I Don't Need an Acting Class

“Once you go to the script, all creative work stops” Milton says. It’s a provocative statement but it’s true if you consider how most actors jump straight to a performance or an intelligent rendering of the lines before they ever have an understanding of the world they’re inhabiting, or even a monologue’s sequence of thoughts. In this week’s short episode, Milton uses the short film he’s working on as an example of what it looks like to work slowly, even on a smaller scale. Brought to you by weaudition.com

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It’s something every actor can relate to: you walk in the room, onstage on in front of the camera. Your heart is racing, your mouth is dry, and before you even speak, you know your nerves are getting the best of you. In that moment, instead of trusting all the work you’ve done and living off the given circumstances, you fall back into “performance mode,” that same, old, tired gimmicky “thing” you’ve been getting by on all your life. This, according to Milton, is just part of the process. Eventually, we begin to trust that the work we’ve done is in us and it’s enough. Brought to you by weaudition.com 

Stanislavsky’s Method of Acting was born out of trial and error. He was not a natural talent. Had he been, we probably would not have been gifted with his discoveries of the craft. By analyzing his students’ successes and failures, and his own, he created techniques that were practical and coaxed the actor “toward the inner most source of their creativity.” Brought to you by weaudition.com

As you gain a deeper understanding of the role you’re playing through analysis and rehearsal, it’s important that we give ourselves permission for our actions, or impulses, to change. It’s not something static that we decide in advance. And, if an action becomes stale and is no longer bringing you to life, it’s essential that it changes. Brought to you by weaudition.com

Today we revisit a question that actors never stop asking. The ability to know whether or not you’ve made a good choice is part your talent, and it’s a skill you can hone over time. A choice has to feed you emotionally but it also has to be appropriate to the character and the world of the play. And the more you know about the world that you’re in, the more it feeds your imagination which becomes fertile ground for amazing choices. Brought to you by weaudition.com

Stanislavsky never wanted a set vocabulary of acting. The words he used were an outgrowth of the creative work he was doing with actors. They pointed to ideas that brought actors to life, gave them something to hold onto. In other words, it was never *about* the words. Nowadays, we've become so focused on vocabulary, it's lost its meaning. So instead of asking yourself: what’s your action in the scene?” It might be more helpful to ask: “why are you going out there?” Or, “why am I telling you this?” Have an acting question for Milton? Email him at [email protected] Brought to you by weaudition.com

Our job, as actors is so much more profound than playing the part and getting applause. As Stella Adler’s father said to her: “We need to make it better for them.” When we understand what the play is fundamentally saying to the audience, and what your character represents, it not only gives us something to hold onto, but something to aspire to, lift ourselves up to. It is a universal human idea or lesson that the audience will be better for having learned when they leave the theater. Plus, Milton goes off on Wesley at the end for “trying to get it right”, so that’s fun. Brought to you by weaudition.com

When building a character we can use the facts that are available to us in any way that will help us. Just as this is true for our character’s past, physical life or way of seeing the world, it is also true of the time period in which our character lives. Some helpful questions are: how does this time period effect who my character is? And how can I translate that information into behavior?

“If you’re waiting for the director to help you, you’re going to be dead in the water,” says Milton. This episode is about taking ownership of your process, how you work. This builds confidence and independence as actors. Most directors don’t understand how we do what we do, so we have to be able to translate their effect-directions into something doable. Also, we never want to feel that our performance is dependent on a director. We do however, want to be able to depend on our process, always. This empowers us and allows us to take pride in our work as creative artists.

This week, we return to the Russian word Rasbor, which means “to dig down” beneath what you’re talking about to get to the big, cosmic idea. This is a new way of thinking in terms of acting, a muscle that we’re not accustomed to exercising. When we talk about our characters, it should never be about accuracy, or information or words. When we talk about our characters, it should be in a way that shows we understand, experientially, the meaning of the idea. How do we get there? Through “Rasbor.” We must scratch the surface of our impressions and discoveries to reach the true meaning, or big idea, of what we’re talking about. This connects us, vitally, to the character, bringing us to life and giving us something to hold onto.