Category Archives: Actor’s Etiquette

Actor’s Etiquette: The Actor’s Job

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18th-Edition-Cover-WO-428x487It’s all on your shoulders.

The quality of your performance is determined by three things:

  • How much talent you possess (This is a fixed element.  Training can bring out hidden talent; it can’t create it.)
  • How much time you put into the work, especially outside of formal rehearsals
  • How effectively you know how to use your personal and formal rehearsal time

There is no substitute for time.  There are no real short-cuts in acting.  Yes, good technique speeds things along and allows you to accomplish more as a result, which leads to better performances.  But good acting still takes plenty of time, it’s just that now you know how to use that time to maximum effect.

Being a good actor is, as with most things, a matter of taking responsibility for your own stuff and not expecting someone to hold your hand through the process.  If you’re reading this blog, you’re either an adult or you’re going to become one.  That means determining what kind of actor you want to be and making sure that you do whatever you need to do to achieve that.

I’ve been doing this a long time.  When an actor shows up at rehearsal or to class, I can tell whether he’s done any work on the play since I last saw him.  I can tell whether it was work done earlier in the week or hastily done this afternoon.  I can tell what kind of work he’s done – whether he’s just been saying his lines or if he’s dug into the character, and if the latter, what kind of digging he’s done.

Whether I’m directing or teaching, there is a limit to what even I can do with you if you aren’t bringing something to the table.  THAT’S what you’re responsible for, as an actor.  Like me in that play I talked about in the last Etiquette post (when I was playing adjectives, by the way – that much I can recognize in hindsight!), you are only going to be as good as you can be at this particular moment, and that is PERFECTLY ALL RIGHT.  It’s where you are right now.  It’s the best you can do.

But it’s ONLY the best you can do if you are really putting in the time and effort and doing everything you know how to do at this moment.  That’s something the director simply can’t do for you.  We might be able to nudge you in the right direction now and then.  But we can’t do the work for you.

 

Actor’s Etiquette: The Director’s Job

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etiquette word in letterpress typeI think I’ve alluded to this in some posts, but let me now be quite direct about it.

The director’s job is NOT to get you, the actor, to give a better performance.

That doesn’t mean that directors will not help you turn in a better performance.  Hopefully, every director you work with will contribute something that improves the final product, whether it be a rehearsal environment that is conducive to your best work, a well-timed question about your character, or a creative idea that you wouldn’t have thought of yourself.  All I’m saying is that it isn’t their job to do that.  And even if it were, most of them can’t.

Many years ago, when I was young and loaded with lots of natural talent and good instincts but little technical prowess, I did a professional production that had a scene in which I apparently stunk.  So badly that I was essentially “kept after school for extra help.”  The director, who was also a very fine actor, did his best with me.  We spent an hour together, with him trying to explain what he was looking for or what I was supposed to do that was going to fix this dreadful scene.

I had no idea what he was talking about, and I could see him getting more and more frustrated with my inability to give him what he wanted.  I felt terrible about my obvious inadequacy, even if I had no idea in what way I was inadequate, but had no ability to express my confusion or to interpret anything that he said in a meaningful way.

I think he eventually just accepted that I wasn’t going to be able to do it well, as I don’t remember a lot of additional work on the scene after that.

A director like me (a good, articulate actor who is also a teacher by nature) can help you deliver a better performance than you can get to on your own.  As one of my actors said, “You really teach when you direct, don’t you?”  (Although most of what I teach in rehearsals can’t be retained long-term, due to volume.)

But really, I’m the exception to the rule.  If an excellent director and actor like Lee couldn’t do anything about my sad portrayal, despite the oodles of talent that had gotten me the job in the first place, then most directors without his understanding of acting aren’t going to be able to help you, either.

So don’t expect them to work miracles.  You are the only “saint” you can depend upon for this.  That means putting in the time, both in rehearsals and out.

The Actor’s Etiquette Posts, and Why You Should Read Them

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etiquette JapanA few years ago, I toyed with the idea of getting a degree in Accounting.  I already had a B.A., but I was taking some Accounting courses and wondered if a degree in it would be useful.  (The answer turned out to be “No,” but that’s not the point.)

One of the degree requirements was a Business 101 course.  As far as I was concerned, this was a waste of time.  I’d been working in business for nearly thirty years in a variety of capacities and had learned a lot about how business functions.  This was a course that would be useful for twenty-somethings, but not for me.

Oh, I was so wrong.  I learned a surprising amount from it and am very happy I took it.

I’m going to write a series called “Actor’s Etiquette” which will appear every Friday and which covers things that seem to me to be obvious or common sense, and yet I encounter both experienced and new actors who don’t understand the concepts behind them.  Or at least, don’t practice them.

They are things that are so basic that those of us who have been living them for years forget that they aren’t part of everyone’s vocabulary.  We get jolted in rehearsal when we see these behaviors.  The words, “You’ve got to be [expletive] kidding me!” may even pass through our heads, although we are typically wise enough to not say them.

All of them are, on some level, about an actor’s responsibilities to the play or the class, and to your fellow artists or students.

Please don’t assume that you are “beyond” these posts.  I’m going to flag them all as “Actor’s Etiquette” posts specifically because I want to draw your attention to them.  I know you aren’t going to read every single post I write, and that’s fine.  But when I preface the title of a post with “Actor’s Etiquette”, that’s my way of saying, “If you read nothing else, read this one!”