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Friendly Enemies?

Many years ago Delia Salvi wrote a book called Friendly Enemies. The premise of this was the actor and director were pitted against each other in a necessary conflict.

I sat at the dining table today, eating chops and staring off into space, when my eyes fell upon the spine of the book in front of me.

It’s a nice idea for a book, teaching the two sides to get along together. But it starts from a presumptive premise, that there is a conflict.

Salvi says it comes from a lifetime of observation, I would have preferred it come from a lifetime of intervention.

You see, any relationship can be adversarial. But depending on the situation, there may be a conflict of wills.

I don’t see the need for conflict between actor and director, just as there is no necessary conflict between coach and athlete, or teacher and student.

Conflict in a relationship occurs when there is a conflict of wills.

I don’t see why there should be a conflict of wills. Except of course when the actor does not understand their place.

Wooooooooooh! Aren’t you always defending actors against useless directors?

Yes, I am. But these conflicts having nothing to do with being an actor or a director, it’s that both actor AND director do not understand their place OR responsibilities adequately.

And then conflict occurs between the personalities and no book can prepare you for that.

At the end of the day, the director is boss. Conflict arises when the actor forgets that. When the actor does not trust the director, because they talk rubbish, don’t know what they’re doing, ask for the impossible and use their authority poorly.

No wonder the actor challenges the director’s authority. Being lead into battle by a lousy leader is likely to get you killed. And yet soldiers do as they are told. But actors feel they have special right to challenge the director.

When the actor’s interpretation clashes with the directors, they should not squabble. The director should be adult ( as should the actor) and instead of using their authority, they should both go back to the script and discuss it. There’s no more actual conflict than a seminar discussion on Hamlet’s madness.

Except for feelings of entitlement.

The director’s authority is a privilege and a responsibility. It is not a stick to beat the actors, but a staff to light the way. This attitude is liberal but the iron fist rarely fosters creativity.

However when the actor enters this with a sense of entitlement, they are no better than any employer causing management a problem.

Actors, you are not management, you are employees and you cannot win a dispute by conflict. First seek to fully understand the director, no matter how poor their sense of direction.

You are not friendly enemies, you are not friends or enemies, but co-collaborators, with the director as leader, and there is no excuse for bad behaviour.

When I talk about directorial authority, I just mean, someone needs to make the final decision and it’s probably best to be someone that can witness the whole. The actor should respect that. Someone must drive the ship and when the navigator believes they are better than the Captain, there will be conflict.

Obviously if the group is a collective or whatever, then the rules change somewhat, but they will have a bigger problem than just the clash of two wills.

The show, the film, the opera, it has to come first and our self-entitled personalities must come second. Listen to each other, try things all ways and remember respect for each other.

If it seems like I’m saying ‘know your place’, I’m not. I’m saying respect each other.

Start with respect.

Tags: Are the actor and director friends or enemies

Dear Director

Dear Director

Thanks for your message.  I understand your frustration, the actors you work with won’t do precisely as you ask, and I appreciate that you wish that in acting school, actors would learn to produce the results that you require, but I’m afraid you’re labouring under a misapprehension.

Actors are not robots, automatons or puppets, they do not exist to merely produce the results that you desire/require.  The beauty of working with real, living human beings is there capacity for infinite difference.

I know that you are angry that I suggested that you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s just that having a ‘vision’ and understanding the script are two different things.  If the film is a synthesis between the script the writer wrote for you and your own vision of the script, then why not add the actor’s uniqueness into the mix?

If you merely want meat puppets, why not just use CGI instead?  Direction isn’t dictatorial, it’s suggestive, it’s nurturing, sometimes it being the sergeant major, some times the best friend, sometimes the teacher, sometimes the bully, but always you should be working to make the most of those talents that actors actually have, rather than insisting they simply become tools for your grander design.

Please learn to understand how to speak ‘actor’ before you demand that they turn your ideas into action, because each time you request a ‘result’, be ‘ANGRIER’, you insult the intelligence of actors, who know that playing the result is always the most superficial performance.

Perhaps you could also think of acting as a subtle thing, tiny brushstrokes, rather than a paint roller, the audience don’t need telling how to feel or what to think, they’re actually much smarter than you think, they’ll work it out for themselves.

How about you learn to trust the actors that you’ve cast, and instead of a philosophy that places you at the centre of the film making universe, you place the script there instead, you chose to make it, so why not respect it.  It’s just a suggestion, but the writer may have been actually good at what they do.

Directing actors has to be so much more than having a personal vision and just shoe-horning actors into that vision, I don’t care what the rest of the industry is doing, the rest of the industry has made a mistake, the actors are your greatest resource, you should learn to work with them and not the other way around.

Don’t be angry with me for suggesting that actors be autonomous of you and be equal to you, we’re all adults.

Best Wishes

Mark Westbrook

Acting Coach Scotland

 

To You, The Best!

Mark Westbrook
Senior Acting Coach
ACTING COACH SCOTLAND


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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 directors, tips for directing