The Acting Blog

What an interesting read! It’s even more interesting to consider who is a ‘gatekeeper’ or not – something I never would have considered.

This article very much reminds me of a moment when I was an intern in a casting office and my colleague jokingly said ‘Let Olivia go through the new CVs and she can decide who goes in the bin or not!’ In essence we were joking about whose career to throw away, which was a bit surreal! Very much a ‘gatekeepers’ job?

And I suppose the extension of that particular joke is that MOST of the people making the decisions about an actor’s career and future, haven’t acted for a single second of their entire lives, and many wouldn’t know beautiful, truthful acting if it bit them on the bum.

Quite, most ‘gatekeepers’ in charge are just buisnesses caring more for the marketing side of the industry. Think producers and agencies.

Great article! I found this one extremely encouraging, especially since there’s another philosophy floating around that says that no amount of hard work can help you if you haven’t got “it.” Very daunting thing to hear from so-called experts. I think you’re right on the money here though. I hope to work with more people like you and Olivia in the future.

Hi Mark,

This is my favourite blog post from Acting Blog. As it so happens, what you’re saying about bringing the gates tumbling down and overcoming the gatekeepers fits in really well with a project I’m working on right now.

Just to add my two cents worth to the other aspect of this post, which talks about not giving up – you mostly talk about the importance of ‘obsession’, ‘character’, and ‘will’ for keeping going even despite countless rejections, and of course I agree with that. But for me, the most important thing is structuring one’s life in such a way that it becomes easier on a day-to-day basis to act consistently with our long-term goal than to ditch it when other things take over (I think you might have referred to it briefly as ‘the capacity to organise oneself’ sufficiently). Such as when trying to diet, getting rid of all the junk food in your closet so the only way to get junk food is to walk to the shops.

For an actor, this kind of structure could include signing up to acting classes – so you feel bad about having to explain your absence and you turn up even on days when you don’t feel like it; or scheduling acting workouts with other actors etc. With this kind of structure in place, actors can then do what K A Ericsson and others call ‘deliberate practice’, i.e. a series of repetitive tasks where results can be improved upon through continuous feedback.

For example, the ‘repetition’ exercise you do with us in class is a perfect example of deliberate practice – it is a repetitive task (as the name suggests) where its results can be improved upon through you (as the acting coach) providing us with feedback every time. And of course, the class acts as a ’structure’ that pushes us to do that exercise every week (at least), regardless whether we feel like doing it or have the willpower or strenght of character to keep doing it.

Lots of thanks for this blog post, and see you in class

Hello,

seems to me an item is missing in this reflexion on the gatekeepers (nice epitet): why they and with what criteria do they keep the gates closed?

The late french sociologist Pierre Bourdieu tells us of a theory that can explain why some are “chosen”: institutions (such as theatre companies, drama schools, universities…) tend to perpetuate themselves at their own image.

One is chosen because is similar to the chooser (at the eyes of this one). That can bring some light on why we ourselves were chosen in the past to do this and not that.

For (and were is the weekspot of your post) we in fact have been chosen by some gatekeepers, so they are not an faceless enemy, they are what we are – aiming at survival.