The Acting Blog

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!

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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Tags: layers of performance

Being Off Book

If you work or train with me, you’ll know I do things differently. Not to be controversial but because it’s more effective.

One of the main ways that I differ is that I insist that the actors come to the first day of rehearsal with lines learned, not generally, not quite well, so they can paraphrase but perfectly verbatim.

To counteract the (likely) chance that the actors will stick with early choices for intonation, we ask them to learn it cold, like the word have no special meaning.

This is quite a feat and it goes against the learning through repetition in rehearsal that actors usually rely on.

Imagine coming to rehearsal and on day one, everyone is off book. No stressing over lines, no scaring the crap out of other cast members with your failure to deliver cue lines.

Instead, from day one, you are ready to play, ready to act, which doesn’t really start happening for most actors until maybe the dress rehearsal or later. Of course on set, you HAVE to know your lines on day of filming. Opera singers always come to rehearsal with lines well learned.

When you work with a company of actors that are off book from day one, you experience freedom, you see them work fearlessly and the lines come falling out easily, because they just know. Here is a freedom far too few actors know.

Leaving it late is lazy and self-indulgent. Learn the lines early, get off book and fly from day one.

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.

A Handy Guide to Acting Emotions with Steven Seagal

Steven has always been one of my favourite actors   Thought you would all enjoy the chance to learn from the master.

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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Preparation

From today our studio has a new motto, Preparation, Preparation, Preparation.

As an actor, you cannot be prepared enough. Preparation comes in all different forms but it is the most important word in the actor’s vocabulary, for without solid preparation, all the rest is irrelevant.

I have nothing else to say on the matter, excuses are for the weak, be prepared, arrive on time, tell someone else your sob stories and get on with your job, a job you are privileged to have and that three dozen people would kill you for.

Seriously now, be prepared or get out.

The Beauty of Truth

I love watching performance. There’s something magical that I’m drawn to in the actor’s art of storytelling. But most of the time, I confess, what I see is little short of rubbish. Sometimes the play is intellectual at the cost of the story, sometimes the ideas thrust upon the actors by the director are faulty and give the performance a pretentious or unnecessary edge which spoils what you see. And sometimes, the acting is no good. Correction, most of the time, the acting is no good.

What do I mean by ‘no good?’ Well, I mean that it was artificial, mechanical, empty, disconnected and most of all, it was bullshit. I use that as a technical term, bullshit is when I can sense the actor’s are lying to me. Something in their performance is not truthful, it is fraudulent and it stinks of artifice and even worse, the vilest sin of PRETEND.

I crave truthful performance. It is one of the most beautiful things that one can see. It often goes unnoticed because it is not showy, it is not marked by a sense of ‘performing’ or ‘acting’, it is subtle, unadulterated and most of all truthful.

Many acting techniques falsely believe that truth can be achieved through faith. If you just believe in the circumstances of the character enough, you’ll create truthful acting. That is pure nonsense. You are already truthful. The art of the actor, is NOT to work hard enough to create truth, it is instead, to reveal truth, the real whole truth of the moment to the audience. This is an act of courage and bravery that many actors find very difficult.

I was recently watching a rehearsal for a friend’s show at the Edinburgh Festival this year. I watched the performance and the actors all gave good ‘performances’, but that’s what they were ‘performances’, there was not a scrap of truth involved. But one actor’s performance, my friend, as it happens was so subtle that often, her fellow actors responded to her as if there was a problem and she had broken out of the performance, so truthful was her performance, so subtle, that even her colleagues, hearing the words they had heard a hundred times didn’t recognise the truth when they saw it. Or perhaps they did, and thought that she had stopped acting – which is of course exactly what she had done.

The beauty of truth is that it allows us to enjoy a ripping good story and not focus on the individual actor’s performance, which – in the end, is why they come.

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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Tags: acting truthfully

Illusion

Acting, the performance of an actor is the performance of action which creates an illusion, which is carried out with the complicity of the audience. No one thinks *real* magic is occurring, we just admire the work of a very gifted and hard grafting magician.

Character is illusion too, it does not require belief on the part of the actor, although self confidence is a must. When you perform the words of the writer, with something like the same intent as the character, then the illusion of character is created.

To create character is the job of the writer, to live fully the actions of the character, with great emotional availability, in the moment, in response to what your partners are doing now, that is acting. And the rest is children’s games and poppycock.

We are makers of magic, illusionists, not wizards. And with this knowledge a great weight and an impossible responsibility is lifted.

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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Tags: acting is an illusion

The Final Curtain

All shows end, some well, some not so well, but we all mourn the loss of our temporary family and their unique bond. Whether a long running tv show like Friends or a short Fringe show, through desperate and fabulous times we bond with these people. They are your friends, family, co-workers, and sometimes we fight and sometimes we excel ourselves.

Never forget that when the final curtain comes down, and we move on to our next temporary company, we have to build again, remain open minded, don’t compare, don’t bore them with war stories of past acting buddies and companies, instead start afresh, new friends, new adventures, new highs, new lows and thank any deity you please that you chose to be an actor and not some sensible thing.

The Character Myth

The creation of character is achieved through the augmentation and the suppression of aspects of your own personality.  Whether the reason for this is based on the facts of the play, your own imaginings, the rumbling in your stomach or the advice of the director, the creation of character is a relatively simple idea that is often over-complicated..
Whatever process that you are using or that you believe that you are using, running in the backgroud is the simplest of systems, the manipulation of your own personality to suit the needs of the play.

Let me posit a controvserial idea made popular by David Mamet. ‘There is no character.’ The character only exists as a collection of lines in a script.  Character does not become fully tangible until the words of the playwright and the physical action of an actor have been coupled with the complicit audience’s imagination.
To borrow a metaphor from Mamet, the actor and the magician aren’t so dissimilar. The actor creates the illusion of character in collusion with the writer and the audience. The magician trains long and hard to produce the illusion, they sell the illusion to the audience with their skill and the audience’s complicity.

The actor works in the same way, their skill works in complicity with the audience’s imagination to create the magic of theatre.  The magician does not need to believe in the trick, although it helps if they have faith in themselves.  They do not first need to get themselves into a state where they can actually believe that they can perform some kind of magic.  The aim of their practice is to perform the trick in such a way that the audience are completely sold on it.  This takes long hard practice and a skill for creating illusion. Their aim is not to believes that they are capable of scorcery.

Yet for many actors, their goal is to fool themselves that their invented circumstances are real.  Even the most successful must have days whilst trying to pretend something that isn’t real is real when they think ‘what the hell am I doing’?  This is not France, I’m not the Third Duke of Albany and I cannot stand that girl playing my wife in this play.  Sooner or later, common sense kicks in. When common sense kicks in two things happen.  First the actor berates themselves for not ‘staying in character’ a state they were never in in the first place, and secondly they try to force themselves to believe the plainly ridiculous.  Have you ever tried not to think of an elephant or stop feeling sad? The mind cannot be willed in this way and it certainly cannot be forced to pretend that the make believe is real.

For this type of actor, the great skill is not in convincing the audience that they are the Third Duke of Albany, but themselves!    When they have achieved this level of self-deception, they claim they are ‘in character’.  I would be posit that they were ‘mid-delusion’ instead.  Anything so self-centred leads them away from the audience and towards a sort of selfish self obsession.  It does not serve the play, or the audience. At best this work acts as a catalyst for the wrong focus during rehearsals and as worst it serves the actors ego. In the Common Sense approach, the actor is a magician, creating an illusion. The illusion of character is created for and with the audience’s collusion. The skills of an illusionist can be learned, repeated, developed, improved upon and performed.   In more traditional Stanislavski-inspired approaches, the actor is a wizard creating real magic.  The magic of character is that it comes from nowhere, is unexplainable, cannot be explained or reproduced.

Playing Real People

Of course, playing real people throws up additional challenges.  The desire to be historically accurate may lead the actor on a wild goose chase.  This actor is serviced by the desire to read or hear glorious praise as to authentic facsimilie of the real figure that they have achieved.
They will be lauded for getting the ‘hands right’, or the ‘mannerism’s or whatever.  Whilst this is laudable, it is surely not the essential aspect of a script about this person, surely it is their story that the audience loves, not a test of the actor’s capacity for impersonation of historical personages.
There is an inheritent problem in playing real characters.  An actor playing the role of the Nazi Minister for Propaganda ‘Goebbels’ can do all of the research on that real person that they like, but the character in the play is not really Goebbels, they are an imaginary character in a work of fiction.  This barely crosses most minds, actor nor audience.  This character may represent Goebbels, may use the real Nazi’s words, but is still a literary device in a piece of dramatic fiction.

The one positive route is that with some historical figures, it is possible to read about or watch footage of them moving and their behaviour.  This gives the actor a physical skin to wear during the rehearsal and performance of the play.  However, the danger here is to ignore the inner life of the character, the desire and the actions they take to achieve it, instead preferring to take self pleasure in achieving an admirable level of impersonation.  At the end of the day, impersonation is not immediately helpful to us either because all of this hard work does not answer the simple question:

What’s happening in the scene?

Instead this impersonation work simply fills valuable time.  I’m not for a second saying it can’t add significant depth in helping the actor create the illusion of a character  However, because the real person and the fictional person are entirely different in their essence, all the physical work does not help the actor to play the scene.  The fictional character has completely different needs from the real person, if these are not address all the ground work in the world won’t really help the actor. If they have not prepared the groundwork with a thorough understanding of the scene, this physical work on the authentic reproduction of the character becomes a shield with which the actor will eventually use to hide from the role and the scene itself. Another danger is ‘creating the character’ through improvisation and exercises.  Whilst these may be valuable rehearsal tools, they are also widely used to fill time.  Since many directors are unsure of what to do help the actors to perform the roles they have been chosen for, well meaning games and exercises aim to tease and tempt the actor’s muse into delivering on their end of the contracted bargain.   Character cannot be built outwith the scene and then imported in. First this type of actor fully fools themselves (pretends) that they are the character.  They falsely believe that the deeper the state of self-delusion the more readily they will have prepared themselves to truthfully live the character’s responses to the given circumstances.  The irony of someone in a state of self-delusion trying to truthfully do anything should not be overlooked.

Many actors struggle with the process of ‘finding their character’ in rehearsal.  They feel guilty that their well trained creative powers have failed them on this occasion and they feel, unworthy of the role bestowed upon them.  Most of them never think to look in the text of the play for the answer.  There was once a highly regarded and experienced actor who sat in his dressing room before the dress rehearsal, desperately trying to find a link to their character.  Falsely believing that their job as an actor was about creating another personality, they had tried and tried to do this but could not.  Finally after this long silent stare, he decided to shave his head and cut off his beard.  There! That was the character.  This was what he had been missing.  He had found his character and strode onto the stage with confidence.  But what had really happened? What was the problem he really faced and why did his highly spontaneous act of hair removal give him such confidence?

The real problem was not that he could not find his character.  There was really no character to find.  His real problem was one that so many actors would share.  He was afraid.  He was afraid because he didn’t know what to do.  This was the real problem.  He didn’t suffiently comprehend what he had to do.
But is this possible? Surely an actor who has spent his life on the stage knows what to do.  I would say not.  If his long experience has taught him anything, it’s that his way of working is based on impulse and instinct, a thrilling ride, but highly inconsistent.  It has lead him to make radical and bold artistic choices, none of which were connected to the play being performed.  He was probably lauded for those choices though.    He has some ideas of how to be entertaining, how to say the lines, how to demonstrate his indepedent acts of creativity, but he had no solid technique that could help him perform the scene.
Learning to play the scene in the moment as it happens is the real gift to the actor.   Truthfully responding to what you see happening in front of you, based on the circumstances of the play.

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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The Last Moment of a Monologue

So many actors kill their monologues in the last few moments. A few things can happen. Sometimes there’s a moment where it finishes and they look embarrassed with themselves, that usually kills the moment. Another thing is when they break the moment and immediately look at the panel, like a small child who has just finished using the toilet. Others rush the end, to get it finished and to put it beyond them. All of these and more ways exist to kill the moment and leave the auditiors/panel feeling cheated. The people watching you are always a few moments behind you in comprehending what you are saying. If you end abruptly, without a moment to let it sink in, you cheat them, and they won’t thank you for it.

End the monologue with purpose. Finish with strength, leave an impression.

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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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

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Tags: Acting craft

The Director Just Gets In The Way

Nine times out of ten, the director you are working with undertands less about acting than your mailman.  This is a rather sad conclusion that I have come to recently. I didn’t ask my mailman, but I’ve dealt with a lot of other directors and heard plenty of first hand accounts of dealing with directors from actors that I trust.  You see, the director’s job is to help the actor to do their job.  And yet, most directors say that but then heap, no burden upon the actor a whole host of suggestions, ideas and directions that are not only garbage, but they are impracticable, and for those of you without a dictionary, that means that those spoutings from the God-head are.. not capable of being put to use.

So what are they then?  They are ‘the best they can do in the situation’.  And the situation is, they don’t not squat about acting.  They know what they want, they can create it visually, but they are damned if they can get those naughty children the actors to stop yapping for five minutes and do what they’re told.

The actor knows how to perform. It is their gift, or it is their discovery.  They know how to do it.  And yes, they are not always the best judge of their own performance BUT… most frequently, it would be better for them to have no vision than to try to take on board the suggestions of the director.

Most of the time, the director just gets in the way of what the actor is doing.  Sure, it helps to have a performance editor, but that’s no what directors do, they instead come up with ‘the good ideas’ and then they force them onto the performers.  Not all directors, like I said, 1/10 is smart.

So what am I saying? Do away with directors.  Not entirely no.  But the director needs to understand their role better, they are master of ceremonies, conductor of the act of creation, but they must also know and understand how to make performance, how to speak to performers and how to provoke from actors the performance required by the play in action.  Not from the picture in the director’s head, their ‘vision’ is usually little more than idle, self-gratification.

So directors, this is for you.

Actors and director have one task.  To stage the play.  Discuss the play until you all understand it from a practicable, actable point of view.  All else is academic twaddle and a waste of time.  Forget your clever ideas, open your lug-holes and listen to the actors, their instincts are often golden, guide them through any difficulties, then build a play area for them in rehearsal, let them play inside this area, but reinforce the boundaries.  Rehearse the piece often enough that it is never set in stone.  That’s the trick of course.  Because rehearsal by its nature creates stasis, things begin to degrade, just as the performance grows near.  Trust your actors, trust their abilities, you have built the play area for them, now let them go play and marvel at what they can do, without your meddling.

Do these things and stay out of the way of the actors.  They don’t need your vision, they need a little help from time to time.

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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Tags: Lessons on Directing from an Acting Coach

Ruffalo and Adler…. Whose performance inspired you?

I was very lucky in 2006 to see Mark Ruffalo in Awake and Sing! on Broadway, it was one of my favourite moments in the theatre.  A great cast, an incredible play.

So, I’m asking what performances inspired you?  Feel free to comment, whose performance made you realise you wanted to be involved in this crazy busy, in this wicked but alluring industry?

I’d love to hear your stories.

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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Get beneath the words

The words are the surface level of human interaction. Like the iceberg, these are the bits that stick out of the water, while the rest, the real stuff of human connection and interaction lies beneath.

Our jobs as actors is not to control how we say the lines, but instead to get beneath the lines to the intent of the character and from there to the essence of the psychophysical action that we must perform.

Words are there to communicate meaning, they are anything but this. They are tools, weapons, tactics for manipulating, outmaneuvering… coercing, damaging, destroying… Whatever it takes to get what they want, on this topic Mamet says ‘we may or may not say what we mean, but we always say something designed to get what they want’.

So if we are to bring life to this character, we do so, not by getting under their skin (they have none), but through a detailed analysis of the biggest clue the writer can give us, the words.

When we understand a character’s intent, we understand what we must do in the scene, all other things are extraneous.

Speak the words of the character with something like their intent and voilà the illusion of character is created.

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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Connecting to the Role

I’ve seen a lot of theatre, tv and film acting and the problem that I see is a lack of a genuine connection between the actor and the role to be played.

What this lack of connection creates is an insincerity in performance by the actor. The amateur believes that this is due to a failure to reach an emotional understanding of the role and scene and a further failure to reproduce this on stage. This more than usually produces scenes of generalised emoting that is boring to watch.

Further, the actor trying to emote their way to a connection ends up digging and digging deeper and deeper in each performance, searching for an emotional depth but delivering an ever shallowing performance that is painful to watch. Forgiveable because one can see how hard the actor is working, but still dreadful.

What the professional understands is how to access the connection to the role without the need to seek emotion. We ask not what is the character feeling and how do I reproduce this, but instead we ask what is the character doing, and then we find a way of doing that which is in line with the writer’s intention, which is sincere, which is truthful.

By focusing the actor on what the character is doing in the scene, we avoid the emotional trap and produces engaging and captivating performance.

The advanced students of our Glasgow acting classes create this kind of beautiful work every week and it’s not just watchable, it’s magical and inspirational.

And critics of our way of working say that by focusing on the doing, it creates empty performances.. Think again.

Tags: connecting to the character, connecting to the role

Influential Acting Teachers….

Test Your Knowledge of Acting Today.  Take a look at each photograph below and see if you know who these important influences on acting are!

So…

Congratulations if you recognise all FIVE photographs, answers will be in tomorrow’s blog post…

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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Get Out of Your Own Way…

I know, I haven’t blogged for a while, life is complex, but here’s one about something that’s been on my mind.

For the past few months, it seems that I’ve been saying the same thing to many of my students.  That the fundamental learning change that they need to make is not one of acquiring new skills, but of getting out of their own ways.  But what does this actually mean?

Once have some basic elementary technique, the real change that must occur with the actor, the most vital task is to remove the barriers of internal resistance between impulse and action.  And so our task becomes to nurture the instant relationship between inner impulse and external reaction, to remove the time delay, and this requires not belief in the imaginary, nor supplication to a technique, or genuflection to a teacher, but the dissolution of our own inner resistance.

So, alongside our skills training, we also work for the removal of those personal blocks that impede the spontaneous impulse, to reduce the time between reaction and action, action and reaction.  This is not a new idea in any form, it is expressed by Mamet as ‘Getting Out of Our Own Way’ and by Grotowski as working via Negativa.

The actor that works to destroy the internal resistance will be able to show the tiniest, the least impulse as it flashes through the body.

This requires an exceptionally brave actor, one who is willing without bullshit to reveal themselves, their most intimate moments to the audience for their pleasure and entertainment.  It not only requires that the actors knows themselves, but that they learn their own tricks and brutally dismantle them.  It demands the actor discover their boundaries and their barriers and bulldozes them.  It necessitates the actor to trust their teacher, because none of us go easily into this state.  We must also learn that criticism is not our enemy, good criticism, criticism that can be acted upon is the very best kind of help.  Trust your teacher, but do not make him/her your friend, it is impossible for your friend to help you get out of your own way, they have too much invested in not upsetting you.  Sometimes when working to remove these internal blocks, the teacher must be harsh or brutal to you, they may also try sensitively talking to you as well, but the chances are that you will respond to this with defenses and excuses.

To work this way often requires the circumvention of thought, as least introspective and reflective thought.  This is often where the resistance lies.  The little voice in your head.  Self-image and the self-consciousness are the seat of internal resistance.  At our pinnacle, training must be, what the Zen practitioner calls ‘No Thought and No Image’.  Action and Reaction exist in us as a spontaneous and impulsive energy ready to ebb and flow with the impulses, unimpeded by barriers, blocks and walls of resistance.

Those that are interested in the idea of Via Negativa in Performance Training, might like to read Jerzy Grotowski’s Towards A Poor Theatre.

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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Tags: How to get out of your own way as an actor, via negativa

Upwards or Backwards?

The task of the improvement of craft, which is or should be what we all seek, is an upward struggle. Like Sisyphus that boulder doesn’t get any lighter and the gradient does not fall away. It is an endless labour.

Like Sisyphus you are either pushing your career/craft up hill or you are letting it slide back down. Upwards or backwards. There is no standing still. Continually onwards with no time for resting.

When you train and when you work, all tasks can be divided this way. You are either committed to constant development or you are slipping back and atrophying your skills.

You are pushing the boulder up the hill, but the moment you stop pushing, then you are headed back down. It’s all or it’s nothing. You either push forward or slip back.

At each point in your training, you should ask yourself, am I pushing?, am I working my hardest? or am I coasting or stuck on cruise control?

It’s all, or it’s nothing. Which action have you committed to?

Betrayal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you Dave, your betrayal has set us free.

Tags: david mamet's theatre, Practical Aesthetics

The Business of Show

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

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

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

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

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

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