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How Many of These Plays Have You Read?

We all need to read more. Most auditionees at drama school have barely scratched the surface of dramatic literature when they apply. Many actors have not gained a strong appreciation of dramatic literature either. If you’re an actor, you’ve got to fall in love with plays and scripts. I’ve included some great plays for you to read below, I might have mentioned some before, but it can’t hurt.

Take a look at the list below. How many have you read?

TOP BRITISH PLAYS

• School for Scandal by R. B. Sheridan
• Volpone by Ben Jonson
• Hamlet/A Midsummer Nights Dream by William Shakespeare
• The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter
• The Positive Hour by April de Angelis
• After the End by Dennis Kelly
• Blasted by Sarah Kane
• Black Watch by Gregory Burke
• Spoonface Steinberg by Lee Hall
• Blackbird by David Harrower
• The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union by David Greig

TOP AMERICAN PLAYS

• Oleanna by David Mamet
• How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel
• The Mercy Seat by Neil Labute
• Doubt by Patrick Shanley
• A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller
• Zoo Story by Edward Albee
• Awake and Sing! by Clifford Odets
• Buried Child by Sam Shepard
• Angels in America Parts 1 & 2 by Tony Kushner

TOP CLASSICAL EUROPEAN PLAYS

• A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen (Norway)
• Miss Julie by August Strindberg (Sweden)
• Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco (Romania)
• The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht (Germany)
• Tartuffe by Moliere (France)
• Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca (Spain)
• Oedipus Rex (really classical! Greece)
• Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (not technically European but if it’s in the song contest – Russia)

Let’s add another:

Streetcar Named Desire – Tennessee Willliams (thanks Price)

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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Pass On – a Poem by Michael Lee

I don’t often post videos, or things that aren’t related specifically to acting.  But I felt so moved by this, I had to share it.

I have included the text of the poem below.  It might make a good monologue for someone too.

Pass On

Pass On

When searching for the lost remember 8 things.

1.
We are vessels. We are circuit boards
swallowing the electricity of life upon birth.
It wheels through us creating every moment,
the pulse of a story, the soft hums of labor and love.
In our last moment it will come rushing
from our chests and be given back to the wind.
When we die. We go everywhere.

2.
Newton said energy is neither created nor destroyed.
In the halls of my middle school I can still hear
my friend Stephen singing his favorite song.
In the gymnasium I can still hear
the way he dribbled that basketball like it was a mallet
and the earth was a xylophone.
With an ear to the Atlantic I can hear
the Titanic’s band playing her to sleep,
Music. Wind. Music. Wind.

3.
The day my grandfather passed away there was the strongest wind,
I could feel his gentle hands blowing away from me.
I knew then they were off to find someone
who needed them more than I did.
On average 1.8 people on earth die every second.
There is always a gust of wind somewhere.

4.
The day Stephen was murdered
everything that made us love him rushed from his knife wounds
as though his chest were an auditorium
his life an audience leaving single file.
Every ounce of him has been
wrapping around this world in a windstorm
I have been looking for him for 9 years.

5.
Our bodies are nothing more than hosts to a collection of brilliant things.
When someone dies I do not weep over polaroids or belongings,
I begin to look for the lightning that has left them,
I feel out the strongest breeze and take off running.

6.
After 9 years I found Stephen.
I passed a basketball court in Boston
the point guard dribbled like he had a stadium roaring in his palms
Wilt Chamberlain pumping in his feet,
his hands flashing like x-rays,
a cross-over, a wrap-around
rewinding, turn-tables cracking open,
camera-men turn flash bulbs to fireworks.
Seven games and he never missed a shot,
his hands were luminous.
Pulsing. Pulsing.
I asked him how long he’d been playing,
he said nine 9 years

7.
The theory of six degrees of separation
was never meant to show how many people we can find,
it was a set of directions for how to find the people we have lost.

I found your voice Stephen,
found it in a young boy in Michigan who was always singing,
his lungs flapping like sails
I found your smile in Australia,
a young girls teeth shining like the opera house in your neck,
I saw your one true love come to life on the asphalt of Boston.

8.
We are not created or destroyed,
we are constantly transferred, shifted and renewed.
Everything we are is given to us.
Death does not come when a body is too exhausted to live
Death comes, because the brilliance inside us can only be contained for so long.
We do not die. We pass on, pass on the lightning burning through our throats.
when you leave me I will not cry for you
I will run into the strongest wind I can find
and welcome you home.

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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Habitual Mannerisms

You are at your best, your most authentic as an actor when you are most yourself. That’s living truthfully.

But under the pressure of performance, we often damage our work as the pressure finds its way out in the form of habitual mannerisms. I have spent many years watching actors and people that want to be actors and they all demonstrate their tension in the same way. I have created a list so that you can help identify your own displays of tension and eradicate them.

1) Penguining (Flapping your arms at your sides.)
2) Waitressing (Arms out in front of you in a V shape, like a waiter carrying plates)
3) The Forklift (as above but straight out like a forklift)
4) Craning (two actors leaning in towards each other)
5) Giraffing (body standing still head leaning forwards)
6) Tug of War (two actors tugging at each other or an object from each side)
7) Theatre of Ants (looking up at the ceiling) Theatre of Giants (looking down at the floor)
9) The Hollyoaks Lean (as 4 but with shouting)
10) Tissuing (playing/fiddling with any object or prop)
11) Hands in Pockets
12) Gasping (expelling air through the mouth)
13) Huffing (sighing through the mouth or nose)
14) Trotting/Mr Tumness (tiny steps forwards, backwards etc)
15) Eye Lock (every scene eye to eye)

Finally, if you do something once or twice, it’s part of your performance, if you do something habitually out of discomfort or self-consciousness, it’s a problem.

To You, the Best!

Mark

Tags: bad habits actors have, Habitual mannerisms

Pride

The theatre in Britain has always been a matter of pride.  We’ve always been proud of the quality and diversity of the theatre, we won’t quite admit it’s nothing compared to the Germans, but we sort of feel like we invented it, and despite the Greeks and all that stuff, since we have Shakespeare, we sort of feel like we do.

In Australia, going to the theatre in a city like Sydney is expensive.  Even on a student ticket, you’ll be paying quite a lot of money.  It’s the same with London, and New York too.  But I slightly despair at the ticketing of events outside the capitals.  I was recently invited to a theatre event in Glasgow, I was told the ticket was £3.

Now while on the one hand, it’s wonderful that the ticket is so cheap, on the other hand, the cheap ticket does nothing at all for me, it makes me consider the value of something that is sold for just £3.  Don’t we have any pride?  Going to the mainstream theatre is still reasonably expensive here, but generally only for touring productions.  Local work tends to be a couple of quid, and that intrinsically reflects how we feel about the quality.

Does any other business sell itself so cheaply?  £3/£5, you can’t get into the cinema for less than £9 these days.  What are we saying about the value of live performance and how we value it?

Where’s our pride?  On one hand, if you live in Derry, you’re going to pay £19 to see an amateur musical at the local main theatre, here in Glasgow, you can get away with paying a pittance.  I’m not saying that art shouldn’t be accessible, but I am saying it should be value itself differently.

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: what is theatre worth?

2+2=Zebra

I believe common sense and I believe in pragmatism. But I recognise that in the arts quite often 2+2 equals zebra.

What I mean is that nothing is as simple as a mathematical equation when it comes to acting. In acting like in life there are endless contradictions. Good acting practice or good acting coaching is not about removing these contradictions but about becoming comfortable with them.

Let me give you an example:

I might say to a student the most important thing right now is to go after your task then within a few breaths, I might suggest using a quote from Meisner that “that which hinders your task is your task”.

How do you know which is right? Is the coach contradicting himself? Very possibly, many acting teachers say a lot of things…

But these contradictions are not for you to resolve but for you to work with.

For instance, the contradiction within the task occurs because a human interaction is a two way street. While you must go after your task throughout the entire scene, if you do not deal with the truth of the moment, if we don’t acknowledge our scene partner’s behaviour, we cannot adjust our strategy and achieve the task.

The two way street requires different ways to practice. So As-Iffing practises one way and ADRA the other. Finding a solution to the contradiction is part of my job.

While it seems like a contradiction it’s actually common sense. It’s possible to have two goals and switch between them.

Just like in repetition, you want to be spontaneous and blurty, to subvert the intelligent reaction and go with the gut, but at the same time there are rules to play by.

And if these two ideas of total instinctiveness and playing by the rules seem like a contradiction, well they are, but we still need to solve that conundrum.

Our craft of acting has many contradictions, as you explore them they will test you but just because you are tested, doesn’t mean something is wrong.

Stick with it.

Tags: Acting, Acting Technique

Getting to Know Shakespeare

Now that my e/book Truth in Action is away to the printers, my attention turns back to my original book Approaching Shakespeare.  Shakespeare is something special to me, not just because we’re supposed to love him, but because he is truly a man for all times.  His thoughts and poetry stretch out in time to touch us even now, there is barely a situation you can experience, that Shakespeare has not covered in his plays or poetry.  And on the topic of love, (today is Valentine’s Day after all) then he is a master.  Go one further and we have the whole Shakespeare authorship debate (please note the Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust were invited to take part in this debate on my blog, but while anti-Stratfordians were happy to comment, the SBT were… absent.  Oh well, why would they want to reach an extra 22,000 people?)

At the moment on Sky Arts 2, we’re getting In Love with Shakespeare, a short 5-minute piece where an actor does their favourite bit of Shakespeare.  It’s a neat idea, not too long, snappy and impressive.  Worth a watch if you have Sky Arts.

But actually, regardless of their lack of interaction (they were again invited to talk more about their course via this blog, but they ignored the email)  the Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust have produced TWO really wonderful things.  So if you love Shakespeare, or if he’s a mystery and you’d love to get to know him properly, then I would STRONGLY recommend these resources.

The first is Shakespeare Bites Back – a totally FREE PDF eBook about the Shakespeare Authorship debate, written by Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson.  It’s written by two world renowned experts on Shakespeare and will enlighten about the authorship debate.  Didn’t you know that some bonkers folk think Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare? Well, it’s a fascinating and engaging read, so ahead and give it a blast, you’ll enjoy it.

But for a much more comprehensive love affair with Shakespeare,  you can take a free course on Shakespeare online via the Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust.  They’ve called it Getting to Know Shakespeare and it’s a set of documents, videos, pictures and audio files that you can actually work your way through.  It’s full of fascinating stuff for actors, not just stuffy facts of academic debates, but the stuff of actually loving to PERFORM Shakespeare and includes many interviews with actors.  One by Abigail Rokison, an actress and academic is absolutely wonderful and I’m proud to say that I worked with Abigail long ago when she was just out of Drama School and before she was a Cambridge scholar.  You could sit and go through all of it in one sitting if you wanted to, but it’s much better to take your time and enjoy it.  But it’s completely free, carefully thought out and well constructed.  I hope you’ll sign up for free and join me in learning more about this truly inspiring person, William Shakespeare, the swan of Avon.

 

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: ebook on Shakespeare, free online shakespeare course, Getting to Know Shakespeare, PDF ebook, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

At Work with Gibberish

Stanislavski used to have his actors paraphrase the scene, to put it in their own words. It helped them personalise what the author had written. The trouble is that it’s not the character’s words that bring us to life because what they say isn’t really that important to actors. It IS really important to the audience, but to the actors, the words are gibberish, they’re lies and you don’t intend them and every attempt TO make them sound like you sincerely mean them results in insincerity of varying degrees.

So how to bring the page into being if not through the words of the character?

None of us speak but for a reason. We are intention, action and reaction, a very simple process. Something in us, some desire, some need sparks an intention, a desire to achieve something, to get something done. This intention bursts into life as actions we take, some of which come out as verbal communication. But the intention burns through every word.

To bring the words to life is your goal but to do that means leaving them alone, the words and lines have meaning of their own, forged by someone far better at that job than you.

That’s where Gibberish comes in, rather than personalising the words, we get behind the intention. In a Gibberish exercise, two actors have a single line of dialogue each, something useless because it refuses to mean anything like ‘one dot red dash’.

Now they attempt to achieve their Task, but not by trying to communicate something or transmit some emotion, not by trying to make this stupid rubbish phrase mean something to the actor but that they must DO something to the other actor.

As they work, the actors become aware that since the other actor’s words are meaningless, they only have their behaviour and tone to work from. Now their sensitivity to what the other actor is actually doing in each moment heightens, they are aware, and react not to what has just been said, but to what has been done to them.

The actors learn to pay less and less attention to the content meaning of the other actor’s utterances but to how they are bending those utterances to their purpose. Now a non-verbal ping ping occurs with both actors acting and react to the truth of each moment and the scripted words are enslaved to that purpose and not spoken earnestly to answer ‘correctly’ the previous line.

All cues are physical signs.

Sometimes the lines come out strangely, not how you would intend to say them, but entirely authentic nonetheless, appropriate to this moment because it was caused by the behaviour exhibited.

Once you see this exercise truly working, once you see it in action and the actors then moving into the scene and still doing the same thing, then, you witness the power of action and you will never be able to listen to another actor sincerely trying to mean their lines again.

Tags: Gibberish exercise

What’s the point in drama school?

It seems to me that as I work with students that have already graduated from drama school or college that something is missing in their training.  Would I be naive, arrogant, or insane to suggest that what they are missing is their actual actor training?  Well, more and more colleges are offering courses in acting and performance, but I’m not seeing the level of performance improving, in fact, I’m seeing it… suck.  When I go to see actors in training doing public performances… they’re… not that good.  Even those from the top schools, even those that are about to become our country’s next big thing, aren’t… that… good.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are benefits of going to drama school and college, but i’m not sure what they are.  Okay, you get to meet some pretty great people.  But that’s not particular to drama school.  You can meet them in other places.  You get to work with professionals with experience and excitement.  Yes, but that is also possible… in the profession itself.

Isn’t spending three weeks on a project about the Greeks or Brecht is… somehow… outdated? Shouldn’t they spend an awful lot more time on helping actors to be the best possible actors they can be, rather than trying to fulfill outdate curriculum?  Especially when the basic acting skills seem to be lacking.

If you leave drama school with little or no actual improvement in your performance skills, then why go?  Because you need their badge.  You want their logo on your CV/resume.

And well.. that’s frankly not good enough.  Just going for a seal of approval is a waste of your money and time because it will open doors for a while, but after that, if you haven’t go the work and you don’t have the technique you’re done.

If drama school is just a badge, a mark of approval, isn’t it just a big expensive waste of time.  I’ve begin to think that drama school actually disables, confuses and disempowers actors.  On the flip side, in my studio, I see complete beginners, total amateurs, people who do something else for their living wage, spend just two or four hours a week toiling and after a couple of years.. they’re good, actually, they’re REALLY good.  REALLY GOOD.  In 4 hours per week?  Without the fancy building? Without the famous letters on their CV?  Well to my mind, if we can achieve this in much less time and for much less money, then the drama schools better be doing something better than we are, cos frankly, we’ve got them beat.

I know it sounds arrogant.  I know that, I re-read it.  It sounds arrogant.  But just cos it’s arrogant, doesn’t make it a lie.

 

I am often dumbfounded by how badly wrong many drama schools get it. They train people in the art of the craft but don’t provide them with the tools to get food on the table.

The romantic notion of the struggling artist living in a bedsit is for the birds. There is nothing cool or romantic about it. You need to be positive and proactive out there; hustling to gain a position within the industry.

One thing is for sure. No-one will turn

up on your doorstep with a leading Hollywood role for you to play. You need to go out there and claim it; you need to be business-savvy about how to get in front of the right people.

Part of your acting training should focus heavily on this. I know that’s what I drum into my students and we go to great lengths to equip them in the right way.

Your acting training should be a great experience but it has to face you in the right direction to take on the realities of today’s industry.

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: drama school vs. classes, what's the point in drama school?

Shakespeare Monologues: 5 Mistakes People Make with their Drama School Auditions

Just a brief one today, but an important one:

ONE:  PROSE

The most obvious mistake is that people choose a PROSE speech instead of a VERSE speech. What’s the difference? Well, one is poetry and the other is simply the ordinary written word.  While I’m sure his PROSE is excellent, I believe that drama schools want to see if you can handle VERSE drama like Shakespeare, and if you choose PROSE, what are you showing them that is different from the contemporary or modern piece that they’ve asked for?

TWO:  IGNORING THE VERSE

Apparently CENTRAL don’t want you to work out the Iambic Pentameter these days, funny, cos I’ve always thought that you can’t really get away from it, it would be like playing Chopin but ignoring the time signature – it would be all wrong.

THREE:  NATURALISING

We’re so used to acting for film and television that we want everything to be small and natural.  There’s no reason that you can’t use heightened performing that is authentic, or what you might consider natural in playing style, but you can’t naturalise Shakespeare’s verse (or anyone else’s for that matter).  If it’s heightened language, it needs a heightened performance.

FOUR:  POOR CASTING

Make sure that someone might cast you in that role.  I’m sure that the Drama Schools would say that as long as you did it well, it doesn’t matter what you choose.  But the point is that if they can’t imagine you in that role, you’re fighting a losing battle.  On the flip side of that, if the part is for a girl, then sorry, but only girls can play it! Drama Schools don’t want to see your amazing inventiveness in playing a female Hamlet or a male Juliet, they want to see your acting, don’t make yourself look like a weirdo who can’t follow instructions.. which leads me to…

FIVE:  FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS

Every now and again I come across a fellow or a fellowette who just can’t follow instructions.  We’re not talking about obeying anyone here, but when the drama school has issue audition advice, they mean it.  They’re tired of seeing pieces that don’t contrast, pieces from off the telly when they want a theatre piece, pieces of Marlowe when they specifically asked for Shakespeare, pieces of Shakespeare when they specifically asked for non-classical, pieces from 1850 when they were looking for a modern piece!  FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS, or you end up looking like 1) you can’t read 2) you can read but you don’t care to follow their instructions 3) you’re a pain in the arse.

 

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: Advice for Drama School, mistakes with drama school audition monologues, shakespeare drama school auditions