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Reading the Scene

I am constantly surprised by how few actors can actually read a scene.  I mean, they can literally go through the words, and they can tell me what happens.  But when it comes to turning the conversation into something they can act upon, the dialogue with them turns into a gloopy soup of generalisms and stuff they made up.  What’s the trouble? Well, of course, the first part is that reading a scene for an actor, is not just the task of reading it that the lay person would undertake.  Instead, the actor must learn how to mine the script for action, for something to do, not just a way to say the line, not just to get angry on this or that line, but how to bring the scene to life, how to act it.  Complete beginners and experienced actors can have the same trouble if no one takes the time to teach them the fundamental skills of how to read a scene.  Learning to read it, to dissect it for action, that’s the skills we’re talking about.  You can’t learn that in a university, discussing themes and philsophies of performance, you may learn it at a theatre school, but often they teach you how to think about the scene, things to consider, mental or emotional issues, which again, do not relate to the action of the scene, the thing that the actor must pull from amongst the carefully written words.

When an actor reads a page of script, whether they realise it or not, they have one simple question.  What am I supposed to DO here?  This what must be answered when you read your script, this is the most important question of all.  As an actor, you must inhabit the behaviour of a fictional character and speak words as if they were initiated by you, without the third party of the writer.  To do this, you need to understand what makes the character take action, then you must find a way to take the same action with conviction and purpose.

But it’s not an easy task, I confess, had I not the tools to examine a script for action, I may be as lost as the next person, and so many then choose the path of ‘creative artist’, the path of ‘making shit up’, because that’s much easier than actually dealing with what’s in front of you.  Read the scene, understand it.  Then you will be able to answer that most important of questions:  What should I DO here?

To You, The Best!

Mark Westbrook
Senior Acting Coach
ACTING COACH SCOTLAND


Like What You Read? Want to Read More? Mark's eBook is available here
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 2011

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Strasberg’s Notes: Still Not Convinced

In The Lee Strasberg Notes, Lola Cohen attempts to show us more of Strasberg, master of method. I was told recently by a method actor that if I read this book, I would know just how wrong I was about method acting.

Having read everything published about or by Strasberg, I read this book vigorously, ready to have my mind changed, ready to be shown the true master as so many acting revisionists have emailed me about.

Yet, I see that this is the same Strasberg that I see in his own book A Dream of Passion, and that I have not misunderstood him at all, we just don’t agree about what makes good acting happen.

Let’s take a short extract as an example:

“the art of acting is, first, the creation of character, not the reading of the line or the playing of the scene. Your goal is to characterise on a level that is completely convincing, and this work on the character is separate from the work on the play. The character comes alive if you believe in what you’re doing.’ (Strasberg in Cohen, 2010:43)

At the risk of some other famous pompous windbag method actor talking down at me again, let me say this:

I do not agree with one word of that quote. I actively disagree with it?

Why?

Because it is based on a set of presumptions about acting that are spoken as if they were commandments, but really, they are nothing more than beliefs and opinions.

Acting is not firstly about character, it is precisely about the playing of the scene. For what else is there to do on stage or screen?

Our goal is to be truthful to our audience, to convince them of our sincerity, and to do nothing to spoil their involvement in the story.

I would suggest that work that is not expressly done on the play is ‘something other than useful’ and that Strasberg’s focus on this simply perpetuates his master Stanislavsky’s mistake about the precise concerns of the actor’s job.

The character comes alive when the audience suspend their disbelief and accept what they see as true.

Week in and week out at our studio in Glasgow, we see moving, truthful, convincing performances by our students, none of whom have bought into the need for any of these things.

This IS a historically interesting book, a great deal of extra detail is now available, i enjoyed reading it, even if I can’t agree with 90% of it.

Tags: Method Acting, the strasberg notebooks

Winter’s Bone

I am not fond, nor do I make a practice of reviewing on this blog.  My role as a coach is to support, critique and develop the skills of the actor, not to tell you what I like and dislike with regard to art in content or form.

Nonetheless, having spent the afternoon watching this film in the cinema, I wanted to share my opinion of it as an example to which we can all aspire.  The film in question is Winter’s Bone, an unflinching tale of a teenage girl, searching for her daddy in the dangerous social terrain of the Ozarks.  The lead in this picture playing Ree Dolly is Jennifer Lawrence who is quite literally one of the most natural, truthful, organic and unpretentious performers that I have ever witnessed.  The film, and her performance dripped with authenticity.  For such a young actress, to tap into the ease with which she performed her role was very special indeed.

Lawrence has never had a drama or an acting lesson and it shows.  She is not filled with the self doubt of the trained actor, she does not feel the need to patronise us by painting her performance for us, she is simply instinctive, spontaneous, and entirely at ease with herself on camera.  Lawrence is no new-comer, yet, I imagine when Oscar comes around, she will be probably be left behind as the trail of glitterati actors are worshiped for their run-o-the-mill performances.

There is a great scene in which Ree goes to talk to an army recruiter.  I knew immediately that the man was really a soldier and the credits confirm this.  How was I so sure? Because AGAIN, his performance did not reek of someone trying to think for the audience.  He was just truthful.

This is what I desire to see on stage and screen.  But when I go to the theatre, most of the time, I see that the actors do not trust the audience, they have to do the work for them, in case they can’t join the dots for themselves.  Perhaps this is partially society’s fault for the ‘dumbing down’ effect, but… something tells me that when actors like Lawrence grace our screens, we get to see a little bit of perfection and we do not need to be spoon-fed.

This is in contrast to watching 30 minutes of the UK-teen soap Hollyoaks this week, where the acting criteria seems to be ‘must look fit’ and ‘can act without looking at camera’.  The acting is entirely patronising, pantomime style and ridiculous.  It makes me embarrassed for the actors when I watch it.

My tip for one of the finest performances that you will see this year is Jenny Lawrence in Winter’s Bone.  You might not like the film, you might not like the story, but Lawrence’s performance is undeniable.

The copyright for the picture used in this blog is presumed to belong to the film company Roadside Attractions, I will without qualm remove it if anyone believes that I am using this image in a way that does not constitute fair usage under British law.

To You, The Best!

Mark Westbrook
Senior Acting Coach
ACTING COACH SCOTLAND


Like What You Read? Want to Read More? Mark's eBook is available here
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 2011

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Tags: Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone

Do not Waste It!

My wife and I recently visited my hometown on the occasion of my Mother’s 60th birthday, after the meal we went to my cousin’s house and sat talking with my uncle, a man who missed our wedding because he was fishing.

He sat and talked about his engineering business, how he built it up with his own sweat, employed 20 people, worked many long hours, made sacrifices. Then, without any drama, he told us all ‘I hated it. I hated engineering, I hated all of it’.

Outside of the Army (he was a tank driver for National Service) he had spent most of his life working a job he loathed, running a company he hated, to provide for his wife and daughter.

Now I understand why fishing is still so important to my uncle, it had clearly been a passionate vocation for him and has been his respite from a job that he loathed.

This is what I want to say to you. Do not spend your life like my uncle doing something you hate. Don’t waste any time doing something you hate.

Make the change today. Do what you love, be what you want to be. Do it today.

Within your own Character

From the airport in Colombo, Sri Lanka…

You bring certain facets of your personality to every role you play, acting in the end is not becoming someone else but revealing, augmenting or hiding certain aspects of your own character.

Your character leaks out of every performance. This is not to say that is necessarily recognizable as you, many times your closest friends and family will compliment your work by suggesting that you were in fact transformed.

This transformation occurs when your understanding of the script asks that you behave in certain ways, these ways do not conform to the personality traits or characteristics that your loved ones recognize in you.

The secret to the appearance of transformation is the transformation of your behaviour.

For this reason, the actor must be prepared to do anything required by the scene to adapt their behaviour to the requirements of the moment.

You do not need to have killed someone to have experienced the desire to destroy something and it is within your capacity to damage, spoil, batter and annihilate at will.

Of course, the more richly you have lived, the more experience you have, the more you can say yes, I have performed such actions myself.

But if you do not have such experiences? That is where practicing your actions in classes or rehearsal or even at home will come into play.

Every act of character is potentially within your own character . You must work to explore how to act upon it at your will.

Tags: acting the character

Breaking with Tradition

The old ways, the traditional ways are the foundations on which we build. For this reason, we respect them as the building blocks of development but we do not cling to them like the ten commandments.

When we make a break with tradition, when we move away from Stanislavski, when we declare that Strasberg is no longer useful to us, we are parting company with the past and building a future for actors. Of course as soon as we do this, we are criticised for misunderstanding our traditional masters and chastised for our lack of respect. It is seen as heresy, idiocy, ignorance or just plain wrong.

I can understand this. I once fiercely defended my past masters against any critic, ready to debate or insult those who opposed the path of acting I had studied for ten years.

The actor that really wants to find truthful acting cannot find it inside someone else’s forms. There was no successful Stanislavski trained actor better than Konstantin himself. And so naturally, his best students changed and developed what he taught them into their own methods.

The best and most effective style of acting is no style, no method, no technique. All the most successful actors, sports people, surgeons, poets, painters, boxers have moved beyond style and technique to a formlessness.

That does not mean that the beginner should begin with no technique, they must be given building blocks. They cannot begin at the end. And so we have a rudimentary training system to teach the skills of the actor to the student.

My best work as a coach begins with a trained actor and ends by cutting through their existing training to the heart of the actor’s truthful performance. This does not require unlearning, just courage.

Mastery for the actor comes when who you are and what you do are seamlessly joined together. This is unique to you and takes many years to achieve.

But this is your goal as you progress, not greater commitment to form, but seamless, invisible action.

Uncertainty

At times in our life, and our career we have moments of serious uncertainty. We doubt ourselves, we doubt our abilities and we often doubt our place in this crazy business called Show.

If you feel this way, you are not alone. Artists of all kinds tend to experience the crisis of uncertainty from time to time, even the greatest, and sometimes with severely crippling effects.

But you need to know something. Uncertainty is just a state of mind, it is not real. We can fuck up, we can fail, we can do a bad job, fail to click with a team, it can all go to hell, and you know what? You just need to start again, even if that means right from the start.

We are destined to do this thing, this arts thing, this acting thing. To us, it’s not just some fun thing to do, but the thing that makes us feel replete. No person, no thing, no experience can replace this for us. We often try to move away from, Lord, I’ve tried, but it keeps coming back.

And when you screw up, or things don’t go your way, or you lose faith in yourself, you will be engulfed with a wave of uncertainty.

Pick yourself up. Dust yourself off. And start all over again. That’s the lesson for today, life, work, all of it, it will throw some serious shit our way, you really must accept it as part of the whole shebang, and…

Pick yourself up….etc.

Anyways, I’m probably riding an elephant or something in Sri Lanka right now so….

Until next time

To You, The Best

Mark

The State of Play

I am afraid to admit that the standard of acting in my adopted country is very poor. The critics seem easy pleased by competent performances that do not go a scratch deep. There is no craft, and the schools and colleges of drama do little to develop a craft, just stick to ancient acting principles, postmodern ideologies and Eastern arts, all taught in a way that is similar to throwing spaghetti bolognaise at the wall, the good bit isn’t necessarily the bit that sticks!

At present, as before, the UK prides itself on it’s acting talent, but there are probably only ten people that can actually tell you how to do it. Unlike other countries, the UK has no association to technique or practise. Russia had Stanislavski, MChekhov, Vakhtangov, Meyerhold and many others.

It’s as if actors are born and not developed which is horseshit.

But my point is the truth. On stage, I have so rarely seen organic, truthful acting, recently, I only see mugging, mumbling, performing and pantomime.

It makes me so sad, because none ofu this grabs you by the gut, it is fake, false, perhaps engaging the cerebra but never the viscera.

And that’s the goal, not to stimulate thought, that’s the academic model of good acting, but to stimulate the gut, to excite the senses.

Be honest how many times has this happened? Less than 5 in your life? Occasionally, and when it does, it’s like magic!

Right now, we are suffering, our storytelling is weak and our acting mostly fraudulent, false, mechanical.

So what’s to be done about it?

The Layers of Performance

Forgive my awful handwriting, but I was inspired and wanted to write it down authentically…

At the base layer of an actor’s performance is the story of the play/screenplay, entwined with the plot structure. This provides the macro level direction to the actor’s performance, the spine of the performance.

The next level is skeleton of the performance, which is created as a score of (psychophysical) essential action, this is analysed and formed on the strength of our analysis. It provides a score, just like a musical score, which the actors can ‘play’ just like notes. Actions are not just plain activities, they are psychologically imbued, motivated actions, living objectives, not just something you want, but the combination of want and action, action with intention.

At the next layer, we must take action and practice accomplishing that action/intention. Working off your scene partners. Using them as the fuel for your scene. This gives us a chance to embody the bones of the scene.

At the next level we add the word, unadulterated, let it happen and get out of it’s way. Go for your action, let the words work for you.

Then there’s the director shaping the performance. Hopefully, without spoiling.

Lastly, there’s the moment, the seat of immediacy, the final guide to how you should behave. Here is something you can’t rehearse, you can practice, we prepare, as Mamet says, to improvise.

Here in the spontaneous moment, is the test of your preparation.

To You, The Best!

Mark Westbrook
Senior Acting Coach
ACTING COACH SCOTLAND


Like What You Read? Want to Read More? Mark's eBook is available here
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 2011

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Tags: layers of performance