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Tongue Twister for T and TH sounds

You probably know by now that I love a good mouth exercise for teasing the tongue, limbering up the articulation and loosening any tension in the jaw.

If you take my classes, you might recognise this, it’s not a standard tongue twister but a great mouth warm up nonetheless.

I thought a thought but the thought I thought was not the thought I thought I thought.

I thought a thought but the thought that I thought was not the thought that I thought that I thought

I think I thought a thought that I thought but I think I thought that the thought that I think was not the thought that I think that I thought.

I think I thought that a thought that I thought was not the thought that I think that I thought though the thought that I thought was the thought that I thought and not the thought that I thought that I thought.

To You, The Best…

Mark

Tags: tongue exercise, Tongue Twisters for Actors

The Philosophy of Excellence

Remember, we cannot be consistently excellent, until we have learned and habituated those things that allow us to reveal our excellence.

The acquisition of new skills is never easy, often marked with pain and even moments of despair. It will always comes in its own sweet time and slower than you want.

In traditional jui-jitsu, there is only one belt. White. The White belt is envious of the black belt, because they wish for the coveted belt, but they do not see that it takes the blood, sweat and grime of time apprenticed that literally turns a piece of White material black with use. White belt to black. Only through time and hard graft.

It will be easier to give in, return to old bad habits and settle for mediocrity than staying the course. It will be easier to pack it all in, blame everything and anyone but not yourself.

Your character is measured by how your inner self struggles with the external forces of life.

Working towards the goal of excellence will tire you, may often reward you only to punish you when you think you’ve succeeded.

As Kipling wrote “if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.” Success and failure have no power over you that you do not give them. You do not succeed because you deserve it, nor do you fail for the same reason.

At the end of each encounter, each scene you must ask yourself honestly, did I prepare myself sufficient to the task? The lesson, good or bad springs from there.

Betrayal

Betrayal is a major theme in the works of playwright and screenwriter David Mamet. In Oleanna, both John and Carol betray the trust of the teacher-student relationship. In American Buffalo, Donnie betrays Bob by letting Teach physically abuse his protege. In Red Belt, the sincere and principled teacher is betrayed by the movie stars that manipulate him. There are many more examples in The Edge, The Cryptogram, The Spanish Prisoner, Mamet is a master on this theme.

In 1997 when True and False was published, Mamet inspired, angered and aroused debate with his heretical outbursts on the nature of acting.

Fast forward 10 years and Mamet seemed to betray all of the liberal artists in one go when he wrote a now infamous Village Voice article, explaining his conversion to Conservatism, well, lost some admirers I’m sure.

Tuesday 13th April 2010, Mamet’s latest treatise entitled ‘Theatre’ is published in the UK, seemingly betraying the aesthetic of the Atlantic Theater Company, and the students that devoured his logic for a more pragmatic approach to acting. He also gives his opinion on repetition and directors.

This is not a particularly well written book from many angles. Mamet recycles much of the logic on the craft of the writer and actor from Three Uses of the Knife, T&F and Bambi vs. Godzilla.

Some of it is wonderful and I did laugh out loud at a story of Mamet’s wife going to the theate with an aged Group legend Harold Clurman, but for the most part, it is a story of reversals, twists of logic, and betrayal. Much like his plays and films, of course.

Mamet even changed his attitude towards who can act, in the past, all an actor needed was will, common sense and bravery. Now, he’s selling us the ‘you’ve either got it or you haven’t.’

But doesn’t the teacher have the right to change his mind? Yes of course he does. But it’s his own ideas that he is now upending.

Is he doing this to provoke? Possibly.
To prevent us from resting on assumptions? Maybe.
Because his own experiences have changed his opinion, likely.

But where does that leave us, the students? It leaves us standing on our own two feet, ready to face the world without having Dave standing behind us as back up.

Developing your own practical aesthetic is more importantly than slavishly following someone else.

The Teacher had to allow us to walk unaided, to allow us to walk alone, with confidence and pride.

Thank you Dave, your betrayal has set us free.

Tags: david mamet's theatre, Practical Aesthetics

Ethics & Aesthetics for Actors: Part 2 – Aesthetics

With our work ethic established, we must have our developing working practices based on aesthetic principles. I worked many times as a director with an amazing minimalist designer called Carrie Southall. We grew up 40 miles from each other and met 200 miles away at university, and although we weren’t particularly friends until the last year of our degree, once we started working together, I knew we shared a basic aesthetic, one that projected our joint and own careers.

What does having an aesthetic mean? Technically it is a theory of art, but it can also be a shared perspective or paradigm for making art.

When you work with people with a shares aesthetic, you speak a secret language, one that excludes others and reinforces the group, but more than anything, it develops a practical working language with which to effectively communicate with your fellow artists. It becomes a short hand and in the acting business, we have long spoken many and confusingly similar tongues.

Every group must develop their own practical aesthetic. What must a practical aesthetic be?

Primarily PRACTICABLE, meaning capable of being put to use.

Otherwise it must enable and empower, it cannot do this if it creates confusion.

Stanislanski’s systematic approach was a practical aesthetic based on some simple ideas for truthful acting.

In my opinion, he took a wrong turn, but he had an aesthetic that he shared with MXAT. Just like Boley and Ouspenskaya shared their aesthetic with the Lab. Likewise Strasberg shared his vision of Stanislavski’s work, Adler upset the apple cart by sharing her version of that aesthetic.

An aesthetic is a way.

Tags: carrie southall, developing an aesthetic, mamet, Stanislavsky, Strasberg

Ethics & Aesthetics for Actors: Part 1 – Work Ethic

Success as an actor is a matter of work ethic and working aesthetics. This tricksy balancing act is what gives your average acting-shmo more than a fighting chance. Of course, there is a place for luck in this equation but without a solid, killer work ethic and a workable, practical aesthetic, you will not produce the conditions for or opportunity to capitalize upon that luck.

Today’s blog is about developing a killer work ethic and it starts with an Atlantic Theater Company-inpired guidelines for success in work and training. At Acting Coach Scotland, we call it, The Minimum, it is the least you can do to prepare for class, coaching, auditions or work.

There are 5 parts to The Minimum:

Be Prepared

Be Early

Wipe Your Feet at the Door

Don’t Complain

Help Your Fellow Actors

Let’s go through each one at a time:

1) Be prepared
Preparation is an essential minimum. Yet many actors adequately fail to prepare then blame everyone else, finally chastising themselves when their failure to prepare only prepared them to fail. This is the widest and deepest of the Minimums, because it includes taking responsibilty for everything that is within your control. In the blame culture in which we live, the dog ate my homework and other excuses are just failures to accept responsibilty. Be prepared, no excuses, remember that our industry is liberal and often indulgent but equally unforgiving in equal measure.

2) Be Early
No one ever thought badly of you for being early but being late is a crime in time based arts. If you are due to start work at nine, plan to arrive early, plan to overcome car trouble, rail strikes and snow on the line. Cultivate the habit of always being early and you will cultivate a professional working ethic. Don’t expect anyone to indulge your real but irrelevant excuses. Stella Adler used to make late students bring flowers, I’d prefer chocolate, but in the real world just be early. As the folks at the Poor School used to say: on time is ten minutes late.

3) Wipe your feet at the Door
What the heck? Well, what I mean is that you should leave it all at the door, your outside concerns, your bills, your finanicial or boyfriend troubles, leave it at the door. We will indulge you but no one really cares. Leave the drama for the room, leave your shit at the door.

4) Don’t Complain or Moan
What is the collective name for a group of actors, it might be a company, an ensemble, even a cast, but more likely it’s a moan, a moan of actors. If you don’t like it, do something about it or shut the fuck up and don’t bring the while group down with your pessimistic shit. This is an essential minimum, you have no entitlement to moan. Turn up, do your job, go home. If you don’t enjoy it, leave.

5) Help Your Fellow Actors
This might seem obvious, but we are a very self centred type of people. Cultivate in yourself the habit of helping each other, supporting each other, we’re in it together.

This is the Minimum. The Minimum. I would add to this:

Don’t leave your common sense at the door.

Do more than is expected of you.

Tomorrow’s blog will cover successful working aesthetics

To You, The Best

Mark Westbrook
Acting Coach Scotland

Tags: mamet, Practical Aesthetics

There Are No Heroes

I’ve been reading Mel Gordon’s excellent Stanislavsky in America, a sort of mirror edition of his wonderful The Stanislavsky Technique: Russia.

As a young man, I devoured the mix of history and exercises that filled this marvellous book and it took me years to stop taking it out of libraries and buy my own copy.

The new book is a similar mix of history lesson and practionercentric exercises. I’m still fascinated by the historical journey of systematic acting from it’s early conception to its post-Practical Aesthetics future.

But these days the exercises look ludicrous, they are examples of waste, they are examples of how incredibly gifted people tried in vain to convey the art and craft of acting from the inspirational to the aspirational, from the unconsciously competent to the unconsciously incompetent

As I read aloud these exercises I laughed, I felt guilty at laughing at the endeavour of my heroes but there was something ridiculous about it. This was the wisdom of those who believed the moon was made of cheese and the earth was flat. They were interesting enough diversions, perhaps even enjoyable activities but they were to acting what a halibut is to driving a bus.

This made me very sad. Have my great heroes spent all their years toiling, labouring under a fallacy? Very sadly I now believe they did.

These games are nonsense. They don’t work and they confuse the actor. What’s more, forcing actors to guiltily comply is tantamount to abuse. But they’re fun and so many actors enjoy doing them, although fucked if they know how to apply what they learned from all this fun and games.

We need less flimsy games based on flimsier acting theories, we need simple aesthetics, and killer working ethics.

Over the next two blog, I’ll outline what I mean by that.

Lastly, I want to leave you with something to ponder, why do so many people believe that they can act? Because the best actors make it look so fluid, so natural, so truthful that we don’t see any strings or joins, we see them in the words of Bobby Lewis just ‘walking and talking’ – and anyone can do that, right?

The Business of Show

They call it Show Business and you should never forget that for the most part, a business is what it is. If you’re labouring under subsidy in a non-commercial venture that doesn’t require profit to be shown, then good for you, do it for love, do it for art, do it for love of art…

But those of us that make our wage from a business should not expect anything less than a business in the way it behaves. Someone wants to profit from your labour and fuck you if you don’t turn a profit or can’t contribute to it at least.

So if you are in the Business of Show, remember to treat the work like any other business, and feel privileged and special when someone pays you well for what feels like a great time. Do this because there will be other times when you work with people that despise and disrespect your talents and your graft. And you need some sunshine days to remember when the black clouds appear.

But take this on the chin, sometimes a job is just a job and sometimes, it’s a joy and sometimes it’s a bitch and you are misunderstood and mistreated. It happens in any business, learn to live with it.

But strive to do business with like-minded, respectful, creative, industrious, and fun people. This will really help. Seek out the good guys, tolerate the bad ones for their pieces of silver.

And lastly, don’t moan. Everyone is in it together.

The Facts of Acting

One of the very basic things you should understand as an actor is how to read a script AS an actor. I’ve spoken often about the tools of script analysis because they are the essential way to unlock the material the actor is working on.

One of the fundamental elements of a complete script analysis is a recce of the facts, also known as the Given Circumstances. These are all the fixed things about a script, including everything the writer has given to you through their script that tells you something about the character and the situation they find themselves in.

Don’t be arrogant and only read your scene, read the entire script to immerse yourself in the given circumstances of the play.

Questions you should be able to answer include:

Who is in this scene?
What are the characters to each other?
What do we know about them?
Where and when does the scene occur?
What is your character literally doing in the scene?
What do other characters say and do to my character?
What do other characters say about my character?

This is your home work/ preparation on every script you do, the most basic stuff. Do it to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the script and your scenes.

Understanding the Given circumstances is essential but you cannot act upon them. They are facts and their role is to empower you to make smarter and more informed decisions as you progress. Think of it as a springboard to so that your creative choices are based upon the script and not pulled out of the ether to avoid embarrasment.

Now you have the facts, every script will surrender to you its given circumstances.

Simplicity

Last evening, Philip and Karli and I went to Tramway in Glasgow’s South Side to see the legendary director Peter Brook’s latest production called 11 & 12. It was a very simple story, simply told and the acting by the mulitinational ensemble was exquisitely effortless. Now don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the best production I’ve ever seen, but for once I didn’t want my money back because I had enjoyed it, it was simple.

Simplicity is very important and we forget that. As artists we want to be rich and complex, but simplicity is key. Too much to think about while we act leaves us vague and general. Instead we need a very basic thing, a path to follow, a thing to do, we might call it a task, an action, an intention, objective or motivation, something which at once summons us, something which calls us to action.

Action is pure, it is immediate and it is simple. Stillness is simple too.

Work to be simple, work to make difficult things simple to you, try to find simple things to do on stage or on the set, engage your mind and body in simple tasks or deeds.

It is never complex things which make your job difficult, it is always something fundamental or basic.

Problems in your work should always be approached simply, almost naively.

Start from the simplest point, understand the basics of the scene, work from them.

When you have no work, fill your days with simple things. This will keep you free to work.

Reject the complex in favour of the simple. Seek Occam’s Razor. Always the simple way.

Tags: 11 and 12, peter brook, tramway

Give Me Three Days

Give me just 3 days and I’ll show you everything you need to know about the foundations of an actor’s craft.

Wow, that’s some boast huh!? Yeah I admit it sounds almost unfeasible…

But from experience as an Acting Coach in Scotland, I’ve found it to be true, the foundations of acting take only three intensive days to learn, the rest is practise. I’m not talking about voice or movement, or any ancillary skill, I’m speaking of the craft of the actor.

Our craft takes only three days to learn, but perhaps a lifetime to master.

Acting is a learnable skill, just some take to it easier than others. The character of some individuals is better suited to performance and to the psychophysical expression of desire.

Once you have learned the basics, it is about habituating them until they become instinctive. A good technique is simple, streamlined, with all the fat cut away from it. But the best technique is one that dissolves into you because it has through practise become a good habit and then eventually effortless.

I can teach you the basics, but to take them and make them habit, that takes something in you, to make it work with ease. That’s your part of the deal.

If you can figure out from yesterday’s blog how to act for yourself, then you don’t need me, you don’t need expensive acting seminars from big name acting coaches, you don’t need 3 or 4 or 7 years in drama school, dear God, seven YEARS?

Better to spend that time working, earning a crust, not getting in debt. But the system says go to drama school, and then we will consider you legitimate, then ignores that entirely when it casts its next role plucked from nowhere with no training.

3 Days. Think It Over.

What Do I Do Now? A simple acting lesson

How does an actor know what to do on camera or stage? They take their answers from various places, the words of the script, stage directions, notes from the director and finally their spontaneous instincts, based in these former places.

So you learned your lines and you’re setting up for your first scene, how do you know how to behave? How do you know what to do?

And before the method/system lists come out, the answer is simple and basic.

1) Have something concrete to achieve on stage/screen from the first moment of the scene to the last. You have it, you the actor, you are truthful and real.

2) Watch what the other actor is doing and change, adapt your behaviour accordingly in order to successfully achieve 1).

Then speak the lines in ways that fulfil 1) & 2).

By having both a task and a reference point, you have more than enough to keep you occupied and in action/acting.
Get out of your head, focus on your target and the goal that you want from them.

Speak clearly, don’t mumble, don’t forget your common sense, stop yakking and get on with it!

Tags: basics of acting

Vulnerability

One of the biggest problems facing the actor is producing a truthful response. Most actors can live truthfully on stage and screen when they have the right tools, but re-action, and not action is the true test.

A good actor must be able to reveal themselves to the audience and that takes courage. Vulnerability is not a comfortable place, all our old defenses kick in, we become cerebral, we raise our shields, we erect personal barriers to protect ourselves against danger.

But the actor must not fear this danger. They must accept a simple truth, actors do in public what others do in private and to do this requires that you allow yourself to be hurt in the moment, to be pushed to places you wouldn’t normally go.

Letting go and allowing yourself to be vulnerable, requires that you trust yourself, your director and the other actors.

Re-acting means learning to take another actor’s words and actions personally, without pretending they are the 12th Duke of Devonshire. React to what the other actor is actually doing and not the character and with vulnerability, you will react with truth in the moment.