Thoughts on Acting, Theatre and Creativity
Playwrights You Should Read
Today is my wedding day, I won’t be blogging as normal until 20th September. Instead, I’ve written some blogs in advance to make sure you have a steady stream of blogs whilst I get wed and go away on my honeymoon.
Today’s blog is short but I’d like to offer you the chance to catch up on your reading. I get really mad when people won’t buy plays. Plays are your training ground, even if you work in film, the playwright can teach you a lot about dealing with different writing styles.
These are some playwrights and their play I think you should read. This list is by no means exhaustive:
- Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Nights’ Dream.
- Dario Fo: Accidental Death of an Anarchist.
- David Hare: Skylight
- David Mamet: Oleanna
- Neil Labute: The Shape of Things
- Ann Marie di Mambro: Tally’s Blood
- Zinnie Harris: Further than the Furthest Thing.
- David Greig: The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union.
- Gregory Burke: Black Watch
- Moliere: Tartuffe
- Arthur Miller: All my Sons
- Mark Ravenhill: Paradise Lost
- Edward Albee: The Zoo Story
- Tennessee Williams – A Street Car Named Desire
- Caryl Churchill: A Number
- Howard Brenton: Magnificence
- Kwame Kwei-Armah: Elmina’s Kitchen
- Sophocles: Antigone
- Tony Kushner: Angels in America
- Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Ernest.
- John Patrick Shanley: Doubt, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.
- Henrik Ibsen: Ghosts
- August Strindberg: The Stronger
- Anton Chekhov: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya.
And that’s just to get you started. Come on, educate yourself!
To You, The Best!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 2010
Top Books on Acting
Most books on acting are complete nonsense, these are the books that I personally recommend:
True and False -David Mamet
Practical Handbook for the Actor – Bruder et Al.
Action – The Actor’s Thesaurus – Lloyd-Williams and Calderone.
The Power of the Actor – Ivana Chubbuck
The Intent to Live – Larry Moss
The Monologue Audition – Karen Kohlhaas
The Sanford Meisner Approach – Vol 1 – Larry Silverberg.
The Actor’s Art and Craft – William Esper.
Playing Shakespeare – John Barton
The Right to Speak – Patsy Rodenberg
Not a long list, but my personal guide to books on acting that are worth reading.
Excerpt from An Interview with Mark Westbrook
This is an interview I did a while ago (but didn’t end up getting published)… It’s just an excerpt. Hope you enjoy it.
When I met Mark Westbrook to interview him, he was not how I imagined him to be. Some of the pictures on his website show a rotund bearded man, in his 30s, jolly, well dressed, full of laughter and enthusiasm. The man sitting waiting for me, drinking a cup of tea and reading a book about Feminism, was wearing jeans and a martial arts hoodie. He spoke enthusiastically about his passion for acting and actors.
RM: Mark, how did you become an acting coach?
MW: Some of my friends were actors, I was a director and had taught acting for several years, but didn’t consider myself an acting coach. Many of my actor friends seemed really at sea when it came to the very basics of their craft, no matter how much they had worked, or where they had trained.
RM: What do you mean by ‘all at sea’?
MW: They didn’t seem to have a way of working that would help them consistently, there was no ABC of acting for them, and that worried me, because I thought Drama Schools should be providing that type of educating.
RM: And you believe that they’re not?
MW: I don’t just believe it, it’s borne out by experience, the craft of the actor seems to be missing from the modern actor’s toolbox, they don’t even have a toolbox. They face a script almost completely clueless, or the methods and techniques they’ve learned are so contrived or impractical, they just don’t work.
RM: What’s a toolbox?
MW: A set of tools that they use in their job. Just like a plumber.
RM: So an actor should have certain tools they use for…
MW: For certain tasks.
RM: So you started coaching actors because you felt they were missing some important tools for doing their job?
MW: Yes, and not only that they were missing tools, but that the tools they had didn’t work, or served only to create very stiff or fake acting.
RM: You’re saying that what they teach in drama schools, doesn’t work?
MW: For the most part.
RM: That’s a pretty arrogant thing to say, isn’t it?
MW: It’s only arrogant if it isn’t true.
RM: But you yourself, you went to drama school?
MW: Yes, college, university, drama school and an acting conservatory in New York.
RM: So some of it must have worked.
MW: I think I was able to pick and choose what worked and what didn’t and forge it into an approach that can help actors to work better for and by themselves.
RM: Right, so you’re not anti-drama school?
MW: No, not really, I think actors need to learn their craft somewhere.
RM: Some might say that you don’t have a background as an actor, how can you know this stuff, aren’t you just being provocative?
MW: I’m not just being provocative, I am being provocative because I believe that what I’m doing helps actors, and my experience is that if most actors could swop three years of training for a year with me, they’d be a lot better off.
RM: Well, you would say that.
MW: That’s true, I would. Again, experience in the studio shows that actors that work using the tools that ACS provides, they can work with greater confidence.
RM: Do you teach complete beginners?
MW: Sure, everyone has to start somewhere.
RM: What about middle aged people?
MW: Yes.
RM: Surely, they’re never going to have a successful career, they’re competing against people that have been in the business for years.
MW: That’s true. But no one really cares about that, if the person can do it, they can do it. If a casting director sees that person and they fit the bill, and they’re professional, and they’re gifted, and they’re not a dick, then, that’s all that matters.
RM: But aren’t you just giving people false hope?
MW: There’s nothing certain about being in the acting industry, from the top to the bottom, I’m helping people have a full on, two hundred percent stab at something that they want to do. I’m really sensitive to people’s aspirations, because there’s a lot of charlatans out there that will milk aspirational people for all their worth, I’m not into that. I can help actors at all levels, but they’re not just cash machines for me, their careers and potential careers are important to me, and essentially my success rests on their own.
To You, The Best!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 2010
Just Say the Lines
My experiences as a writer are that given enough rope, the actors will labour the lines to death. They’ve also develop an assumption through popular culture or training that they are superior to the words in some way, and can (and often do) request changes to the text based on ‘what sounds better’ or the removal of something that doesn’t ‘ring true’. My point is this. Shut up and say the lines. If you were asked to bring your editorial skills to the table by the playwright/screenwriter, then by all means, please do. In film of course, the director and the actors regularly shit all over the writer’s work. In the name of ‘what works’, or ‘what rings true’, or basically, some deficiency in the actor that means they can’t say the line the way it is written. Here’s a trick. The writer, through fluke or gift or training or none, is actually probably quite good at their job and has been paid money to produce the words. If as an actor, you think you can do better, please do. Otherwise, just say the lines.
An excerpt from a 2008 article in The Independent makes this point for me: “The uncanny exactitude of Mamet’s notation is borne out by a story told by the actors David Suchet and Lia Williams, who played the professor and the student in that production. At the start of rehearsals, they found the carefully positioned emphases inhibiting. So Pinter asked the author for a script without the underscoring. Mamet declined on the grounds that the stressings were all in the right place and necessary. Pinter stuck to his guns and an unmarked script was provided. The telling point is that when the actors re-consulted the marked script four weeks into rehearsal, they discovered that they were in fact playing virtually every emphasis originally indicated there.”
Say the lines, don’t labour them, and enjoy the benefits of the writer’s own talents, add yours to theirs, rather than trying to avoid doing your job by taking on their job too.
To You, The Best!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 2010
Rehearsal: A Demonstration of Excess and Waste
Our rehearsal process is a demonstration of excess and waste. We often waste the three weeks of rehearsal common to most subsidised shows by fannying about for two weeks and then panicking like crazy for the final week. It’s what the film director Werner Hertzog refers to as ‘what starts as aesthetics ends in athletics‘.
We waste so much time. We talk endlessly in circles about irrelevant issues that cannot be acted upon. We listen to the director’s vision, which is less actable than the discussion, we do character work. I’m not even sure what that means. We try to become part of the creative team by ‘creating characters’, that basically involves ‘writing’ whilst standing up and talking and improvising about things that do not have any impact on the scene. Ah yes, but we must improvise the previous circumstances of the scene. Bullshit. That will be great fun, but in essence, entirely wasteful.
Much of the things that we do in the rehearsal period are not helpful in putting on the play. They do not help the actors to act the scenes, instead, they are a wasted time. Activities like these are things that I call PARLOUR GAMES or FAKE WORK,, they feel like creative work, but actually, they are not supported by the text, nor do they support the work on the text. These games and exercises are little more than fannying about with good intentions. This is often a form of well-meaning hippie crap that masquerades as acting or performance training. Improvising around the circumstances, total. waste. of. time. Hot Seating: Nonsense. These are tools of improvisers and devisers and is a completely different skill to acting. We answer inane and ridiculous questions about what colour, shape, flower, animal, fizzy drink that our characters are, it’s all complete twaddle. It is unnecessary, it does not make you an artist, it makes you FEEL like an artist. If helps you to tell yourself that lie. But it is a lie.
This is how to spend your time rehearsing a show
- Learn the Lines in advance of the first rehearsal (completely devoid of intonation)
- Read the Play Lots
- Understand the Script as a Whole by Asking Some simple questions that will unlock the essence of the play.
- Analyse each scene of the play for action (the actable parts of the script) with simple tools again
- Practice the actions of the play without the script, on real life scene partners
- Build relationships between the actors
- Add the words.
- Block the Play
- Run the Play until the actors are comfortable with what they have to do.
- Perform the Play, live in the moment, make it different every night.
- All else is waste and does not contribute to the performance, but to the actor’s belief that they are doing some good, hard work, fake work, pretend work.
And before you get there before me, it doesn’t make us any less of an artist because we don’t stroke our egos by thinking we are creative artists equal to the writer, we are interpreters, creative, dramatic interpreters, it is not our job to ‘work on the play’, it is our job to tell the story to the best of our ability.
To You, The Best!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 2010
An Essential Lesson
If there is one thing that I must impart, it is about lines. In my career to date, there is one issue that I come up against time and time again, lines.
Look, you are an actor, your lines are vital to your performance. Learn them all dead cold, with no intonation and do it before rehearsals/filming begins. The freedom you will feel for doing this is elating.
It is not acceptable to sort of know them, to paraphrase, to wait until the last minute. Sit down and learn them, and learn them verbatim.
And verbatim means verbatim. Not kinda or sorta, verbatim. If you want to make up lines, go be a writer! And then see how you feel when actors fuck with your lines, paraphrasing and hacking up your precious words.
“But I don’t know how, I don’t know the best ways.” Well, here is a tip, it is not magic, just sit down and memorize them until you learn them. Cover and speak, use a dictaphone, get an iPhone app, write them out or use memory hooks like pictures.
You cannot know your lines well enough. You cannot over-learn them, that’s a bullshit myth. If you want your lines to be truthful and fresh, learn
I hear lots of excuses, I believe none of them. If you sit down long enough, you remember them, if you don’t, you wont. They will not ‘go in during rehearsals’, that’s not the purpose of rehearsal. The purpose of rehearsal is for the actors to practice the actions of the character. If this is held up by your paraphrasing, stuttering unlearned excuse making, stumbling, then you are holding everyone else back.
I can barely believe that I have to write a blog about this, isn’t this a given? From my experience, it is not. How sad.
As Spencer Tracey once said about acting ‘learn your lines and don’t bump into the furniture’.
Why most actors make lousy acting teachers
I know, I know, you just think I’m bring controversial or annoying, but from my experience and that of many of my peers that their favourite and most influential acting teachers were not actors but writers and directors.
Why and how could this be?
Firstly, actors are often far too close to the process of acting and cannot get the distance to examine what they are doing on an objective level. Many actors have reached the heights of their career without ever being consciously aware of precisely what makes them a great actor. They are unconsciously competent and that makes it very difficult to step back and codify the process of acting.
Not all. I don’t mean all actors, but in my experience of directing and teaching for almost twenty years now, most can talk about it, usually in ways that are not practicable, but they cannot actually teach others to do it. They convince themselves otherwise, because who could bear to live with the knowledge that one was a charlatan and our role little more than that of a flim-flam man.
I know this because I’ve spoken to actors that have become teachers and they couldn’t teach acting to save their lives and when questioned fail to move beyond the realms of the mysterious intangible bullshit that mires our beautiful craft in such nonsense.
Why can directors and writers do it better? Because they often have the ability to step back and consciously move to a more objective perspective. They see how the mechanics of the scene works and how the actor can best achieve the desired results. Of course, we have to be righteously defensive against results playing itself, but teaching is much more like directing than acting is. Those that think teaching is some kind of performance do not understand the process of education.
The acting teacher must be able to instruct the actor in how they work from scratch, unfortunately many focus on the wrong things.
There is one and only one thing the actor needs to know how to do, Play The Scene. Play the Scene. Everything else either serves this idea, adds to the actor’s capacity to play the scene for the audience or it’s a waste of your time.
Get Craft
Some people are lucky, they can just do it. They don’t really know how they do it, if they’re asked to talk about it, they mainly speak nonsense, but they can do it and no one cares. For the rest of us, there’s CRAFT. The actor’s craft is highly disputed, but one things for sure, if you have no craft, if you’re a purely instinct person, you’re great when the going’s good, but a nightmare when it doesn’t come spontaneously. You need to get CRAFT, CRAFT isn’t insurance, it won’t protect you if it all goes wrong, but it will give you a stable set of tools to work with and THAT is sadly missing from the British/Scottish acting industry that I work within. Without craft, you’re just lucky and luck has a habit of coming and going.
Craft is something that can be learned over the years, but not by just repeating the same mistakes. I never trust someone who tells me they have 20 years of experience, I instinctively worry that they’ve spent 20 years making the same mistakes. Craft requires testing, an element of deliberate practice and it really helps if you are able to learn it, test it, learn some more test it, etc. You may be an actor without getting craft, but I don’t expect you to have a long career, of course, there are always those that have the knack, they develop their own kind of personal craft, that is okay too, as long as it works and it works consistently and it makes you a better artist, a better collaborator perhaps even a better person.
I’ve always thought that our craft was built on graft, hard work, working harder than anyone else, working longer than anyone else. Craft can learned in a classroom but it requires performance to test it. Performance puts us in crisis mode and everything that’s not nailed down, will go out of the window in the moment. Craft is what sticks.
To You, The Best!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 2010
Glasgow Acting Coach Recommends: Discipline and Graft
To me, these are the two most important qualities an actor can have. So many have neither and that scares me. Even experienced working actors have little of either, or there are those that pretend to be actors, they say it, but they never audition, they never take action. I guess you can’t fail if you fail to act. I want you to watch this video clip and remember these are undergrads from a college in Oregon. How do you think they got so good. Discipline and Graft. Nothing less. They aren’t lucky. They are gifted, but the talented are ten a penny. What makes the difference is DISCIPLINE and GRAFT. Focus your talent and graft until you achieve excellence. Watch this video and remind yourself that we all got into this because we loved to perform, and if you’re going to perform, then perform the best you can.
This is them just goofing around. To see them when they look polished… see HERE.
To You, The Best!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 2010
If it looks like a Duck…
For Gordon…
They say that if it looks like a duck and it sounds like a duck, then it must be a duck. That might be the case for ducks, but in the case of acting schools, teachers and their techniques, some ducks are not ducks at all, they’re turkeys.
I have lots of current students that went to so called colleges and studied acting. These are not accredited drama schools, they are instead, part of the flurry of colleges cashing in on the aspiration of the young, and come to think of it, the mature too, by providing what looks and sounds like an acting training programme, but is in fact, just a paper qualification, received for work done on a play-pretend course.
I have no doubt that the teachers are sincere, but the institution often fails to equip these teachers with enough support to enable them to teach the students and prepare them for the profession. Also, a degree in drama and a bit of fringe theatre experience and an episode of Taggart or The Bill, does not make an acting teacher, and often the students end up more confused and less empowered than they started off.
For the students, it’s a raw deal, because if the training they receive looks like proper actor training and it sounds like proper actor training, then indeed for them, it must be proper actor training.
But this is not the case, and I know this because my classes are filled with students that went through Turkey School and still can’t quack.
It’s easy to blame the students, perhaps they didn’t listen, perhaps they didn’t understand, but I would put it to you, that these courses failed the students and not the other way round and that if any students achieve a modicum of success, it is due NOT to their training at these substandard institutions, run by second-rate minds, but instead, through luck and force of will.
These people I admire, for the adversity they’ve overcome to reach success, they’ve worked their way to achieve something inspite of the disabling effects of their training.
For those of you that are still looking at training options, or those that have failed to get into an accredited drama school and are considering taking up a secondary option at one of these Turkey schools. Don’t do it. Your naivete leads you to believe that you must take action or you will lose out on something and peer pressure and parental pressure will tell you to make this choice, but choosing a poor or weak school isn’t a second best, it’s a second rate experience.
To You, The Best!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 2010
3 Seconds
A short one to end the month:
I can tell within roughly three to five second whether someone can act. No one suddenly gets better over three acts, they just get less bad or we become desensitized to their poor form.
There is something immediately available to test, even within that short space of time.
Three seconds.
And if I can do it, so can your auditors, in all their many forms.
What I see immediately is not a magic or talent, but an ease with which things done
In a bad performance, I immediately see signs of someone over-doing it. I see tension and I see the fakery of sentiment, like lies dripping from every moment.
Three seconds. This is all visible in three short seconds. So is excellence.
Nudity on Stage and Screen
I’ve never considered myself a prude, I enjoy the naked form as much as the next person. However, I cannot abide nudity on stage or screen. Particularly stage. Whenever I see it, I cringe. It is not the character naked that I see, it is the actor abused. It is rare that I have seen a moment of nudity that wasn’t solely for someone’s titillation. Of course, I know, much is done in the name of art, but mainly, it’s bullshit. Some writer/director/producer/douchebag wants to see some guy/girl/other naked or they think it will put bums on seats. Oh but what about so and so in such and such?
The word is EXPLOITATION. Exploitation in the name of art.
Sure, I would have loved to see a beautiful naked angel, a pale skinned naked angel come down from heaven in the midst of the battlefield in a production that I directed. Beautiful as the moment would have been aesthetically, who would have been looking at the angel and NOT their bits? Men look terrible naked on stage, women are just gawped at. I remember seeing Stephen Dillane in Hamlet at the Gielgud years ago and he had a naked scene. Was this some scene in Hamlet that I have previously missed? No. It was someone’s good idea. Some actor was coerced into it, or worse, they willingly agreed to it, believing it were somehow artistic, truthful, or… revealing… But like everyone else in the audience, I was doing one of two things. Looking at Stephen Dillane’s cock, or trying NOT to look at Stephen Dillane’s cock. Either way, his privates were everyone’s focus, not the speech and not the acting.
The actor is always self consciously naked. The audience is always conscious that it is the actor naked in front of them. It takes both parties out of the moment and into some self-conscious place. Either way, it spoils the intended moment. Nudity on stage and screen is frankly ugly, rarely beautiful, and when beautiful, it is often simply exploitation thinly veiled.
Lastly, the answers to yesterday’s picture quiz are: (Top Left) Jerzy Grotowski, (Top Right) Stella Adler, (Middle Left) Sanford Meisner (Middle Right) Lee Strasberg (Bottom Left) Michael Chekhov.
PHOTO BY: dunikowski
To You, The Best!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 2010
Characters are NOT Real People
No one that takes my classes will find the title a surprise to them. Yet, there still exists a school of acting, or nine, that tries to teach the actor to invent/create a character as if they were a living person. When their students fail to do this, they degrade them for not ‘committing’ to the task, being difficult, or not having invested or worked hard enough. But the task that was set was baloney, it was the kind of exercise that second class minds produce in order to keep children occupied. And as such, it is patronising, and that person doesn’t deserve to work with actors. But but but!!! They still get results. Yeah, it’s amazing what actors can pull out of the bag when they have to, isn’t it? And all the time that was wasted fannying around talking about the characters, could have been better spent rehearsing the play. But then those people wouldn’t know what to do, and would be exposed as the swindlers and peddlers of snake oil that they are.
Sadly, some actors are still labouring under the mistaken belief that a character is some how a real human being. A character is no more a real human being than the Mona Lisa. A character is the crafted work of art of an author, they are metaphor or cypher for humanity and human nature, but they are not human beings. Of course, we relate to characters as if they are real, that’s the point for the audience, but character is a made thing, a constructed thing, a crafted thing, just like any other work of art. Characters are clearly cut, they are not as confusing and contradictory as real people are. Otherwise it wouldn’t be fun to watch them. They are reliable when our friends are constantly changing. The characters in plays, novels, films and television series always essentially remain the same. Characters are constant. It makes them enjoyable to spend time with.
Character is expressed through the words that the writer gives us to work with, and through the way that impulsive motivational drives and desires of the character are interpreted by an actor in rehearsal. The actor is a real person. Guess what happens when a real person performs the actions and words of a metaphorical work of art? The collision produces the illusion of character for the audience.
If building a character meant exploring every aspect of them, as if they were real, it would take you until after you were dead before you found out nearly all the things about them.
Character, like dialogue is made thing. A construct. And when the actor takes on this construct, they must find ways to deal with this problem. Many actors, attempt to create the life of another human soul on stage or camera. Then they wonder why they feel that they never ‘got into character’, that’s because they gave themselves a meaningless, and more importantly IMPOSSIBLE Task.
There is no character, there is only the magic trick performed in front of a collusive audience, an audience who want to believe in magic, even though they know they are being fooled.
There is no character. This is the quiet revolution.
To You, The Best!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 2010
Loving Shakespeare
About a year ago, I was visiting Dublin and I wrote about blog about all the crap Shakespeare that I was seeing. I’ve just started teaching my own Shakespeare course for actors in Glasgow and it made me think about why I have so much reverence and respect for the Bard of Avon.
Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the English language, perhaps ever in any language. Why do I think that? Not because I’m ‘supposed’ to, because I’m English, and somehow I have to have some kind of deadly respect for him. Not because I was taught him well in school, cos frankly, most of us weren’t. I discovered Shakespeare while I was off sick from school, my Dad’s friends owned the local video shop and they used to give me a free video each week. For some reason I chose Kenneth Branagh’s film of Henry V. My dad’s friend looked at me as if I had two heads, but I wanted it.
I watched it. Then I watched it again. Then I watched it again with the play in my hand. I couldn’t believe it, I understood it, not only that, but I felt it, I wasn’t confused by the archaic language, I got it, it clicked, I wasn’t translating, I was letting the language wash over me and I was just absorbing it. Until that time, I knew nothing of Shakespeare.
Living only 40 miles from Stratford upon Avon, I spent as much of the next two years at Stratford as possible, and in their two mighty bookshops, which I pillaged.
But this was only the beginning. At university, I met a brilliant tutor called Alan Beck, who was never my official tutor, but introduced me to one very important thing that Shakespeare had gifted us so much help and direction in his verse, that is almost instantly defies modern psychological acting techniques.
What do we mean that he gifted us these things?
Actually, quite simple, he’s deliberate and particular about telling actors when to slow down, when to speed up, when to pause, when to come in on queue, even how to breathe.
He might tell us when, sometimes he tells us how, but he never tells us WHY. That’s where our Practical Aesthetics skills come and that’s where following Shakespeare’s clues help.
And he starts this all by showing us the simple human heartbeat in his verse. Throughout all of his greatest writing, the human heartbeat is present, giving rhythm, and pace to his words, but also leading the actor by offering them clues, help, assistance and direction. This is why I love Shakespeare, because he actually chose precisely the right number of syllables in each line to make that heart beat within his verse.
Then he adds the most beautiful imagery, he is crediting with introducing, coining or being the first to cite 8,000 words.
Then we weave simile, metaphor, alliteration, assonance, dissonance and many other rhetorical tools and all other wonderful things into it that verse. Because actors have to deal with all of these things together, the verse ,the meter, the imagery, words, the rhetorical devices, it is my belief that its only actors that ever get to truly appreciate Shakespeare, which is good, because his work was not written for school boys or academics, but for his players and their audiences…
You probably use words that Shakespeare invented or coined every day, or at least every other day…
Assassination
Advertising
Well-Read
Watch Dog
Eventuful
Reclusive
Addiction
Alligator
Discontent
Mimic
Manager
Tardiness
Shudders
Urging
Switch
Retirement
And many many MORE.
You’re probably quoting Shakespeare even though you aren’t aware of it:
All that glitters is not gold (Merchant of Venice)
In my mind’s eye (Hamlet)
The green eyed monster (Othello)
Bated breath (Merchant of Venice)
My Mum’s Favourite (Hamlet) “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.”
Dead as a doornail (2 Henry VI)
It was Greek to me (Julius Caesar)
In a pickle (The Tempest)
The Naked Trust (Love’s Labours Lost)
Play Fast and Loose (King John)
A tower of strength (Richard III)
Wild Goose Chase (Romeo and Juliet)
He has had a profound influence on the English language and on the way that we express ourselves. And this is why I love Shakespeare, for his endless contribution to not only our language, but to our culture, and the gift of many many plays and sonnets.
To You, The Best!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 2010
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.
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.
Tackling Talent: Part 2 with ACS Assistant Coach Ian Watt
Friday’s have become special days at the ACS studio. Over the last few weeks we’ve been working through a DVD of Meisner classes. It’s a real treat to watch the man himself training actors in his own techniques. At 8 hours it’s a bit of a marathon but it always sparks off lots of discussion.
We’ve been thinking about talent. The core skills of Repetition, Script Analysis & As Iffing can all be developed through hard graft – so does the term TALENT even fit with the Practical Aesthetics ethos of acting? Does it matter how TALENTED or UNTALENTED you are?
Talent is a difficult term to understand to begin with. One dictionary definition is – a natural ability or giftedness. So someone with talent has an aptitude for certain things or an innate ability to achieve a level of skill or competency. Now here’s a much misunderstood term. Competency sounds like an apology for being just-about-passable but is defined as a combination of aptitude, knowledge, understanding and attitude.
Two indisputable talents sprung to my mind – Picasso and George Best. Picasso’s early works are worth a look if you ever thought he couldn’t draw and Best was such a great footballer that Pele, the Brazilian legend, signed an autograph for George with the words “from the second best footballer in the world.”
Yet Picasso said it had taken him a lifetime to learn to draw like a child and Best worked so hard in extra training to develop his weaker left foot – it became stronger than his right. Without doubt both showed signs of having great talent at an early stage in their lives but they also demonstrated they had a great work ethic – even in Best’s case.
But all of Best’s aptitude for balance and ball skills didn’t help him extend his playing career and Picasso’s understanding of form and hand to eye co-ordination wasn’t the reason he continued to produce works until he died aged 92. Maybe the difference between them was attitude.
Mamet wrote a private letter to the original students of Practical Aesthetics before their first performance – ‘A good actor trains his voice and body and analytical powers even though this training is taxing and “no one may ever notice.”
I feel talent shines out. It is obvious and noticeable – especially to those who can’t. So how does that fit with the P.A. approach? To be honest – I dunno. I like the idea of talent being a gift – something you’ve simply been given. It’s nothing you can or should take any credit for – it’s just the way you are. If you perceive a gift as something of value then you’re likely to take care of it – nurture it and not hide it at the back of a cupboard next to the horrendous cardigan you got from granny last Christmas.
REAL talent makes something difficult look easy to do – SO easy that everyone thinks they can do it. Ultimately I guess you can either use it or choose to waste it. My advice – which you didn’t ask for – is nurture however much talent you have whether it be great or little. Don’t worry about whether you have it or not, work hard and concentrate on developing the skills you need. If you are tenacious enough to keep on learning – you might surprise yourself and manage to be competent!
Thanks
IAN
To You, The Best!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 2010
Finding Fulfilment
What is fulfillment and how do we achieve it? From the day we are born, whether we know it or not, we are continually seeking the answer to these questions. For some people, fulfillment is called pleasure; some know it as accomplishment, triumph or contentment, others know it as piece of mind or being at peace.
But what is fulfillment – this insubstantial and indefinable condition, this desire that we are burning to attain? Fulfillment is feeling whole, sated, full up, completed. It is absence of absence in our lives. We want for nothing.
Equally, if we do not experience this completeness, then this lack of fulfillment haunts us. We become distressed at the awareness that something important is lacking from our lives and we feel deficient. No one prepare us for this intangible dearth, this absence of an elusive presence. Rationally, we irrationally spend much of our time trying to capture or recapture this state.
We are compelled by an invisible need to sate this desire, to fill the emptiness that is left by its absence. We attempt to do this in so many fruitless ways. We leave our husband, buy the sports car, change jobs, eat the entire tub of ice cream or max out the credit card on new clothes. Each activity will provide satisfaction, but it will be short-lived, temporary, only filling our need for fulfillment, our craving for a very short time. When the buzz of the sugar rush leaves us, we crash, feeling more empty and guilty than before.
Under the pressure to fulfill this gnawing desire, we can behave out of character. We move from person to person, searching for a relationship with ‘the one’. It makes us cheat on our wife over and over, explore ‘open’ marriages, compels us to try to quench our thirst for fulfillment with a new sexual partner each week, seeking the elusive excitement of the beginning of a new relationship. What cause us to behave this way? The cause, our justification is often:
‘I did not feel fulfilled.’ or ‘I have needs and this person does not take care of them’. ‘You don’t do it for me any more’ or ‘we want different things from life’.
No, what you want is exactly the same; it just manifests itself in different ways.
But what did we expect? How self-centred we are to believe that another’s purpose is to make us feel replete.
But the hole in us, this bottomless void knows no sating because we are addicted to our desire for fulfillment and when we are not trying to gain it, we are unhappy too. Once we have performed these actions, these acts that we felt were so necessary to our happiness, no – our mental survival and stability, we quickly realize that we were wrong and very soon the urge for fulfillment surfaces again. But this time it takes on a new shape, an entirely new form. That’s why it’s so elusive, it never appears in the same guise twice.
Many of us attain the highest positions of employment, great personal and financial success through our job, only to realize that one’s career goal, our ambition, did not fulfill us, did not close the avoid. So, we think there is something wrong with us and we set off to find the next way to sate the insatiable urge, perhaps through gambling or drink or drugs or maybe a fresh challenge in a new job.
Often, people will say ‘I know that I would be really happy if only I could just get this or that particular job’. Exchange job for the word partner, house, holiday or some other longed for experience and we see the futility of the situation. Other people often say to me ‘I’ve no idea what to do in life’ – what they actually mean is, nothing that I have experienced has given me that fulfillment that I know OTHERS have achieved before. But of course, they are wrong, especially about the others.
Should we give up our dreams, our desires? Should we stop wanting entirely and just be happy with our lot? Not at all. We are improved and developed by the challenges in our lives. But the job itself will not, cannot make us complete. We can feel the temporary buzz of success, we can enjoy basking in the sweet glow of victory, but this soon turns bitter as the feeling of fulfillment ebbs away.
When I was young, I went backpacking in Australia. I met many people, experienced all kinds of new things and wholly enjoyed exploring this new country. I learned a great deal, connected with people, visited amazing places and that really made me feel good about myself and excited. One day, I sat by myself on a rock on an island looking out over the warm, calm ocean. The sun was drifting downwards and the shadow of a bird of prey soared overheard. I looked at all of this, I breathed in, I literally became inspired by the sea, the heat, the smells of the forest behind me and I thought to myself ‘This is the crowning moment of my life so far, I am so lucky, it is wonderful beyond compare, if only…’ Even the dramatic magnificence, the sensorial splendor of this moment in a place thousands of miles from home could not make me feel complete, it could not fulfill me.
Did you ever experience the sense that although you were happy, something was missing? Imagine if you will, a plastic container that has been punctured in some way, so that it has a hole in it. You pour water into the container, but it just leaks away. The container cannot possibly keep the water. You can keep trying to fill the container over and over again but unless you fix the hole, it’s going to just keep pouring out. Fulfillment is exactly the same.
There is a more dangerous and harmful search for fulfillment. We call this a vice or a sin. People gorge themselves on food, they use porn, wager their money, abuse alcohol, sleep with prostitutes, sleep with strangers, overspend or indulge in illicit substances. They are ancient issues, they are not contemporary, they have been with us forever, because their cause has been with us forever. However, we lose our grip on them and they have us in their grip, they are abused to plug our endless desire, our present absence.
All of these sensational pleasures, these apparent satisfactions cannot keep the hunger away. They become addictions and they becoming harmful. The excitement of the casino fades, leaving us with unpaid bills. Pornography leaves us disconnected from real love. The quick temporary thrill causes these extreme measures to become compulsive. But inside, we experience emptiness, we try to fill it with these powerful pleasures and it does indeed work for a while, but then the emptiness begins to creep back in and we must indulge again in our harmful attempts at completeness, each time more extreme. We do not overeat or over-drink to feed ourselves, we do it to satisfy our ancient craving, and of course, it does not work beyond the sensory thrill.
If all this is true, I know that you are wondering. How is fulfillment possible? How can I become happy and sated? The solution is unexpected. For you to feel fulfilled, you must take the focus off of yourself and place it on others. That is not to say look to others for your happiness. As we have discussed, another person will never provide this for us in the long run. To feel full, to feel that you have everything, you must give something of yourself to others.
The path to feeling true fulfillment is removing the selfish fixation with yourself and start paying attention to the needs of others. To act unselfishly fills us like no selfish act can. For this to work, we need to do something for someone else’s happiness. The fixation and fascination with self, the primal selfish urge is not easily tamed, but by facing this challenge with the goal of improving someone else’s lot, we lose our self-centredness and become replete.
Does this mean give money to charity or helping out in a homeless shelter? Perhaps. That’s a nice idea, a good place to begin but it’s likely to be temporary. Couldn’t anyone give away money to the poor or unfortunate? To buy the homeless girl a warmer coat, to go to the shop and purchase it yourself, to battle with the issue of size, colour, warmth, all on her behalf, this requires that you give up your previous time and it takes real compassion, thoughtfulness and the selflessness to act with another’s benefit in your heart and mind.
We are goal-oriented. We want to know how to know what actions to take. Which particular unselfish acts will produce the best results? That’s the great challenge of achieving fulfillment, you won’t know it until you feel the absence of absence and even then how does one become aware of lack of nothing? It is not a conscious experience; you feel it long before you are aware of it. In fact, when you feel it, you will not even be concerned with knowing it. You will be full, and when we are full, we do not contemplate filling. To find fulfillment, true fulfillment, we must stop looking to ourselves, to our own needs and see its possibility in everyone else around us.
Not my usual, but I hope you enjoyed it.
To You, The Best!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 2010
Do NOT Let the Director Near the Lighting Board
I was lucky to begin my theatre career in tech. I was originally an LX technician at the Edinburgh Festival. It was challenging and I was well trained by graduates of RADA and Central. One of the very last things they taught us, which has been echoed through time, is do not let the director near the lighting board. Control freaks like us directors, we would love a push button option. But directors are not only unqualified to go pushing the buttons but it’s doing someone else’s job and one we’re not particularly prepared to do well. Push a button YES, sure, who can’t? Deal with the consequences, takes a technician.
It’s not that they couldn’t work a board, it’s just, that’s not their role. They are intelligent, skilled people, and they should clearly stick to their best subject. As a director, I’ve been called upon on tour (and sometimes volunteered) to run the show on the LX desk BECAUSE I have considerable experience doing it. Once on tour in Irvine, I did just that, gave us my seat in the audience and sat perched high in the lighting box, running lights. But it WAS my job that night. It WAS my role that night. It’s when the director begins to interfere in areas that they are not responsible for, that we start to get into trouble.
Similarly it is with academics and the arts. Academics can give stunning and enlightening insight into the arts, but unless they’ve actually had REAL practical experience of the arts, of doing the thing, they remain a critical commentator, perhaps very useful, but essentially, they should steer clear of practice. More and more the academic has found their way into the conservatory, perhaps by some backdoor known as ‘Research’. But there are few academics without considerable professional experience that have the capacity to advise on ‘the doing’ of theatre, film and television.
I do not denigrate the director that can run lights. I do not denigrate the actor who has a gift for writing radio, nor the academic who has served their apprenticeship and is an experienced professional.
I do question the life-long celibate, giving out relationship advice and teaching Sex Ed.
This person has found themselves teaching the arts. This person is deadly to the teaching of the arts. They know LESS than their neophyte students and their inexperience will either mis-prepare a generation or embarrass themselves. We need the academy. But the academy should remain in the academy and the conservatory in the conservatory. The two have no business swapping roles.
Whilst I would be interested in discovering WHY my pipe has burst, I’m only letting the experienced plumber, not the plumbing theorist near my kitchen.
To You, The Best!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 2010
A Few Good Resources
Hey All
In today’s blog, I wanted to offer you a few resources that I’ve found across the web.
STINTON TALKS MAMET: The first is for people in the UK or for those who can listen to the iPlayer or catch Radio 4 somehow. Tomorrow evening (Monday 8th February), Colin Stinton will be reading some of Mamet’s work on Emotions, The Rehearsal Process, and The Play and the Scene. It would be good to hear Mamet’s close collaborator Stinton expressing Mamet’s ideas before Mamet’s latest book ‘Theatre’ is released in April this year. This was meant to be a permanent resource, but check it out before it goes…
APPROACHING SCRIPT ANALYSIS: I was looking up some stuff on the web, and wanted to seek other perspectives when I found this interesting article on Backstage, it compares several acting teacher’s approach, one of which is Practical Aesthetics, take a look here. I’m interested in what you think of the OTHER approaches mentioned.
CASTING THE UNKNOWN: This is a great Radio 4 (finite) resource on the show FRONT ROW is taking about acting, using REAL people, non-actors, casting straight from the street.
It’s only a few resources, but I’ll bring more too, let me know your thoughts…
To You, The Best!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 2010
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