The Acting Blog

Know your Job

Greetings, apologies for the lack of blogs recently, been very busy, but which of us isn’t and excuses don’t cut it.

I’ve been reading Larry Moss’ book, The Intent to Live, he’s got some amazing clients and speaks a lot of sense, although personally I disagree with about 70% of it. His distaste for Mamet is evident, and many times his examples are born out of clear misunderstanding, but there’s still much to learn from Mr Moss.

I was thinking about at what point the actor’s own ideas begin to encroach on the script itself. Certainly my own experiences of the recorded media indicate to me that encroachment is the norm. There are so many opportunities for the actor to flex their creative and imaginative muscles in each role that it seems that impinging on the text is unnecessary.

It is when the actor’s choices damage the text and their relationship to it that it starts to become a problem.

It isn’t your job to ‘help’ the script, 9/10 your helping is a knee-jerk reaction to having to deal with the difficult part of acting. But you do not need to help the script, you need to develop the solid skills to open it up and fully explore it as an actor. If you think you can do better, then go write something but don’t be lazy and don’t feel that your creative domain includes the writer, how would you feel if the writer gave you performance notes….? Precisely.

Do your job, leave the others to do their own.

Tags: Larry Moss

Read Plays

I’ve been watching a great webcast with Larry Moss.  Now I was expecting Larry to be a giant asshole, because of the way he was in the Backstage article I posted a few weeks ago.  After his berating of Mamet, I immediately wanted to dislike him, but much of the webcast is excellent.  It’s true, I don’t agree with about 40% of it, but he’s sincere and he’s passionate and he’s a proper acting teacher, rather than most of the charlatans that operate in our profession.  It’s a very recent interview, so enjoy

Part of the excellent webcast and Larry Moss is talking about scene analysis, and he says something like ‘You’ve got to fall in love with writers’.  And how right he is.  Acting is falling in love with language, because language is the only portal to action, language is the only portal to character for the actor.  That makes a lot of sense.  Only through your understanding of the play will have access to the role.   Fall in love with great writers, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Miller, Williams, Shanley, Moliere, Aristophanes, they will teach you so much about words and language and good writing, that you will know what to do with all kinds of writing.  Read plays, read great plays and if you want some suggestions, ask me and I’ll tell you some to read.  Shakespeare is a great start, think it’s difficult? It is! But you get used to it, and it demands your literacy.  I noticed that my younger students suffer from a lack of literary awareness and this makes them much less sensitive to language, and particularly they don’t easily

I’m 100% serious.  One of my Top 10 essential tips for an actor is READ PLAYS.  Read lots of plays.  If you can’t afford to buy them, go the library.

Practical Aesthetics people will find some very relevant and some very familiar sounding terminology.  However, he does move towards the use of imagination.  I find it difficult to find truth in imagination, my common sense sets off alarms.  Being asked to believe in the pretend doesn’t work for me, it requires faith, a faith that I don’t think I need.  Unfortunately towards the end of the webcast, Larry starts responding to a message (feels like a plant) about Mamet.  He believes Mamet is misinformed and destructive.  Has anyone actually read True and False, or do they just generalise?

Watch the Larry Moss webcast for yourself here.

Tags: Backstage, David Mamet, Larry Moss

A REALLY excellent article from Backstage about the difference in Acting Techniques

Hey All

I rarely write these shorties with links, but I REALLY think you should read this excellent article in Backstage.

Please read it, you’ll greatly benefit from it, it’s very interesting and it was hard to find!

http://pages.prodigy.net/delossbrown/backstage.html

It’s an excellent look at the various approaches to acting, particularly American, but it gives Karen Kohlhaas a chance to express about Practical Aesthetics and gives Larry Moss a chance to call Mamet ‘asshole’.  Moss says he’d say it to his face, I reckon Mamet would kick his ass.

Tags: Backstage, David Mamet, Karen Kohlhaas, Larry Moss, Shakespeare