they don’t have to take any action, which is sort of in the job description. But they like the sound of their own voice a little too much and often respond to direction with a long spiel that’s somewhat related to the topic.
THE YES-BUT can’t direction, can’t take criticism or feedback, they’ve got a reason OR excuse for everything, they respond to every single piece of direction with a reason for why they are currently doing what they can do, but they struggle to take direction or know how to deal with it.
THE GRAFTER puts their head down and get on with the job, but you don’t offer much in terms of choices.
THE AMNESIAC can’t remember their lines, ever, you only work with them once, cos you’ll never cast them again, ever. From my experience, they barely tried to learn their lines, they often spend their time in rehearsals trying to paraphrase the lines, which means they don’t learn them through doing. Instead, the last days of rehearsal are stressful and painful because the actor is forced to learn the lines against their will.
THE PROBLEM CHILD always has a problem, personal or professional, never able to get on with anything and has an excuse for everything, long, deep seat and troubling.
If you see yourself here, try to make a difference, you will have a much more successful rehearsal time, and hopefully, a better production.
To you, the best
-Mark-
Mark Westbrook runs Acting Coach Scotland, an acting training and coaching business in Glasgow, Scotland.
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Recent Posts
- The Layers of Performance
- Playwrights You Should Read
- Being Off Book
- Top Books on Acting
- Excerpt from An Interview with Mark Westbrook
- A Handy Guide to Acting Emotions with Steven Seagal
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