Archive for December, 2009
Why We Fail in Auditions
How come some talented actors never make it? Some very talented individuals, who are amazing in class, do incredible work on stage, really nail it on camera, but when end up in the audition room, or in front of a casting director, they simply fail – they fall to pieces.
It’s the audition or casting session when it really counts, because you can be the best actor in the world, but if you fall flat on your face in the audition, you’ll never get the chance to show your skills off.
With all your sacrifice, your devotion, your hard work and training, you are well prepared to do the work, but there is still one thing that gets in your way.
Call it self-sabotage, call it neurosis, call it freaking out or being nervous – but we do this to ourselves. We arrive without adequate preparation, we’re perhaps a ‘little’ late, we’re full of excuses, well okay, and we’re full of shit. We try far too hard, we end up looking desperate, we end up putting them off, and we end up turning them off with our repulsive neediness.
When we leave the audition, we end up feeling empty. But it’s okay, because we’ve already given ourselves an excuse, we didn’t really try all that hard, so we didn’t really fail. It’s a rather ugly way of protecting ourselves, because we didn’t risk it all, we can persuade ourselves that we didn’t actually fail.
We tell ourselves that if we had really tried, we’d have gotten the job. We give ourselves a get-out. We condone our own failure.
We tell ourselves that it will be different next time, but we know inside that it won’t. Sooner or later, we persuade ourselves we just aren’t any good at auditioning. You give up, all that hard work, dedication, training and everything is thrown away because you’ve self-sabotaged yourself.
So… what would I suggest? How could we fix this problem?
It will take a serious change, but it’s worth it. It’s really worth it, if you want a REAL and fulfilling career in acting for stage and screen, you need to make that change.
You need to cut the shit. Look at yourself. What are the bad habits that you’ve created to self-sabotaged your career? What causes them? Why are you late for auditions? Why don’t you put time aside to prepare properly for auditions? Are you lazy? What’s holding you back? How does all your self-sabotaging fit together? To get past this problem, you need to really take a hard look at yourself, look at what’s REALLY stopping you from getting what you want, make a list and go after it, change your behaviour.
But the real key is this. If you really want to be successful in your auditions, you need to attract success. How do you do this? You take every step you possibly can to attract it, create the expectation of success by the actions that you take. SIT DOWN RIGHT NOW AND MAKE A LIST OF 5 BAD HABITS THAT ARE PREVENTING YOU FROM SUCCEEDING. Next to it, write what you WILL do in 2010 to change those habits. Now start taking action.
Or you can keep running away from the real world, keep giving yourself excuses and end up in one of those safe jobs that will allow you to say to anyone who’ll listen ‘I coulda have been an actor, you know’.
To You, The Best!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 2009
7 Signs Your Acting Teacher Sucks
ONE: Mainly Clueless
Wise and sage-like, most of them know that their technique is practically useless, but carry on peddling their nonsense for years.
TWO: Charge Too Much
I’ve seen middle of the road acting teachers charging up to £100 an hour for a session in which they rob you blind for little more than a life-coaching session. If you’re teaching or coaching high earning actors, then perhaps your fee should be higher than normal. However, if you’re coaching jobbing actors, then something low like £25 per hour is more than enough.
What’s more there are so many people out there willing to pay hundreds or thousands of pounds/dollars to these marketing/acting guru charlatans, as if being ripped off was a badge of honour.
THREE: Some are Just Out of Work Actors
I’ve seen many out of work actors claiming that they have what it takes to teach acting. Clearly, they just need the money, and you gotta admire their pluck, they want to make some money, so they turn to the thing they’re apparently good at, well trust me, most actors can’t explain to you how they do it, so they’re going to struggle to explain it to someone else.
FOUR: Actually Teachers
Unlike out of work actors, some acting teachers are actually trained teachers. They’re certified Drama teachers, or perhaps worse ‘speech and drama’ teachers. People with certificates and medals, no actual theatre, television or film experience, just time spent ticking syllabus boxes, or stuck in a High School teaching English.
FIVE: Just NOT a Teacher
Teaching is a profession that requires craft. You can’t just call yourself a teacher, that’s why there are qualifications for the position. But acting teachers can set up in a village hall and call themselves ‘acting teacher’ or ‘professional acting coach’. It really helps if your acting teacher has actually got a professional teaching certificate, actually knows something about education and training.
SIX: Bullying
There’s a lot of bullying or hazing in the name of teaching acting. An acting teacher should never bully you, does not need to shout at you, demean you or insult you. That’s unprofessional and they don’t deserve your custom. On the other hand, you MUST be willing to learn, you must accept that the acting teacher will try to challenge you. There is no part of actor training and coaching that requires the acting teacher to be rude to you in any way.
SEVEN: Stomping around in your Mind
Acting teachers should not want to stomp around in your head. What’s going in your head is none of their business. I’ve seen acting teachers trying to make people cry, digging around in their past, pushing buttons that shouldn’t be pushed. If you want to ‘open an actor up’, might I suggest you become a surgeon instead.
There are some incredible people out there, great teachers, great mentors, great inspirations – seek them out, wherever you might find them. But steer clear of those that suck. You know who you are…
To You, The Best!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 2009
Does Practical Aesthetics work for Physical Theatre?
In yesterday’s Acting Blog, I stated that: “A technique of acting must work all the time, every time.” An anonymous (American?) commenter asked:
“Does PA work for physical theater?”
I feel that there are about eight different answers to this question, so we’ll have to take this one in parts.
For me, the answer is very much a Yes. However, it’s worth working through the entire answer to this question to see why:
First of all, when I said that a technique of acting must work all time, every time, I was referring to actors working in films, television and theatre on scripted pieces. I was referring to what we might refer to as ’straight’ acting. I was also referring to it working consistently for the actor, on each stage and set they tread – rather than Practical Aesthetics being some kind of answer to everything.
Because of course, Practical Aesthetics is no use at all for installing televisions or baking cup cakes. So part of my answer is Yes, it will work if it is useful to you. The answer is No, if it is not useful to you. A fork is great for eating with, but sometimes you need a spoon, right?
Next, of course, it depends on what we mean by Physical Theatre, according to various resources I checked, the term is a ‘catch-all’ meaning:
- Mime
- Contemporary dance
- Theatrical Clowning and other physical comedy
- Some forms of puppetry
- Theatrical Acrobatics
I’m sure many would argue that Physical Theatre is in fact, an entirely separate art form and has it’s own individual skill set, that an actor must learn separately from the main acting technique.
I do not believe that Practical Aesthetics is a catchall. However, it can’t hurt to apply some principles from Practical Aesthetics to ANY of these individual art forms. In this case, Practical Aesthetics might be considered to enhance this skill specific training.
Practical Aesthetics is also a philosophy of making theatre (Mamet’s new book ‘Theatre’ due out in April 2010 should offer us all more) and so many of the great principles of pragmatism offered by Practical Aesthetics are useful to any creative person or group. If we just take one idea of ‘Invent Nothing, Deny Nothing, Accept Everything and Get on with it!’ we can see how easily that this ethic could be used by the Physical Theatre practitioner in the creation of their work.
Furthermore, if we ask if PA useful for the creation, rehearsal and performance of Physical Theatre itself, then the answer is a resounding Yes. If we take the example of DV8, which in its recenty physical theatre performance ‘To be Straight With You’ used physical performance enhanced by the spoken word, then we can see that it could be useful and work well.
And if we remove the spoken word and think of a company such as the German-based, Russian monks of physical theatre such as Derevo, there are many principles and tools in the basics of Practical Aesthetics that could help, enhance or develop this type of work and its rehearsal/creative process.
Practical Aesthetics, is primarily an action-based approach. It isn’t about words but actions. As Mamet has one of his characters in American Buffalo say ‘Action talks and Bullshit walks’. Much of the early Practical Aesthetics training is learning to work on real spontaneous impulse. Those trained in PA learn to work truthfully from moment to moment, in a physical sense, they become great observers they learn to respond truthfully to what the other person is doing within the truth of the moment, – these are all surely useful, or vital to excellent physical theatre.
We train first and foremost to learn to act through the body – as Meisner said ‘the foundation of acting is the reality of doing’. Sandy also wanted an exercise where ‘there is no intellectuality’. Where we learn to work from the intuitive centre, where we allow ourselves to become impulsive – this can only aid the physical performer.
Additionally, when you add Practical Aesthetics training to something like Viewpoints, then you get a creative philosophy and practical tools that feed off each other and stimulate fascinating creative work.
So the answer is yes, many of the principles and some of the approach itself is suited to making and performing physical theatre, and finally yes, if Practical Aesthetics could be useful to the making, rehearsal and performance of Physical Theatre, then yes, it would work.
So I guess, my overall answer is yes, it works well for physical theatre, if you mean a physical theatre performer who wants to work impulsively, living in the moment, responding truthfully to other performers, to the situation or circumstance, to music, stimulus or mood. Yes, if you want to learn to work without denying those impulses. Yes, if you like to work in action. Yes, if you like to take too much thought out of the equation and move towards action. Yes, if the essential actions of Practical Aesthetics can stimulate the performer physically, yes if tactics lead a physical performer to express themselves physically, rather than simply in words.
In general and in the specific, does Practical Aesthetics work for Physical Theatre? Yes. Yes. Yes.
To You, The Best!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 2009
Acting Techniques are Pointless
BellaLuce asked ‘What acting techniques/exercises have you found particularly pointless?’
Hmmm. Acting Techniques and their exercises are necessary. The trouble is that most of them are entirely pointless. They do keep you occupied, they’re often fun, or least they make you feel like you’re working, or mostly, they frustrate and irritate you into complying with whatever the teacher says you’re meant to think/feel/do/pretend.
We need technique. The problem is that most of them are nonsense. Acting teachers and Professors of Theatre don’t want you to know that, because it undermines most of their careers, and frankly, the way they earn their living.
Personally, I’ve always had what I jokingly call ‘a Wank Radar’, anything that seems like self-gratifying, time-wasting, pretendy-crap almost definitely is so…
Sandy Meisner said that acting was ‘the ability to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances. To me this is a good enough starting point for acting. When I teach acting, I think of acting as something a little simpler. Look at the person you’re meant to be speaking to and speak the lines with a similar intention to the character in the scene.
Many people have a talent for acting, some don’t even bother to train, they simply go on their gut instinct and the gift they were given. I must confess some admiration for this. Nonetheless, it is my belief that talent is never enough. It can take us so far, then we need a little help. To some, that means ‘technique’, some think of a ‘methodology’, some look to the stars, but let’s be clear – many can do well on talent alone – but without the challenge, someone or something to work from, a framework, you end up stuck in the same place.
However, any technique that doesn’t immediately make its use applicable to your work as an actor is suspect, not necessarily pointless but suspect. It becomes pointless, when after a few hours of work reveal no positive benefits towards actually acting the damned scene.
I have been warned for my whole career not to get stuck into one technique. The people that told me that usually realised that the techniques they learned were bullshit, so they took a bit of that technique and added to a bit of something else, and sort of bungled together a technique from toilet rolls and sticky-tape. It’s a nice idea, the so-called Linguini-effect (it’s become the mainstream approach to acting in many drama schools in non-technique schools)- throw enough technique at the actor and hope some of it sticks.but basically it sucks because the results are unpredictable, inconsistent and cannot be relied upon to produce results each time you work. A technique of acting must work all the time, every time.
For me, that is Practical Aesthetics, a simple, no-bullshit approach to acting. It works for me, it works for the actors that use it and it works for the students at ACS Studio. It can work for you too.
To You, The Best!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 2009
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas to all! I hope you have a great time, I’m watching It’s a Wonderful Life as Christmas Eve turns into Christmas Day, and you know what? It is!
Glasgow Acting Coach on…The Death of Method Acting…
I’m annoyed, it’s 03:44am in the morning and I’m fuming at the media’s constant need to agree with the Methodists, that’s Method acting practitioners to you and me. Remember Bush and his ‘You’re either with us or against us’ speech, well the same type of impractical theory has crept from the Methodists themselves to others. Their over simplistic rant goes that if you’re not a Method Actor, if you don’t sue for Emotional Truth, then you’re pretending. All those who don’t pursue this emotional truth are therefore fakes and frauds.
In this recent Wall Street Journal article, David Thomson gives his potted history of the Method, with a small gripe or two, he’s also fallen for the ’swat or not’ mentality. As if – not liking oranges only left you with apples.
Read the Article on Method Acting yourself.
Well sorry Methodists, sorry David Thomson, this just isn’t true. Look, I’m all against faking it, pretend just drives me up the wall and when I see it, it makes me shudder, because those that can pretend well are basically few and far between, so the rest are left asking for the audience or viewer’s indulgence while they fake it and hope to get away with it.
The opposite of Method Acting is not Pretending. To me, the opposite of Method Acting can be found in the philosophy of Practical Aesthetics, the approach to acting that was categorised by William H Macy and David Mamet in New York in the 80s, based on the work of Stanislavski and Sandy Meisner, it involves pursuit of action within the truth of the moment. Well, at least the title gave me hope, The Death of Method Acting, I hope so. I would say that the actors that are being called pretenders are just naturally gifted at taking action, pursuing achievable goals and acting in the moment.
Method Acting seems on the rise in the UK at the moment, who knows why? We’ve never been known for suffering that self indulgent crap before, why start now?
To You, The Best!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 2009
Glasgow Acting Coach on… Dialogue
The great philosopher Cher once said “Words are like weapons, they wound sometimes.”
Dialogue is a contrived thing. It is not speech. Those that think it is, are sadly deluding themselves. It is a contrived representation of real human speech, created assist with the creation of the illusion of character.
Characters speak to achieve something. This can be very simple like fishing for a compliment or complex like trying to turn your brother against your own father. Words are used by people to achieve an end. Verbal communication is the human struggle to formalise thoughts and feelings which have no real shape. They are often inadequate. But to hear a character speak like we do in life would be tiresome and so the writer works to construct the illusion, holding ‘as t’were the mirror up to nature’. It is not an accident that the playWRIGHT is written as a maker of plays, scripts are WROUGHT, not written. Dialogue is a constructed thing.
But when it comes to the actor, they must bring the dialogue off the page and turn it into action, into acting, into performance. After all, the actor’s rarely get anything more than dialogue on which to perform their role. And so, dialogue is the key clue in discovering how to take action and take your character into performance.
Words are weapons and when they are used, they often leave an indelible impression on the person that hears them. ‘What’s said cannot be unsaid’. For the actor, the words are gibberish, they are tools in the pursuit of the character’s desires. It is not the words, but how they are said and why they are said that matters. Of course, at the same time, without over-acting and mugging the scene to death, there is also the moments when you are not speaking and whether or not you have any input as an actor in the subtext.
On subtext, I would say leave it alone. It doesn’t need your help. If one character asks ‘How are you?’ and you must answer ‘Fine’, then playing the tactic DODGE or DEFLECT will take care of the writer’s subtextual demands.
Many would-be actors cannot handle dialogue. They make it sound like poor narration. They can’t bring the words alive, because they do not see the relationship between the dialogue and REAL speech. Whilst it starts as the constructs of another creative, your job is to make it come to life. Understanding why they are speaking is essential, understanding what motivates their words, their reasoning, their choice of words helps you the actor to understand what you have to do with the words. Without this, you are reciting text, not breathing life into the script.
To You, The Best!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 2009
Glasgow Acting Coach on… How to Avoid Faking It.
Okay okay you say, since you hate faking and love truthful acting so much, how the hell do I avoid faking it?
Actually, it’s quite simple, it’s a mental shift in the actor’s perspective that helps us to see things clearly. I was working with an actor today and it started to become very clear to me the different between states and action. When someone is angry, they are in a state of anger which is projected by the things that they do. Their emotional state is caused and maintained by their actions (and reactions to whatever made them angry in the first place). We know they are angry by the things that they do, the actions that they take, the tactics they use, and again – the things that they do.
When an actor is learning to act, they often get stuck in the trap of trying to reproduce emotional states. It is the mistake of playing the result rather than stimulating the truth through truthful action. Of course, any good director or acting coach knows this, yet still many insist on the production of a result or state rather than helping the actor to find it themselves. Over the years, this creates a self-confidence crisis in actors who were consistently having to fake emotional states in order to please their teachers and directors.
The key to avoiding faking it, is to remember that you canNOT will yourself into a state. I know the NLP voodooists would claim that you can, but to my mind, you can only turn the temperature up or down on a state, you cannot conjur one at whim. We’re not talking about emotional truth, emotional truth already exists without you seeking it. Acting is action and not emotion. Emotion is crazy state, uncontrollable and wild. If your character is angry, sad, horny or whatever, you have to look at what horny, sad and angry people DO.
This is the key to avoiding faking it. Find a coach that will help you learn this on a 1-2-1 basis, it takes someone else, someone you can trust to tell you when you’re faking it.
To You, The Best!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 2009
Glasgow Acting Coach on…Mediocrity
Hi All.
I’m sorry to say that I look about me and see a lot of mediocre performances. Flat, lifeless crap and shabby, flabby, overdone shit. It’s frightening that these people got through drama school and are paid to perform in front of you. Under a unique law in the UK, you can’t ask for your ticket money back.
I believe mediocrity has slipped inside our business. Directors are accepting mediocrity because it’s better the Devil you know, than the Devil you don’t. It scares me what passes for performance these days. I rarely can bare to go the theatre, the plays are boring and the performances lack a shred of truth. Of course, there are exceptions. There are already exceptions. But rarely do I leave the theatre without thinking that ticket money would be really great in my honeymoond fund.
Mediocrity is all around us. People accept it, because it’s safe, it doesn’t challenge and it makes the people in power (you know the ones) feel safe because they don’t feel threatened. We daren’t upset THOSE people, they may be talentless, but by God, they’re powerful. And so we prostrate ourselves and join their mediocre band.
So how do we make a change? First of all, we don’t accept shite. We walk out of shows, we turn off the television, we leave the cinema and don’t return. Okay, that’s all unlikely to happen. Okay, how about this, the people in power realise that they have no need to be afraid, that the creative people are there to help. They offer not a threat, but a chance to excel and when you put your faith in these people, they will bring you a return on your investment.
We have also let diversity in the arts hurt us. What do I mean? Oh, I don’t mean like social diversity, I’m all for that. But there are hundreds, no thousands of acting courses. They can’t all be exceptional people. The training course providers have a moral and ethical responsibility. But of course, they won’t listen to me.
So, I urge you as individuals, because some of you will HAVE the power and some of you already HAVE the power, to insist on excellence and to consider all acts of mediocrity in the arts, and for me in acting particularly, as minor crimes against culture. I just mean that if you have the power, use it, use it to help the excellent to excel and the punish mediocrity with absence and silence.
To You, The Best!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 2009
Glasgow Acting Coach spills the beans…
Hi
Some of you are asking about recommending acting coaches in other cities. Sorry guys, I’m afraid unless they’ve taught me, I’m unwilling to put my reputation on the line.
But since so many of you ask the questions, I’m going to talk to you about what qualities I think a good acting coach should have -
That way you can work to differentiate the frauds and charlatans from those dedicated to helping you achieve your acting goals.
- A good acting coach understands acting on an conscious level, that means they can abstract themselves for the process of acting in order to break it down and teach it.
- A good acting coach is well qualified, this means a mixture of experience and expertise, formal qualifications, are helpful, but you don’t need a talent to get them.
- A good acting coach is not upset by a difficult question that you ask, they want to help you at every stage of your journey, including during your confusion.
- A good acting coach is passionate, knowledgeable and wants to share it with you.
- A good acting coach talks sense and when you don’t understand, endeavours to help you.
- A good acting coach has time for you, after class, before class, by email.
- A good acting coach doesn’t lump all their students in together.
- A good acting coach never shouts at you for getting it wrong.
- A good acting coach never uses the verb ‘TO BULLY’ in order to teach you something.
- A good acting coach knows everyone’s name.
- A good acting coach can DO all the things they ask YOU to DO.
- A good acting coach only asks YOU to do THINGS that they are WILLING to DO.
- A good acting coach uses praise sparingly, but constructive criticism frequently.
- A good acting coach knows people in the business.
- A good acting coach is not just an actor trying to make a bit of extra cash.
- A good acting coach is not your friend, they are your mentor, your tutor, your drill sergeant and sometimes your worst nightmare, but they always respect you.
- A good acting coach never makes fun at your expense.
- A good acting coach is available when you need them.
- A good acting coach has planned your journey with you.
- A good acting coach wants to know what YOU want to achieve and plans the steps and helps you to get there.
- A good acting coach never wastes your time.
- A good acting coach has great stories but never uses them to big themselves up.
- A good acting coach is approachable.
- A good acting coach isn’t just in it for the money.
- A good acting coach doesn’t let their ego be the most important thing in the room.
- A good acting coach treats you like you’re the most important person.
- A good acting coach demonstrates all the good qualities of character that any good, respectable human being should be proud to embody.
- A good acting coach can REALLY kick ass.
- Okay, maybe not that last one.
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 2009
It’s All in the Script
Certain methods of working as an actor put the actor’s creative powers at the centre of their process. I can understand this, as the people with the least power in a production, one will take any opportunity to have a tiny piece of the decision making. However, to my mind, the script is the most powerful resource the actor has at their disposal. The trouble is that the script is not often the actor’s friend, they fear getting to grips with it, so a few weeks spent in self-pleasuring character exercises tends to make them feel at east – until it comes to actually performing the script – because they still haven’t overcome that problem.
In television and film, the script is often less-than-respected, in the theatre, the writer is still king. In many ways this is a shame, because it’s the writers who know how to tell stories best.
My own training and what I teach on a daily basis is that the answers to the puzzle of any scene, of any script in any medium, can be resolved by looking to the script. The script has it all. But what about when the script is crap? You can’t save a bad script, you really can’t. You can save yourself, but you cannot save poor craft. You will of course be tempted, but I say resist. Anyway, let’s not look at worst case scenarios, let’s look at your average script for a television show or play, or film. Let’s imagine that the writer spent a long time working on it and it was hell on earth to get it to this stage. Let’s not piss all over it immediately as we disrespect the writer by imagine that we can make it better.
Let’s go to the script. How to play the scene is given in clues by the writer. Let’s face it, writers try to write the most useful script they can for actors – and some will even take out insurance and try to make it actor-proof- meaning even the worst actors with the worst performances based on the worse choices given the worst direction in front of the worst audience can’t fuck it up. Well, they try anyway.
For actors will little experience, I ask you now to learn to respect the script. For experienced actors that have learned many bad habits and begun to think they can do it better, respect the script or start writing your own and prove that you CAN do it better, then try not to pull out you hair whilst the actors tear it to pieces.
Say the lines simply. Don’t overdo it. The audience are NOT stupid. Help them on their dramatic journey by being good at what you do, bringing the 2-D page into 3-D performance. And when you’re looking for help with how to do that. Respect the script and start looking for the clues there.
John Strasberg, son of the famous acting teacher Lee Strasberg famously said that he ‘realised that everything is already in the play.’
But an actor needs to have faith in themselves that they can learn to use the script as a tool and not as a painful enemy, an obstacle that prevents them doing their job. Actor Steve Buscemi who was a student of John Strasberg’s said after working with John ‘I think learned to trust myself more, to look for clues in the play to help me with the character I was playing’.
To focus this much on the play means that you have to have a fairly rigorous approach to using the script as your closest ally. So find yourself an acting coach that can teach you to make the script your friend.
And oh… read more plays 
)
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 2009
The Fall Back…
Okay thanks everyone for your questions and requests for blog topics and titles, I have over 20 emails to sort through, with perhaps, about 200 blog ideas and questions to address over the next 12 months! I’ll start with one (of many) from BellaLuce, she wrote:
“Do you agree with Macy and Mamet’s philosophy to never have a fall back and you won’t fall back?”
Boy oh Boy oh boy oh girl, I’ve got to be careful not to write a thesis on this one. Okay, well, here goes.
Short Answer: Yes.
My experience of life in the arts has been that those (including myself) that have given themselves a fall back will ALWAYS fall back. As I wrote before ‘everything is easier than being an actor’ – everything else – making money, paying off college, getting married, having kids, everything is more important and quite often, we’ve fallen back before we know it. I’ll be honest and say I spent four years at the University of Ulster teaching practical skills in a fall back position. I don’t think I had a vocation for university teaching (i should say UK and US lecturing is like chalk and cheese) and I realised I had fallen back and threw myself into the new.
It’s natural. If you choose a fall back, you will choose it every time. Necessity is the Mother of Invention. If you HAVE to make money with the thing you’re good at, you will, or you’ll die trying and then where’s the shame? It would be horrible in thirty or forty years time to be watching the television, eating your donut, drinking your coffee and saying to your kids ‘I coulda been a good actor you know’, if I hadn’t copped out and took the safe route (of course you wouldn’t say THAT bit)
I know a lot of people that fell back and became teachers, administrators, agents etc. Good for them, but I know that most aren’t happy, because they were born with a talent to amuse and in front of a camera or on stage is a major necessary (perhaps hidden to themselves) part of their nature.
‘Those Who Know Better’ will want to save you from a life of depravity and well, at least poverty by encouraging, nay counseling you to give yourself a fall back. And whilst they give you this good advice with the best intention. But frankly, they’re doing you no favours, even if they think they are.
Here’s some advice. Don’t go to college, don’t get into huge debt to finance an artistic education if you’re only going to fall back on something else. Fall back now and be happy before you rack up the debts and convince yourself you can make a go of this.
Given the easy option, most people will take the path of least resistance. I’ve sadly discovered this of myself of late, although I could see it in others a long time ago, it deeply upsets me that I’ve seen it in myself.
When a gifted person prepares a fall back, they are wasting their gift, but you know what? There are THOUSANDS of gifted people, they can’t all work. So let’s make a pact, will the Back Fallers, please Fall BACK right now, and please leave us to get on with the job of acting. Or don’t fall back, and get to work and go out there and be a success to yourself and the doubters. And let their best comment on the whole thing be ‘How Do You Remember ALL THOSE LINES?’.
Thanks Sarah, I bet you wish you hadn’t asked now )
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 2009
Acting Classes in Glasgow! Can’t make them? Free Advice Available!
Hi, it’s Christmas time and our January Glasgow Acting Classes are almost full and as a little ‘give back’ session, this blog is going to be very short:
This blog is a request. What would you like me to help you with? What would you like me to blog about? I
If you have a request for a blog topic, or you have an acting problem or puzzle, or something you’d like to me to write about, then why not get in touch.
My email address is: mark@actingcoachscotland.co.uk
So whatever it is, whatever you’d like to know more about, get in touch and let me know and I’ll start writing some blogs that answer your questions and queries.
Until then, normal blogging will resume tomorrow!
To You, The Best!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 2009
Mamet on Acting: Part 3 – The Final Part
So, this is it, the final part of the 3-part Mamet on Acting. In our glasgow acting classes, we often talk about Mamet and I try to inspire the students with some of his more useful suggestions and maxims. His new play RACE looks like it might ignite Broadway when it opens officially. Thanks again to JAG for the PlayBill )
When asked about what he meant by ’stick to the action’ by Matthew Roudane in a wonderful interview in 1984 Mamet said:
“The action is what the character is doing. That’s what the actor must do. Acting has absolutely nothing to do with emotion or feeling emotional. It has as little to do with emotion as playing a violin does.’
Mamet’s pet hate is emotional performance. I guess, many people then believe he thinks acting should be emotionless. This isn’t true. It’s just that he believes that it’s the audience that should be feeling something. The pursuit of emotions or emotional truth ends in self-indulgence, self-consciousness and self-pleasuring – yes, it’s a kind of masturbation. Anyone who has ever ’stuck to the action’ long enough to try to get it from someone in a scene will realise, when their defenses are down, that they will feel, that emotion will appear, but it shouldn’t be chased. Of course, a lover spurned and trying to get a second chance will be emotional, but their foremost concern will be to get the second chance, and they will be looking hard at the other person, desperate for signs of success or failure, and they will often do ANYTHING, and I mean ANYTHING to get what they want. When emotion comes, they won’t be in control of it, but they won’t give up the fight for that second chance either.
On the same subject, in True and False – Mamet says: “If we learn to think solely in terms of the objective, all concerns of belief, feeling, emotion, characterisation, substitution, become irrelevant. It is not that we “forget” them, but that something else nbecomes more important than they.”
I like this next passage very much and remember, I’m an acting teacher: “A word about teachers. Most of them are charlatans. Few of the exercises I have seen, in what were advertised as acting schools, teach anything other than gullability. Don’t leave your common sense at the door…” Provocative words, but let’s face it, we all know it to be true. For my own students, the next time you enter the Acting Studio, look above the door and see what it says.
Finally, an our last word from Mamet for a while and I encourage any of my students to do this with me, because if I truly believe in what I teach and if for a second I thought I was turning into one of the charlatans that Mamet despises, I would pack up my business and go run a book shop or something: “If you don’t understand the teacher, make the teacher explain. If they are incapable of either explaining or demonstrating to your satisfaction the worth of their insights, they do not what what they are doing.”
I have to say that I’m sitting here at 01:10am in the morning, re-reading Mamet’s incredible book on acting True and False, and marveling again just how right he got it. Extreme? Yeah, maybe. But that doesn’t stop it from being true. If you don’t have a copy of it, get a copy, it won’t hurt you to read what this guy has to say on your craft. He’ll probably make you spitting mad, but if like me, you read it again and again, it starts to make sense, common sense.
To You, The Best!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 2009
The Puzzle
After discussing this idea with two of my private coaching students Craig and Paul, I thought it would make an interesting blog post for today:
Craig and I were analysing a scene from Fargo and Craig pointed out that this way of working was fun because it’s like a puzzle, in a separate class Paul commented that it may be a puzzle for the actor but the writer never intended it to be so. I would strongly agree with both of them.
Working on text is a puzzle. It should be approached with the same open-mindedness, curiosity and tenacity that one might face a logic puzzle, a riddle or even a crossword or Sudoku puzzle.
A puzzle is a challenge that is intended to be solved. Our puzzle is how to take the literary artefact of a play (dead wood with ink blotches) and transform it into the living, breathing performance of an actor.
The puzzle is a way to view scene work which actors often find difficult and irritating – it’s the bit they often find most frustrating. In classes, we make sure that our students have strong puzzle skills before they go on to work freely on scenes. Without them, they’re simply making shit up and that isn’t acting, it’s improvising on the theme of the play, which is disrespectful to the writer and the craft of acting.
Actually, this topic reminds me of something Mamet writes in Some Freaks, so I thought I’d share some of it with you:
In his chapter entitled ‘Stanislavsky and the Bearer Bonds’, Mamet discusses Stanislavsky’s Puzzle – a scene that Stanislavsky set his students to improvise, telling them that when they could analyse and perform that scene, then they would know how to act. Mamet says “What is the answer to Stanislavsky’s Bearer Bond problem? Stanislavsky said that when one knew how to correctly analyse and perform the problem, one would know how to act; so, then the question is, How Does One Act?’ You start with a conundrum. You have to find the answer yourself.
Great acting involves puzzle solving, faced with the conundrum, stay curious, don’t give up, don’t try to get around the problem. When you finally find a solution, you have the keys to the kingdom. Now the real work begins.
To You, The Best!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 2009
How Actor Training Disables the Actor
The trainee actor already has the tools that they need to become a professional performer. Most of the training should be targeted at reconnecting them to their common sense. Much of traditional actor training defies common sense and is aimed at pleasing someone other than an audience. The successful completion of a pointless exercise is met with approval. Confusion and perturbation is frowned upon. This is not an educational process, it is bullying. Submit to my will and I will approve of you.
So the actor learns to please, and does themselves a disservice at every turn. Their entire performance becomes about pleasing and approval. Most actors can’t tell whether they are doing well or not in their performances, and when they’ve years of people pleasing, they can’t stop doing it.
As their training continues, they stop listening to their impulses, they eschew spontaneity for ’same as last time’ which originally pleased the teacher or director and will never again, because that moment is gone and their frustration that you don’t have a ‘copy original’ button on your arse will be taken out on you as if you were meant to be a Xerox machine.
There are three stages to the training of the actor. Common Sense, Technique and Common Sense again. The first differing from the last only in so much as experience can teach. The conservatory is a place to develop and cultivate a form of common sense alongside the skills necessary for the actor to get work, do work and survive working with people who can’t do but still get work. Common sense is learned, it is learned through communal experience and comes into being through contact with groups or cultures that share commonalities. If actor’s training together accept this pleasing process, if they allow it, if they make concessions and approve it, they are turning this into their currency of common sense.
The trouble with training is that few things in life are one-size fits all. When training is conducted on this basis, it erases the individual. There is no Stanislavski system of acting, there was Stanislavski’s system of acting, which worked for him and the adjustments made by Michael Chekhov, Vakhtangov, Meyerhold, Adler, Meisner etc are just that, an offshoot from the original, it is Strasberg’s Method that students learn, it is not Stanislavski’s in any way. It may be influenced by Stanislavski, but that’s a matter of history and heritage.
Training asks you to give up your common sense in response for secret knowledge and ninja skills. When you realise that most of this knowledge is nonsense, you experience a crisis of confidence. You have some skills, but those that relate to the secret knowledge seem to require voodoo to work and that makes them unreliable and that kills your confidence in them and in yourself. You have two choices. Find your own way, or carry on the lie. There are a lot of liars out there, convincing everyone and fooling no one.
I am not anti-training. I’m suggesting a rethink. A model based on the individual. A model based on the student and not the teacher. A model in which common sense isn’t ignored, in which delusion isn’t required, in which prostrating yourself to power is NOT how you rise.
To You, The Best!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 2009
Abstract thoughts on Acting
I’m sitting in a quiet first class carriage of the train from Glasgow to Edinburgh, finishing making some additional notes for the masterclass I am giving for The Actor’s Kitchen at Screen Academy Scotland.
As I’ve been drinking tea and scribbling notes to myself, I was bombarded with some random and abstract thoughts and questions, so today’s blog is sharing those thoughts with you:
Some acting training is fun and some is useful, can it be both?
Talent+Technique+Tenacity=Success?
Graft+Study+Guts=Success?
Bad acting lacks basic logic but good acting is spontaneous, can it be logical and spontaneous at the same time?
Strasberg=Emotional Truth
Stanislavski=Theatrical Trufh
Meisner=Behavioural Truth
Unconscious competence makes some actors lousy teachers.
Whether you can act depends upon your definition of acting, but can we agree on what good acting is?
The actor’s gut instincts are gold dust.
Acting is like dating, don’t give it all away at once.
The body is your greatest tool and is willing to betray you at every turn.
Risk+Vulnerability+Tenacity?
You can’t fake vulnerability!
Would you let your scene partner come up and punch you in the gut? That’s the metaphor for an actor’s vulnerability. You need to let the other actors punch you hard in the gut. Do you have that within you?
Charlize Theron and Halle Berry have two things in common, Oscars and their constant desire to improve themselves, which lead them to take classes on their lunch breaks during filming, they went further, pushed harder, trained smarter, and they have the little gold status to prove it.
Are you a faker?
It takes really balls to tell the truth on stage/camera.
Happy News, my old friend Paul Birchard (Spooks, currently in the London in Inherit the Wind) has agreed to teach a screen acting/acting for camera masterclass for us as ACS in 2010, I’m so excited!
To You, The Best!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 2009
Mamet on Acting – Part 2
Well, it was Mamet’s birthday on 30th November (St.Andrew’s Day) so to celebrate, here’s Part 2 of our blog series of Mamet on Acting:
From an interview in 1994 with John Lahr:
LAHR: Character is?
MAMET “It’s action, as Aristotle said. That’s all that it is. Exactly what a person does. It’s not what they ‘think’, because we don’t know what they think. It’s not what they say, it’s what they do. Which is exactly the same we that understand a person in life, not by what they say, but by what they do.”
Here Mamet is expressing his Aristotelian belief that character is action, character is the sum of their characteristics, the things that they do, their actions. Character is Action.
Mamet on the basic task of the actor.
“What they should do is they should learn their lines, understand very, very simply what the character in the script is doing, and try to find a congruent action for themselves, which is physically capable of being done.”
Many people have taken this quote and tried to undo Mamet’s logic – oh is THIS all acting is, oh come on, Dave, surely that’s not true. He’s trying to simplify. It’s the opposite of what the other approaches do, which is to complicate the actor’s craft to a level of voodoo so convoluted that no one can actually do it, so they experience various shades of failure.
“Most of the Stanislavski system is a Practical Aesthetic for the actor, based on the Aristotelian idea of unity’.
Mamet believes that the Stanislavski created a practicable (capable of being put to use) aesthetic (a theory of art) which based on the principles that Aristotle expressed that drama featured unity of time, place and action. Mamet would of course, favour the idea of unity of action. One action, one scene.
(1986 – First time I could find in print Mamet mentioning the term ‘Practical Aesthetic’ – if anyone out there in Tinterwebland can correct me on this, I’d be very happy)
“What is necessary is intention, clarity and intention. And the rest is just… as I used to say to my students, the words are just gibberish. They really are. Not to the audience, but to the actor”. Mamet offers us his definition of what’s really necessary, a clarity of work, a focused specificity, not generality and understanding intention. To him, even as a playwright, to him the actor should consider the words as gibberish, first and foremost, it’s intention, and how we attempt to get what we want.
To You, The Best!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 2009
How Much Would You Invest In Your Acting Career?
Many actors don’t work as often as they’d like. But what do they do when they’re not working? Let’s face it, in the UK, the answer is – some kind of crappy part-time, temporary, casual, flexible job and little else.
But to those resting actors, here’s my advice. You should be investing in your acting career every day. You should be doing something to invest in your acting career every day.
Now here’s the thing, when I say invest, I mean time. How much time are you willing to invest in improving yourself? Many actors leave Drama School and never take any classes or try to improve their chances of getting work. But not in the USA, actors are always seeking the edge, the advantage and the actors that I know that do that, they get cast, they work, but when they are not working, they are still learning, acting, writing or training.
Imagine the athlete who never trained between competitions. We would laugh at them, because they would be ludicrously out of shape. But actors never give it a second thought…
Here’s my suggestion for ways that you can invest in your acting career on a daily basis. Below is a sample week; of course, it may not match your actual week, but stands as an example of The Actor’s Week.
Monday: Acting Classes
There are plenty of acting classes for professionals these days, you may need to travel to a city, but it’s worth it. Use this resting period as a way to learn a new approach or skill, improve your existing skills or simply keep the engine running.
Tuesday: Exercise
Love it or loathe it, we all NEED it, so whether you go for a swim, do Pilates or yoga, you need to stay fit and healthy in order to enjoy a long career as an actor. My tip is that three days per week of exercise is quite enough, but if you vary the type of exercise, you’re more likely to stick with it.
Wednesday: Be Among Your Peers
If you can be among actors as much as possible, it will help you to keep the motor running. It’s not just a chance to moan about not working or directors you can’t stand. London has the Actor’s Centre, Scotland will have one soon too, but it already has The Actor’s Kitchen (Edinburgh) and The Actor’s Bothy (Glasgow) as places to spend time with your peers and solidarity keeps you strong.
Thursday: 1-2-1 Acting Coaching
It’s difficult to prepare for auditions by yourself. Most drama schools don’t teach methodologies that can be applied to this situation, that’s why acting coaches can help the actor to stay on top form and prepare them for their auditions. Always look for an experienced and qualified acting coach, not someone who is looking to make a few quid outside of high school teaching hours or another out of work actor/director.
Friday: Check for Jobs
Your agent is busy, so you have to look for work too. So today you trawl the Internet, Casting Call Pro, Mandy, The Stage – well – anywhere, use this time to look at the jobs available and consider new directors or production companies in your city that you could send a CV and headshot.
Saturday: Watch a Film/Go to the Theatre
Support the industry, enjoy a good play or film, remind yourself why you act.
Sunday: Talking Out Loud
This is simple, costs nothing and is fun. Grab a stack of plays or poems and read aloud to yourself. Get used to different forms of language, rhythm, and how punctuation changes how something is spoken. Get used to speaking aloud, get used to enjoying it, no matter whether you’re faced with Shakespeare, Sheridan, Mamet, Duffy and Auden.
To You, The Best!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 2009
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