The Bold Acting Podcast

Learn from the greats. You might not know Alison Steadman but you should watch her performances and see if you can’t benefit by taking a page out of her playbook. She’s acted in Mike Leigh movies, The King’s Man, Pride & Prejudice and my favourite Gavin & Stacey among others. Her performances are surprising, unlikely, bold yet grounded in reality. Liste…

Today I read three newsletters and answer three questions. I love the Q&As. If you have a question you want answered on the show email me a voice memo to [email protected].

For more information go to https://boldacting.com.

Drop-in to my Sunday night cold-read class in Toronto. Email me at [email protected] and I’ll put you on the list.

Sign up to my free newsletter at boldacting.substack.com

Find my podcast The Bold Acting Podcast wherever the podcasts are.

Watch many of my videos on acting like:

Barbara Stanwyck besting Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity.

Frances MacDormand bringing the heat in Three Billboards.

Michael Stuhlbarg and Timothée Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name.

Thanks for the five star rating. Apparently it helps. How should I know? I’m a dinosaur.

This week five conversations with creatives from the archives.

Yael Staav is an award-winning Film and TV director I used to share an office with. She interviews me for a change. Then I speak to the director of Whale Music, Barney’s Version and Westworld, Richard J. Lewis. After that I speak to my old comedy partner David Milchard who is a veritable internet sensation. Don Enright is an Emmy award -winning producer and a Hollywood legend with a tonne of great stories. And finally while shooting commercials in Romania I sit down with my director Jeff Low who speaks on depression, Communism and sex work. Wide ranging talks for your enjoyment.

For more information go to https://boldacting.com.

Drop-in to my Sunday night cold-read class in Toronto.

Email me at [email protected]

Sign up to my free newsletter at boldacting.substack.com

Introducing an earlier podcast of mine you might not have listened to. To My Glorious Self is a book of essays I have partially podcasted. Find all the episodes wherever the podcasts are. Originally aired March 2nd, 2022. The names and some details have been changed to protect the innocent.

Actors are some of our most vulnerable, most insecure yet underrated members of society. We are prone to hyperbole, unemployment, mental illness, addiction and wasting an ungodly amount of money on psychics. So if you’re thinking about befriending one of us -- like me -- please handle with care.

Music from Uppbeat:

https://uppbeat.io/t/braak/sure

License code: AVTXANAUYZXHSHB0

This week I talk about:

* How advantageous it can be to be the foil. Mine the contrary.

* The power of the opposite is highly underrated.

* The Tour de France is on. Are you working as hard as they are?

* Spend time doing nothing.

* When we make art for ourselves we speak to other hearts.

And I answer these three questions:

* From Tanya in Toronto: “Hi, I’m an actor not taking your class but currently enrolled in another school. My parents are less than supportive about my dream. What can I say to get them on my side?

* From Gary in Burquitlam, BC. “Hi Jason, I’m doing adult these days but I want to go legit. Can I put my credits on my resume?

* From Stacey Ray in LA. “Hi Jason. Thanks for the podcast. I really find the honest approach helpful. I'm a Canadian in LA and I’ve been here for 11 years. It hasn’t happened for me the way I wanted it to. I’ve been in a couple pilots that didn’t go. I was in an Apatow movie that no one really saw. I’m 36 and a woman in LA and I don’t know if I can take it much more. But is Canada any better? I feel like Canadian actors never get cast in US shows anyway. So how would moving back home be an improvement?

Submit your questions directly to me at [email protected].

Drop-in to my Sunday night cold-read class in Toronto. For more info go to boldacting.com.

Sign up to my free newsletter at boldacting.substack.com

Watch my many other videos like on playlists like “How the Greats Do It” and “Audition Technique”.

Actors hate auditioning. It’s a lot of work for nothing. 99% of the time nothing comes of it. Auditioning is a lottery ticket, with commensurate odds, that you pay for with your time and energy.

The only way around them is to become a star so that they just give you parts. Or you can go do something else altogether … like plumbing. Plumbers make nearly as much as your family doctor.

Or you can make the audition not for casting but for yourself. Without expectation. If you don’t care about the result then you’ll quickly forget the audition you just had and you’ll be free to make the audition you want. Forgetting is important because it’s out of your hands. Focussing on the things that are beyond your control is a recipe for disappointment.

You can’t fail when you’re making art. You just can’t. You try different things. No big deal. You find out what works. You do it in a way that won’t destroy you or your family or your partners. You don’t bet the farm when dealing with humans. That would be foolhardy. You keep at least one pig back just pour rires.

You try, try, try and then you die. That’s your whole life. You just try stuff and you don’t worry about things. And when you don’t get it quite right you beat yourself up about it for a while and then you give yourself a break. And then you try something else. But it has to be something else. Every time you try something it has to be different than the last.

Trying is auditioning. You audition different paths, techniques, people. Rather than making big plans, make little bold moves every day. Practice this. For example, in your next self-tape try and get the casting associate’s attention within the first 30 seconds. Remember, the thing that made you a weird kid is the thing that everyone is looking for now. That which got you bullied in school is most likely — in its adult version — a strength that people will celebrate you for.

How you make an audition will sustain you. You can’t do it for them. First of all, you don’t know who them is. So you don’t know what they really want. So you can stop trying to please them. You’ll invariably miss the mark. Secondly, they don’t know what they’re looking for either. They just want someone to be the answer. They want someone to take care of everything for them. You can’t be that person every time. So you do the most selfish thing you can: you make art. You make your audition a masterpiece. You don’t do this because they deserve it, you do it because that’s what you are. You are an artist. And this is the kind of art you make. And it’s in the making, every day, every day that we find fulfillment.

We didn’t become an actor so we could book two days on Hallmark’s latest flaming bag of Christmas dog shit.

We didn’t get into this so we could subjugate our creative spirit to an agent or a producer or a casting director.

We aren’t compelled to perform for fame or fortune. If we wanted those things we would have become a serial killer or a CEO in Silicon Valley.

Thank you for reading The Bold Acting Newsletter. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Audition your life. Audition everything especially the things that you aren’t interested in. Those are the things that yield surprises. You can’t get it wrong. We’ve fetishized failure. It’s now something many of us aim for: fail forward, fail up, fail fast. I think we should reframe it as trying. You can’t blow an audition if you’re making art. You can’t fail if you’re sticking your neck out. For what else are we going to do? Sit at home and be afraid?

Auditioning for acting work is the hardest part of the job because we conflate it with a popularity contest. We want perfect strangers to like us. We give them all the power. Instead adopt a soupçon of contempt for the whole thing. People love a little detachment, a little mystery. It makes them want you to like them instead of the other way around.

Next time you’re self-taping make sure to make the thing your own. If you’re just going to memorize the lines and spit them out at your brother or your mom that you’ve roped into reading for you go back to bed. Be surprising, be the thing that only you can offer.

Make your self-tape a masterpiece. I learned this from a mentor of mine in Vancouver named Ben Immanuel. I add b-roll, sound effects, I tag a scene, I cut-off the reader at least once, I eat, I use a lot of props, I make mistakes and keep them in, I add music. I spend hours, sometimes days making a short film for them. Whoever them are. I might not get the part (for any number of reasons) but they are getting my art. Whether they like it or not. I will be seen and heard. They will not likely forget me.

If they’re not going to pay me for the audition then I’ll behave exactly as I please. Whether they know it or not, that’s exactly what they want.

For there will be more of ‘them’. A constant flow of decision makers, all just trying desperately to keep their jobs. They are none of your business. Yours is the art that God compelled you to make. So make it.

Thanks for reading The Bold Acting Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This week I answer questions on the difference between union and non-union actors, whether an actor with an accent should try to sound more Canadian and how to save money when you’re a gig worker.

But first I talk about the Method. It’s an acting technique. It’s 100 years old. And I thought what a perfect thing to disrupt. This made me think of reverence and how poisonous it can be.

I’m allergic to unfounded reverence. We place import on received wisdom rather than thinking for ourselves. We revere religion, the deceased, doctors, police officers, the rich. And sure, whatever works for you. Whatever gets you through the night. But you’re not learning anymore. And you may be modelling bad behaviour for others.

The beauty about a touch of irreverence I’ve found is that it gives you permission —not to dismiss — but to examine the other side of the coin. The one that you don’t normally.

I also read this week’s newsletter. I hope you like it all. Thanks for your support.

I wouldn’t do it without you.

Thank you for listening to The Bold Acting Podcast. This post is public so feel free to share it.

For more information go to https://boldacting.com.

Drop-in to my Sunday night cold-read class in Toronto.

Email me at [email protected]

Sign up to my free newsletter at boldacting.substack.com

It’s only old people that complain about subsequent generations. When I was young I complained about their complaining: “They don’t get us. They don’t know what it’s like.” What I didn’t realize was how annoying young people can be to old people that are really just jealous of the high collagen levels present in the former. It’s part resentment but it’s also because young people do annoying shit all the time. When I was young I didn’t know this. Now I know.

John McWhorter, the Columbia professor of linguistics said on his podcast the English language evolves and it always has. Vocal fry (the gravelly sound that comes out of your mouth when your larynx is compressed) is a result. As is up-speak (the penchant to speak in the interrogative — or like an Australian — when no question is apparent).

It wasn’t easy for my parents to understand why I painted my nails and had a Euro-mullet or was obsessed with acting. I thought they just didn’t get me. And I was right. Difference out of context is jarring. Like a Goth in summer. Difference within context is authentic: A surly server in a Salzburg cafe bearing tiny coffees, a newspaper on a bamboo spine and a bad attitude is exciting.   

Some young people speak differently than I do. I join the judgey ranks of a certain age and dismiss. But it’s just English. And English, like people, will betray you six ways to Sunday. In the 1920s and 30s old people complained about how young people said, “You know” too much. I remember my mum in the early ‘80s in conversation with an older British woman at the bank used the word “weird”. The older lady laughed incredulously. She was of a generation that didn’t use that word as commonly. The vernacular changes just as the linguistic does.

Is there something lost when we annoy great swaths of people that may include the decision makers? Do we plow on no matter what? If you can’t be understood or taken seriously I would suggest a code switch is in order.

Here are two Australians, Kath and her daughter Kim.

Read the Room

Know your audience. You speak differently with your friend group than you do with your parents than you do with your boss than you do with your neighbour. We do this all the time. As performers we can choose which sociolinguistic tools we want to deploy to signal to the audience what kind of character we’re playing. Vocal fry and up-speak become tools for further understanding. Where it falls down is when we aren’t aware of what we’re doing.

A modicum of self-awareness takes practice but oh, the enlightenment obtained when we do.

I would argue that the glottal collapse that is vocal fry is used not only for emphasis but at its worst to apologize or to take care of. Like up-speak changes a statement to a question we’re checking in with the person to whom we speak. We’re taking the subordinate position because we’re not sure or because we defer to the other person. If we’re paying attention we can go in and out of these linguistic choices automatically.

It All Starts with the Breath

If you’ve taken vocal training it is unlikely you will ever subconsciously run out of breath at the end of your sentences. Which is what vocal fry is essentially. If you’re unaware of it happening you’re making the other person pay more attention to the end of your sentence by deploying or falling into fry. Someone who has vocal training won’t likely think to use it. Just like someone that has trained in performance technique won’t defer to others with up-speak. Our voice supports our ideas all the way to the end of the sentence.

If there isn’t enough breath supporting your voice your sentences will lose power at the end. They’ll trail off. Chances are people won’t get your whole idea. And you’ll get less of what you want. You have to send your ideas all the way through to the end of the sentence. The voice has to go past the last word. You hear theatre actors do this naturally. Opera singers never suffer vocal fry. Nor do politicians, drunks, the homeless or anyone else whose day-to-day survival requires they be heard.

Thank you for reading The Bold Acting Newsletter. This post is public so feel free to share it.

My 11-year-old still speaks like he’s five. He finds it advantageous. He’s done informal polling and one currency he trucks in is a cute-speak because he knows he’s cute. His brother is 13 and has braces. He trades in intellect. He has facts and knows computers. I speak loudly in order to be heard. I have yet to try ‘quietly’. Perhaps I’m nervous. I am not confident that the young will still want to listen to me.

Am I really listening to them? Or am I lost, once more, in their shiny newness, their lives stretching on endlessly before them.

I’m less annoyed by difference nowadays because I’ve become more self-aware. Because I need it to survive. Because the Angry-Old-Guy is a crowded field.

Like, weird, right?

For more information go to https://boldacting.com.

Drop-in to my Sunday night cold-read class in Toronto.

Email me at [email protected]

Find my podcast The Bold Acting Podcast wherever the podcasts are.

Thanks for reading The Bold Acting Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Today on the show I talk about styles of performance and redirection. I also answer questions from listeners on what we can learn from performers, how to improve self-tapes and who exactly watches them.

For more information go to https://boldacting.com.

Drop-in to my Sunday night cold-read class in Toronto.

Email me at [email protected]

Sign up to my free newsletter at boldacting.substack.com

Watch my other videos like:

A Message to the Young:

Don't Make Your Bed:

The Words Don't Matter:

The fear of public speaking is greater than the fear of death. The risk of the former is more immediate than the latter for most of us. And because we are inherently lazy creatures proximity plays an outsized role in how we determine what to worry about. (You can watch my video about prioritizing your worries here.)

We worry about being ostracized by our cohort: the people that make up our extended social circle. These aren’t restricted to our friends — they are normally people we can count on in spite of our behaviour. For some reason we include perfect strangers in the cohort of “People We Need to Please”.

We are constantly trying to measure-up with veritable strangers. Keeping up with the Joneses is like trying to keep up with the train that left a half hour ago. Moving targets are a recipe for missing the mark 99% of the time.

We don’t want to be the tallest poppy. This is a great Canadian tradition. Our fear of being different stops us from taking risks. But really, this is just a fear of being ourselves. We worry that ourself is not good enough.

Our self is the only self we have. It’s the only self possible. It’s your best chance.

This is how you can separate yourself from the pack. And the good news is you are an expert at it. You just have to get out of your own way.

Getting out of your own way means shedding the tells and tics you’ve adopted in order to survive an ordeal like childhood, high school, relationships, parents, reality.

When we leave the nest we see how hard life really is. I don’t mean being a woman in Afghanistan or anything serious. I can’t imagine. I mean I remember coming out of university (that my parent’s paid for) and being on my own for the first time and I could not believe how hard it was. I needed two jobs to stay afloat. I was living on the very margins. And margins are not only relative but difficult. Relative to the Afghani woman I’ve got nothing to complain about. Once we finish dismissing our complaints because there are people that have it harder than us we can admit that we build up walls just to get by. Whether you have all the privilege or none of it there will be suffering. We do it to ourselves.

Thanks for reading The Bold Acting Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Now that we know we have these walls we can set them aside. They’re actually tools. They got us this far didn’t they? They’ll always be there for us. But they’re not us.

“Feel the feelings, don’t be the feelings.”

This is my interpretation of living with the third eye. You gently observe your own behaviour. You tweak it like you would tweak a puppet if you held the strings. Nothing is a big deal. The good things in life are no longer met with baseless effusiveness. The bad things aren’t the end of the world. We are calm in the face of adversity. This is also called leadership.

The other day I was riding my bike home from the liquor store. The weather was fine, I was on my bike and I had a fresh bottle of gin that was going to help me make a very wet martini when I got home. (I love them with a lot of vermouth. It’s my new favourite.) When I was turning left from High Park Boulevard to Sunnyside Ave. a car to my left waited for me. The truck behind them honked impatiently. As I rounded the corner I set my sights on the driver of the truck. It was a Polish man in his 60s. As I gave him the hairy eyeball he said “Watch it, fruit loop.” A classic old man burn. A simple, reductive, lightly-homophobic shot across my bow. It made me nostalgic. I delighted in his high-level curmudgeonliness because I used to be indiscernibly angry like him. But I also realized three things:

1. There are plenty of dinosaurs roaming the Earth.

2. When you’re riding your bike on a sunny day there is little reason to throw shade on what should be joyful progress.

3. If I’m still alive after riding my bike through the streets of Toronto I’m doing great.

I know that if I’m breathing then everything is okay. I’ve lowered my expectations that much. For the result is really out of my hands. There are too many variables at play. All I can control is that I do more than people expect of me. I make “going the extra mile” my new “bare minimum”. But for a selfish, often-wrong headed person like me this takes time and practice.

Early to bed

The shortest distance to growth is facing the adversity in front of you. For me it’s organizing papers with numbers on them. I can’t stand them. I also have to relearn how to do a spreadsheet. For some it is public speaking. For others it is being ourselves. Whatever your thing is go after that which is in front of you right now.

And thank your god you don’t live in Afghanistan.   

Get to know Bold Acting Studio’s YouTube Channel! There are dozens of short videos to watch, all of them a short-cut to learning.

Download my free podcast The Bold Acting Podcast. It’s a combination of my strong opinions on performance technique, how to be an artist, financial advice for dummies (like me), and more. Plus I read the weekly newsletter and answer listener questions. Find it wherever the podcasts are.

Go to boldacting.com for more information on my Drop-in Scene Study Class here in Toronto. New classes will be added Summer of 2023.