An Apology

DM said, in gentle rebuttal to my blog writing about stage actors and their potential for dishonest acting:

"Of course, stage acting isn't [necessarily] lying, on stage, right? Nothing [inherently] dishonest in projection and physicality. Just say'n."

My response (and "just sayn" respectfully back):

"You are absolutely right, David. You're right. Nothing dishonest about speaking the truth loudly and boldly. especially on stage; being moved by the truth onstage with a loud voice and large body movements, Sorry I was unclear about that. I guess I was too worried about some actors, when performing in theater, often producing fake acting in order for 'projection' to occur. Thanks for forcing me with your question/statement to clarify the possibility of 'truth' and 'projection' cohabitating in reality onstage."

ON ACTING: The Director

The director is primarily the audience’s representative, their "eyes" and "ears", on the set. He guides the camera and microphone to what he thinks is most important for the audience to see and hear at any particular moment. (The editing of the rhythm and succession of the images on screen in film, to be done later in the editing room in collaboration with the editor, can also be seen as fulfilling this “audience-witnessing-through-directorial-guiding” requirement. It can be seen as placing the various and sundry already filmed actor(s) in the best or most kinesthetically impacting time and space film continuum.)

Unfortunately I’ve known many amateur directors (and more than a few professionals) who define their task with actors exclusively physical: “Well…the actor’s were seen and heard. I did my job.” Or: “Hey, it was beautifully shot and edited.” Left unsaid: “Don’t blame me if the actors’ performances sucked!”

The truth is, the director has not done her job if the actor’s performances sucked. If that occurs, the director is only performing half her task in the physical mounting of the performance.

Her job, if she is any good, is more than just getting performances seen, heard and filmed. She must also insure that the author’s intent in the piece (or as she so defines it!) is realized, and that the actor performances are worth being seen and heard: that the actors’ truth-in-reality is being witnessed through the physicalization of the performance.

The director is the means to an end. The actor’s performance is the end. That is why Stanislavski said: “The great director dies within the actor.”

ON ACTING: The Danger of Solitary Rehearsal

Solitary rehearsal is one of the great toxins to interdependent real acting, too often a strong siren call to bad acting, a Sargasso Sea of good intentions. In rehearsals, whether solo or public, through endless repetition, and we often unfortunately get into a solo performance modality: we have everything planned down to the last detail.

So by the time we enter performance, we are operating as if in a glass bell jar. We know in advance what we are going to say, and we know how we are going to respond the other characters….irrespective of the actual ensuing reality of the living, vital other persons on stage or on set with us at the time; we are acting not with that other real persons-as-characters, but with straw dogs of our own solo-rehearsed or self-rehearsed making.

The other actor in the real performance scene has by now has become a figment of our imagination, not the living, shifting breathing spontaneous person in front of us. Rather s/he is some imagined personage from our rehearsal, a straw dog to deal with as we predetermined.

The other actor could be any actor in the cast or even off the street. It doesn't matter to the locked-into-rehearsal bad actor; s/he would still act and react to them in performance all the same!

Love rehearsal; but beware of it. See rehearsal as a planned set of desired possibilities; not permanent choices set in stone. Reality (in performance) must always trump planned expectations; as it does in life...which is what we are trying to create on stage.

ON ACTING: Relationships; Past and Present

Past experience may color my "relationships," color my experience with people, but the past is merely a modifier; the present objective quest is the main determinant of my present emotional "relationship"; and therefore in the most fundamental ways is the prime determinant of my emotion-sourcing of my actions and reactions. Therefore, as a guide to actors, when enacting “relationships”, consider the present as primary noun and verb, the past mere adjectival and adverbial.

For example, when Hamlet’s father appears onstage in Act I of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, he and Hamlet obviously have a lot of past, they are father and son, after all--and they initially relate accordingly--but the father’s and son's primary relationship in the scene is based on the Ghost wanting something from Hamlet in the present. In fact that’s why he appears to Hamlet at that particular point of time and place. That’s why he talks to him. Their primary and basic "relationship" in the scene is based on the King's desire to convince his son to enact revenge on Claudius, the usurping King! And Hamlet wants something from the King: "Go away! Don’t burden me with old guilt and old love, with a new severe responsibility of regicide. Be a dead father and not a demanding present one. Return to the netherworld. Let me remain happily a student."

That is what the whole scene (and play) is about: Will Hamlet fulfill his father’s present need for revenge, or will Hamlet find an excuse to shirk his filial obligation? The conflict of the scene becomes the King’s present need for revenge set against Hamlet’s need to maintain and enjoy his youthful innocence.

The past relationship (father and son; and the attendant emotions) is prelude to this essential present relationship, that of revenge-seeking father versus equivocating son. Past may be texture on the present, but the real drama, the real "relationship" governing the scene's primary feelings (and actions and dialogue) is whether The Ghost-father will get Hamlet to kill Claudius.

Their present father-son relationship is based on that. It trumps any past feelings they may have/had for one another.

Film Reviews + Apology

Sorry I have been away from this blog so long; I have been putting the finishing touches on a soon-to-be published acting text.

During my absence I did (bad boy) go to three movies: "The Informant", "The Damn United" and "Couples Retreat".

The "Informant" is a big movie with a big star, but unfortunately it is typical stylistically of its time: it mistook confusion for profundity. There is the content problem also. It is a charming but fragmented tale about a pathological liar and his involvement with Archer, Daniel's Midland--an agro-business par excellence; thereby a perfect and deserving target for the liberal film maker's condemnation. Whereas ADM deserved all the shots he film took, but the film could have been more balanced in the attack. Unfortunately, the film, a political satire, kept this film viewer's possible identification at a distance. It is as if had someone had taken me on a hunting trip to kill a deer that was already tied to a stake in the ground. I would have backed off from the all too obvious invitation.

"The Damn United" is s a well-made film about the great British soccer player and coach, Brian Clough. It is a film made with the artistic intent to make you understand and ultimately sympathize with a course, driven anti-hero. It would have more fully succeeded if the actor playing the lead, Michael Sheen of "Nixon/Frost" and "The Queen" fame, had carried in his otherwise excellent performance more of what actor's call, sub-text. Ultimately I didn't care for the film's Brian Clough because I didn't see and feel, in Sheen's performance, the vulnerable, identifiable emotion that drove Clough to such an ambitious life/career course. The film hinted at it, but Sheen didn't (are he rarely does other performances) carry it. Although a star, and a deserving one, Sheen is a cold, albeit brilliant, mechanical performer. He must one day learn to feel, and then one day I will learn to feel for him. (Ironically a brief few shots of the real Brian Clough in some ending documentary-flavored scene, fixated me. The real Brian Clough, especially in his eyes where human sub-text is always most truly revealed, seemed a wild animal, insecure and needy, the perfect emotions that explain this obsessively driven and ambitious human animal. In the stills, I cared for that arrogant, course man, because I felt his feelings.) In Sheen, through Sheen and his performance, I felt nothing. Sorry.

"Couples Retreat" is an embarrassment. The star, Vince Vaughn, a wonderful comic actor (and dramatic actor when he and others give him a chance to manifest that now-often-hidden side of himself) has his fingerprints all over the film: co-writer, producer, and star. It is a buddy film at the core; and all the men in the film seem to be on an actor's (as opposed to characters') retreat: let's have a good time making a movie, in a beautiful place, with lots of beautiful women, and lots of booze around; where we (through the script) can be witty and ribald, do plenty of dialogue improvization and self-congratulatory make fun of ourselves, to show how hip and post-modernly masculine aware we are. Because it is a "home movie" at its core, funny mainly to the participants and contemptuously rib-poking to the audience, the film fails, except with audiences who have a like attitude to their uber-masculinity in this sensitive post-feminist world.

"It's all bullshit," Vince Vaughn would often think and say when he was young (I was his acting teacher in the early first three years of his career) and now he exemplifies that attitude (brilliantly and winningly) over and over again in his very successful general comic acting career. The problem is, in this film, Vince is the not playing a cynical "it's all bullshit" type lead. He is the normal everyday eyes through whom the film, and its more outlandish other characters, are to be seen. And in this film Vince has trouble making the adjustment from sidekick wise ass in other more successful films to scripted Tom Hanks "eyes of the audience" type role in this film.

Vince has trouble taking his character's plight seriously, and so we don't. The film is "all bullshit," as Vince would say.

He's right.

ON ACTING: Film Acting; The Good News and the Bad News

To stage actors who also want to act before the camera, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that whatever truth the actor creates, whatever the size or subtlety of performance, the camera and microphone can and will pick it up and enhance it. No need to worry about projection. The bad news is: all false acting will be picked up also. “The camera never lies." (Which means the actor better not lie; give a false, fake, unreal performance or it will be discovered). Film is rigorously revealing. Stage actors should remember: you may get away with lying on stage, but in film tell the truth. The audience is right in your face. (I lie better on the phone--at a distance--than I do in person.)

ON ACTING: From a Former Student

From A. V.:

"I doubt you remember me as your student. It's been a few years now. You've had tons of students since I studied with you in SF. I've been in LA for three years now and I am doing okay. I work still on what you taught me. Make it simple and make it truthful and keep yourself open for discovery.
Thanks man."

ON ACTING: Working for A Bad Director

A student asked me one time how to solve the problem of working for a director, who, in the audition process, was asking her for fake acting. The director was from the representational school of acting. How should she handle the director’s requests when all her inclinations and training are aimed toward emotional truth is performance? I said: “Don’t work for that director.” The actor stared at me. I stared back; then said: “Would you sign on as a member of the crew where the captain thinks the world is flat? She’ll lead you off the edge of the world.”

Creating a fake performance to please a misguided director is dangerous to long term acting health. No matter how much money a misguided director is willing to pay you, no matter how badly you need the job--for money or even for ego-boosting reasons-- working for a bad director is like accepting a lousy date to get a free meal: even if the meal tastes good at first, you eventually wind up with long-term indigestion.

ON ACTING: Transitioning from Theater to Film Acting

As an encouragement to theatre actors to drop any obligation for projection in film acting when entering film acting's more private world of behavior, the transitioned theater actor might do well to remember that on a film set there are sixty people worried about making sure the actor is seen and heard, but only one person…and one person only...the actor him/herself who is ultimately responsible for creating the good and honest acting performance; making sure the dialogue and movement to be seen and heard by the audience is worth seing and hearing; it is real, truthful acting.

The good news in film acting is that whatever truth the actor creates, whatever the size or subtlety of performance, the camera and microphone, the director and those sixty workers can and will pick it up and enhance it. No need to worry about projection.

The bad news is: any and all false acting will be also picked up also by the sixty people sending the performance to the more proximate film audience. “The camera never lies”; unfortunately some theater-transitioning actors do. They must remember, when transitioning to film, that film is rigorously revealing. Stage actors are advised to adopt the following mantra: "Lie over the phone (from the safe distance of the stage) if need be. However, in film always tell the truth. The film audience is right in your face."

ON ACTING: "Sometimes You Have to be Cruel to be Kind"

There was a new student in class who had just finished a “camera technique” class at another institution. We were about to tape her first scene in my class.

She was glowing with new found knowledge and spoke of her "responsibility to the director and viewing audience", asking me where I was going to set up the camera in order to film the scene.

She fumed and fretted about camera placement throughput the rehearsal classes.

She was particularly unhappy with how we were filming her; said she had just discovered from camera class her left side was her best side; that the audience would get more of the power of her performance from that side.

Finally, on the day of shooting, I told her I wanted to face away from camera.

She was shocked. She said no one would see her; the camera would only see the back of her head. Afetr a long silent moment, I replied: “With the fake, unreal performance you’ve been giving, the audience will be grateful.”

Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

ON ACTING: A Repeat on Reactions

In everyday life, the exact moment a feeling occurs is not a static, predictable thing; ad good actors must respond accordingly.

German linguistic and cultural patience aside (Germans must stand and wait until the last word of a sentence to hear the verb; when I read German, that often meant I had to wait until the end of the sentence to understand the full textual meaning), next time you have a conversation with someone, be aware at what point what they are saying has emotional meaning to you; that is, when the sentence/dialogue becomes logically/emotionally impacting on you. You will find these moments very greatly from sentence to sentence. (Sometimes, in fact, you may even find your inner reaction occurs even before they begin speaking: ‘we know what they are going to say from the look on their face'; and that's when our emotional reaction to them begins).

As in everyday life, the good actor responds according to the pattern of everyday life; which means they must be truly looking, listening, touching, smelling and tasting during a scene in order to be honestly and spontaneously feeling.

ON ACTING: Creating "Moment to Moment"

Only bad actors want long scenes. Good, real-life actor's-as-characters want short scenes; quick victories. The honest actor-as-character moves through a scene to achieve her objectives with her first line; she only moves to the second line because the first line failed; and she only moves to the third line because the second line failed. Throughout the scene, no matter what the length, the good actor's attitude is “All right; one more line…but I’m sure that one will succeed.” When that doesn’t succeed, the character thinks: “I'll only have to try one more line,” etc. The actor-as-character naive optimism creates the necessary and valid "moment by moment" quality of an honest actor's performance.

ON ACTING: From John Wooden

"Failure is not fatal but failure to change might be."

"A coach is someone who can give correction without casing resentment."

ON ACTING: From Aristotle

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

ON ACTING: The Character's Past

An actor who ‘plays’ his characters as if having continual profound insights into the past, always and invariably understanding it , and even worse, all too willing to feel and reveal its emotional effect on his present conflict(s) is giving a starkly dishonest performance.

It must be remembered that a character speaks about the past only because she has to speak about the past. In real life, we think about the past only because the present lacks fulfillment. The past is re-visited only because the present conflictual stimuli have brought the (so-called) “past” emotions, the mud of our lives, to the surface. We are forced to consciously review them, to deal with them, learn from them, to modulate them, to mollify them, to operate better by learning from them--and we only do to achieve our present objective.

An actor all too willing to have their character reveal the past should consider this: If the character had been so eager to talk about the past now, why didn't she do it sooner? Why wait until now? What is it that makes it so important to talk about it now?

A character only reviews the past under duress, under the urgency of the moment, of having to win. The character reveals the past to the another character (and herself)only in order to forestall the other character (or herself) from learning even more about herself, from discovering even deeper and more expensive self-truths…and all of this only in order to get what she wants from the other character as cheaply and expeditiously as possible.

ON ACTING: Thoughts on Thinking

Most people would agree that the human thinking process allowed humanity to dominate the world.

However, it was not a cost-free evolutionary leap. (If nothing else, a larger brain became an extra burden for the feet to carry). Thought takes effort.

Most people don’t want to think. Neither should actors-as-characters. Thinking (which is nothing more or less than a mental delay prior to overt physical action) is a human activity forced on us by the severity of prior inner emotional turmoil.

Even intellectuals would rather live without thinking: otherwise they would not look so dour and sour all the time--with wardrobes dominated with black, brown or gray--if thinking for them were such a wonderful and desirable a human activity.

The good actor must accept: the action of thinking must be motivated by a deep emotional dilemma caused by a prior moment in the scene; it is a result of a prior feeling problem for the character that can not go unresolved; hence it must be thought about.

ON ACTING: Reactions

A tip on re-acting, facially or otherwise: the good actor does not wait until the end of the other person’s dialogue to emotionally begin to react. True emotional reaction occurs at various and ever-changing moments during a listener’s and looker’s reception of dialogue.

Although the script may dictate your character is not to say anything until the other character’s dialogue is over, remember this: although your dialogue takes an extended time as it makes its circuitous path from your inner impulse to brain to mouth, your emotional response, and its non-verbal outer manifestations like movement, the look on one’s face, the shift of our stance, the formation of new ideas, etc., occur at different points in the other person’s conversation.

Real emotional reactions begin at all junctures in all conversations. Only the bad actor just stands there with blank face waiting for the end of the other character’s words before reacting to the conversation. The good actor will listen and look, will feel and allow changes in both inner (feelings) and outer (facial, movement, etc.) as they occur emotionally all through conversation, not just when the other character’s dialogue has ended.

Although scripts (and courtesy to other actors who are speaking) may dictate a delay in the verbal response until the other character’s dialogue is over; this does not necessarily mean you should put a feeling response on hold. The complex, fluid multiple leveled reality of stimulus/synapse/response dictates a continuing state of feeling--and non-verbally reacting--during listening and looking.

Remember: the audience is watching both sides of an acting conflict. They know the rhythm of real interactive life, as they know the rhythm of an interactive tennis game: they know each player in a real game is reacting to the other’s approach toward the ball even although the actual return-of-shot (or return of dialogue) does not occur until some time in the future. Good performances occur in this spontaneous reactive and interactive interdependence…or they will be rejected by the audience.

ON ACTING: Language

Words are not written for the actor (by the writer) just to express a character's emotion. If emotional release were all that was involved in the effort to speak, people would simply groan or a wail or a bark. Expletives would mark the edge of human discourse.

Humans use words to convince other people. Actors must do the same.

Language--dialogue--is the human species' sophisticated way to logically maneuver the human landscape to their purposes. Language takes inner emotions to a higher and more functional purpose: to convert short term bursts of emotional energy into long-term functional instrumentality. Words converts inner emotional experience into logic, with the intent of convincing people to aid us in achieving long term goals.

ON ACTING: Passion

Theatre and film is about passion. I once asked an acting class what they were willing to die for. I got no response. I asked them what they were willing to kill for. They shrugged, confused. I told them that without definite answers to those questions, without the passion to be certain in regard to killing and dying, it was going to be a long, hard climb to becoming good actors.

ON ACTING: Feeling on Demand

Tim A writes again:

"I was wondering how do you approach a scene when you're obligated to do or feel something? For example, an actor approaches a scene in a movie where he is breaking up with his fiancee, and in the scene, he eventually breaks down crying. How do you deal with the obligation to cry? There are some actors that crying comes easy to them, but not that's not always true with some."

My answer:

Remember, Tim, to begin with: no one wants to cry, only actors. But good actors can be made to cry by the other characters or events in a scene; that is, on demand, precisely when the script requires them to cry.

The key to developing this sensitivity factor to crying or any other emotion is to erase the human impediments to emotional response that the actor is victim of; often learned over a life time of survival; to de-callous-ize ourselves, as it were. Re-sensitizing oneself to fulfill the demands of and actor's life can be done, but it requires work.

There are, in fact, tried and true actor's exercises that can enable an actor to strip away the desensitized and calloused covering of emotions; to mention a few: 'emotional recall', 'sense memory', 'substitution', etc., so that the actor can, on demand, be made to feel the intense emotions required at precise moments by a script. (As introductions and supplemental reading when practicing the exercises ad techniques, I recommend the written works of Stanislavski, Strasberg, and a host of followers of their insights and techniques.)