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
4 Comments to Glasgow Acting Coach on…The Death of Method Acting…
Thank you!
I love the term methodists…it is so apt for those believers!
“Try acting dear boy” Olivier to Hoffman ( I believe)
joseph mancuso19/12/2009
for someone who is so influenced by meisner, one would think that you knew that he was trained by strasberg. and strasberg himself said that the only reason that sandy did not understand sense memory was that he (sandy) was the most sensitve actor (more than pacino, deniro, dean, monroe, cobb, stanley….) he had ever come across. sandy didnt really need sense memory but most actors arent sandy meisner. concentrate on your own work rather than being dismissive of the work that has proven to be successful for so many actors. that being said, there are many actors/teachers, in fact most, who are working in a way in which they call “the method” but is actually quite a bit of bullshit. if you want to truly understand the method, speak to David Gideon instead of dismissing the “method” as you’ve come to know it. you’ll learn something and gain some perspective rather than just “hating” on something you actually dont understand.
Thanks for you contribution Joseph.
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