The Acting Blog

The Craft of the Actor

It’s a new year, a fresh start… and it’s time to start taking a fresh look at your profession.

Despite living in a quick-fix world, our profession does not support this kind of culture.  The profession of the actor is one of the apprentice and one of the craftsm’n.  The craft cannot be taught in a few minutes, a few hours, weeks or even months.  Whilst training may only take a limited amount of time,the craft of the actor requires the acquirement of skill, expertise, knowledge and experience which takes the actor from the position of an apprentice – someone learning on the job, to the position of master craftsm’n.  To learn the craft of the actor takes a significant amount of time, it needs both professional and life experience.

The craft of the actor is learnable.  It is a discovering and developing a set of skills that will eventually allow you to effortlessly perform a task, just like the craftsm’n.  Of course, a knack for your craft will probably help you to move faster in your learning at the beginning of your career, but acceleration will eventually slow right down.  In the end, it’s a marathon and not a sprint.  Craft requires constant work and unfortunately since most actors are out of work a lot of the time, they cannot get enough time on the job in order that they properly learn the craft of acting sufficiently.

Too quickly come the shortcuts, the basics are not well-learned, the technique still feels awkward, stiff and difficult to apply.   You must spend your years working on the associated skills and knowledge of the craft, but it will take much longer to gain mastery of language, action, nuance and your own vulnerability.  It takes years to learn to remove the layers of self-protection, self-doubt, self-conscious, to get out of your own way significantly enough that you can reveal yourself to the role and to the audience.  That’s the greatest challenge of the actor’s craft, not to create a clever character, or out-think the writer, but to reveal youself, without barriers.  That’s the real craft of the actor.

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

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