Well! Just because someone is a good actor doesn’t mean they are good at teaching it. The fact is that very few acting teachers get teacher training. And the old adage follows us around like a bad smell: those who can’t do, teach! In my case, I didn’t want to act any longer; I actually thought teaching would work better for me. I was a single parent with a small child at home and needed a steadier source of income.
At the start, a good proportion of my clientele were models. One of the leading actresses in the film, Anna, which I had just cast, was a beautiful young model. Her name was named Paulina Porizkova. She is still in the public eye, due to her recent stint as a judge on America’s Next Top Model. Paulina was signed to the Elite Modeling Agency, which seemed to have an endless supply of gorgeous young men and women. And through this connection, I came to the attention of talent agencies, such as Gersh, Innovative Artists, Barbara Andreadis, J. Michael Bloom, Don Buchwald & Assoc., etc., who all sent me their prettiest and handsomest in the hopes that they would become stars. Unfortunately, models have no more likely to be good at acting than the rest of the population.
Contrary to popular belief, good looking people who succeed as actors usually have to work very hard at it. Very few of these attractive and often charming people, with whom I enjoyed working very much, even made it as far as speaking parts in commercials. There is an absolute divide between people who can act at all and the rest of the world. However, I treated each and every model as if they were the next Andie MacDowell or Aaron Eckhart.
Along with these actor-models, who were represented by agencies and managers, hundreds of actors without representation, answering ads I placed in ‘Backstage Newspaper,’ joined my classes.
I treated everyone the same, and for many years had hopes for all. I did my best to teach them. And here we come to the difference between teaching and coaching. Almost everyone professed to want actual training. Very few said, “I want to do only commercials.” Many were interested in film as opposed to theatre. In vain, did I tell them that as beginners, it made absolutely no difference where they wanted to end up until they learned to act!
What does Teaching Actors entail? (I want to be clear that this is my personal viewpoint – not a general definition.)
I believe it is the dedication coupled with the ability of the teacher to convey to the performing arts student:
A) A highly structured set of principles.
B) The way these principles interact with one another.
C) And how they impact behavior and communication..
These principles concern the connections between the body and mind, conscious and unconscious, and possibly the soul – if one is a believer. (Some days I am, some days I’m not.)
The teacher’s job is to coordinate this overwhelming complexity into some sort of comprehensible system. However, the student must have both the interest and the capacity to enter into this kind of exploration and commitment.
What is involved in Coaching Acting? The process is similar to teaching – but it is usually effective only after the performer has learned how to be ‘believable in imaginary circumstances.’ (Some people, very few, are able to do this without training, but their skills are more limited and they generally don’t last very long in the business. There are, of course, exceptions to every rule.)
Here are some of circumstances in which coaches can be useful:
Inexperienced actors need coaches to bring the weaker areas of their technique up to the level of their strengths. Remember, however, that it is very risky for a coach to introduce major changes in an actor’s approach when he/she is under the pressure to perform.
In helping an actor with a role that requires a lot of character adjustments. For example, how Renaissance culture impacts a Shakespearean character, or being in a gang affects the way a gang member thinks and behaves.
The psychology of particular genres of material such as soap operas, prime time, sitcoms, thrillers, commercials, etc. The actor needs to understand how these various scripts are written for the particular audiences that watch them. The writing is not original – they are tailored to particular specifications and newer actors need to understand how to find originality within the pre-ordained set-ups. The actor must be able to be ‘real’ even when the material is not.
Leading roles which require tremendous psychological energy. Coaches can help actors, even experienced ones, to dig into the depths of their own being to play murderers, victims of incest, torture, and various kinds of abuse.
Of course, there are coaches for accents, special physical requirements, vocal adjustments, etc. Some acting coaches have other specialties. For example, I also specialize in Classical Acting (Shakespeare, Restoration Comedy, Greek Tragedy) and Voice and Speech as well as Acting Training/Coaching.
Clearly, it is my belief that acting teaching ideally precedes acting coaching. In the real world, however, I have often been called upon to coach actors with deeply flawed – or non-existent – technique, usually for auditions, although occasionally for jobs, as well. This brings me to next week’s topic:
How did I develop The Integrated Acting Process - and why would I recommend learning various acting techniques simultaneously?
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