The Acting Blog

Too often I come across aspiring actors who just don’t seem to be all there and make excuses like the ones you point out. Surely if acting was really their passion they wouldn’t want to miss out on an audition, or class or anything that could perfect their technique or develop their knowledge of the profession.

Hello

relating this post to a previous one you asked why people strive in later ages to fullfild a life-long dream to be an actor (as naive as this might seem), there is the same one answer: desire. Or longing. Or an urge to do theatre, to act, to…

Some studies tell us that all children are born with it (a longing to do, see, engage, make theatre) but it goes away if not propperly stimulated.

“It” can make of us a great audience or an eagger actor, or “It” can just be taken from us for good.

The point being: those who go to your classes seeking a long past feeling, they are somewhat right; the people that tell you “sorry, tonight won´t be able to make the class/rehearsal” they are fooling themselves.

This longing is “It”. “It” makes us wait, endure, crave, fight, read, practice, wait some more, laught at the sight (not of danger but) of the stage and – let´s face it – beeing there, in the center of the world, i.e. the attention, like a child.

p.s. the Meyerhold´s Biomechanics Master Gennadi Bogdanov, when confronted once with a girl telling him she was late due to her legs aching from the (strenuous) exercice the group did the previous day, he answered:
- that´s a personal problem. (- could be translated as: I don´t give a damm)

As actors, there are thing we control and things we don´t (Declan Donnellan dixit in that wonderfull book The Actor and the Target, very similar to Mamet´s views, by the way…).

What we can control can not be called upon to take responsability on what we are afriad to engage because:
a) that´s a personal problema and no one needs/wants/cares to know
b) if the problem is too important then theatre/acting is not – and you don´t have “it”, please go home.

Nuno

You’re a wise man Nuno, I hope I get to meet you some day.

Hi Mark, thanks for this blog post – so true.

Just to add my two cents (and to some extent related to Nuno’s comment): the end-result of our performances as actors depend at least in some part on other people (e.g. playwrights/screenwriters, directors, fellow actors etc.) – and other peoples’ poor work unfortunately makes for a wonderful excuse for us actors.

The result is that when we feel the material isn’t as good as it could be, or the director is disorganised etc. we cease to do the very best we can, and say to ourselves that due to the circumstances the end-result was always going to be shabby anyway and there’s no point in investing all that energy and time to get our bit of the puzzle right. We’ll do our best when the big break comes. And of course, the big break tends not to come if we keep thinking like that, it goes to those who are prepared to do their very best with every single opportunity.

I’ve written a blog post about this particular type of excuse and how to deal with it, you can find it at http://www.alexaispas.com/?p=103 in case you’ve got time to check it out. See you in class!

Thanks a lot for such a compliment Mark, but in fact we´re dealing with the same problems (lack of culture, ethics, a serious failing of know-how or of learning from theatre history…).

But here (Portugal)you can imagine things are a bit more – let´s say delayed… No readings, no trainings, not much around here, and it´s troubling.

So your blog, posts, pratctices and references have been a great joy and source of thought.

Cheers,
Nuno