ON ACTING: Variety in Performance

Variety is the natural and inevitable range of a winner...and a good actor. As any scene is a conflict, a natural winner is one who is unafraid of paying the widest range of emotional prices to achieve victory in that scene. A long scene should be a priori evidence to the actor that positive results are not easily forthcoming with one, and only one, emotional tactic. Variety in performance is automatically present when conflictual life is fully engaged in by goal-oriented people whose emotional courage frees them to have many emotional options at their command.

The presence of emotional variety in a scene, while required for exciting acting life, is, like all the other elements of excellent acting, logical to (exciting) life, on or off stage. Natural winners create emotional variety naturally; it is an inevitable concomitant to their desire to win. “All right; here’s my anger. Now do I win?” No. “All right; here’s my sadness. Now do I win?” No. “All right; here’s my sexiness. Now do I win?”

Emotional flexibility is built into the survival/winning mechanism; as the emotional system moves from one emotion to another until it finds the one that works. Only fear inhibits emotional range and flexibility; thereby rendering the fullness of the human system unavailable for effective use.

Actors must abjure fear, and embrace courage.