Blog #16: An example of integrated techniques: how the Japanese are doing it at The Flea Theatre

So, I’m resuming my discussion of the Integrated Acting Process; I will approach it in a roundabout, decidedly un-pedantic way by working back from results to causes. Last night, I had the good fortune to see an excellent example of ‘integration’: Kurotama Kikaku’s production of Kutsukake Tokijiro, brilliantly directed by Jun Kim.  

A colleague of mine, Jan Mizushima, who has been engaged in the lengthy rehearsal process, had from time to time endeavored to describe how this musical play was being prepared. She said the usual sort of thing about being asked to experiment with her character, only to discover that most of the time the director had something else in mind.  I was intrigued by the fact that someone as attractive and youthful as Jan was playing the old Innkeeper’s Wife. So I had no idea what was coming, as I entered the august precinct of The Flea Theatre, where I’ve seen a lot of good avant-garde theatre over the years, including a star turn by Ruth Malaczek in a Mabou Mines production – whose name escapes me and, irritatingly, I can’t seem to find on the Internet. 

Down went the lights and for the next seventy-five minutes – although no one was counting – I was transported to a Japanese universe, where I felt completely at home. No, I’m going to resist writing a review, although I encourage anyone who reads this to rush right down to the Flea Theatre for a deeply satisfying evening of singing, dancing, comedy, intriguing visuals, based on a deeply moving old-time story that resonates with all the joys and miseries of today.  (On second thought,  before rushing down, you better make a reservation at www.theatremania.com)

The evocative music, imaginative lighting and video images and expert direction – all are inspiring, but it is each individual actor and how they work together that keep an audience on its toes, eagerly watching each new development.  And this is especially necessary because this isn’t Broadway or even Off-Broadway with real funding.  No, this is homegrown talent and very, very hard work for no pay. These are skilled actors, who know how to move and characterize.  We, the audience, are so close we can almost feel the actors’ impulses in our own bodies.  And last night I felt myself caring about the ‘good guys’ – while at the same time feeling comfortable enough to laugh at the antics of the often hilarious ‘bad guys.’ 

How do these actors succeed in not only entertaining us but also transporting us emotionally to their exotic Japanese Universe – half the play is in Japanese with supertitles? Many of the actors are Japanese, but there are some non-Japanese, as well, and they manage to achieve a seamless style.  This is no mean feat.

As an acting teacher, I have some thoughts on this. Apparently, the actors all know what the play is about. I’m sure that each actor or actress would say it in their own words, but I would put it this way: the world has been and always will be pretty horrible. Most of us are neither good nor bad, a lot of what we do to get on in life is absurd, and the possibility of love, wealth or whatever one’s ‘joy of choice’ is gives us the energy to survive.  

With all the fun and action on hand that a musical play needs to muster,  I was still aware at every moment while watching Kutsukake Tokijiro of the deep underlying tragedy of Japan at this moment in time – and I could relate to it, because I feel America is going through some ghastliness as well, and I think we are all wondering, wherever we are in the world, what is coming next.

The central performance by Yasu Suzuki, as the reluctant gangster, is in turn romantic, humorous, and violent.  But it is his steadiness and depth of character that sustain the play, connect us to its meaning and move us in so many ways. As I watched him, I couldn’t help thinking of Japan losing the war and the recent horror of the earthquake and tsunami, but more than anything the cover-up about the leakage of the nuclear plant at Fukushima– which, in turn, brought to mind America’s debacle in Vietnam, our ten years’ war based on those unavailable ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and our blood-strewn search and final recent capture of Osama bin Laden. It also brought to mind The Trojan War, initiated by the capture of one king’s wife, and carried on infinitely by ‘heroes.’ 

This vibrant entertainment was made possible by actors who connect to their characters personally and possess the technical proficiency to play on many levels simultaneously. Imagine if our leading man had played his ‘subtext’ of melancholy on the surface, without the humor and specificity of constant switching between charming, tricking and terrorizing everyone around him.  All the actors contributed mightily to the over-all effect, including my colleague, the Inn Keeper’s wife, showing a wonderful balance of underlying intention, human spirit and vulnerability – as well as a ridiculous fallibility – energized by technical facility in working toward clear objectives, furbished by fully realized character adjustments. 

One senses a sturdy, collaborative spirit on the Asian/American theatre and film scene these days. In the space of a couple of weeks, I’ve seen three delightful examples: two of them I’ve written about; Kutsukake Tokijiro and the excellent film, God’s Land, and the third is the very funny and insightful production of Chinglish, currently running on Broadway. All three are comedies, laced with tragedy, containing cohesive multi-national casts – speaking in different languages (hurray for supertitles) - and very relatable for American audiences. 

Is there really some hope for the world?

Blog #15: A Detour into God’s Land, a film by Preston Miller

I’m not a critic by any stretch of the imagination, but after viewing Preston Miller’s film, ‘God’s Land,’ at the Quad Cinema, where it has just finished a short run, I knew I had to write about it.

A year ago when I was undergoing chemotherapy, I needed to find someone to relieve the tension that had developed in my neck. My student/intern, Olive Hui, suggested her friend, Shing Ka, who is both an actor and a massage therapist. During our sessions, we had long talks - about Shing’s family in China - both his parents were doctors - and his experience with the healing arts, which he balances with his acting career. Shing is outwardly a very calm man, but I could sense excitement when he described a film he had just finished shooting – more than the perfunctory enthusiasm actors are trained to exhibit so their own performances will be viewed.

I try to keep an open mind, but when he said that the film was based on the beliefs of God Saves the Earth Flying Saucers Foundation and took place in Garland, Texas, I imagined something along the lines of Saved – or if I was lucky, a Monty Python imitation. But then Shing said it wasn’t exactly a comedy - and gave me a rough cut to take home.

Viewing it on my little TV set – with interruptions from phone calls, trips to the kitchen for snacks and picking up stuff my cat kept knocking over - I found myself intrigued by the likable, well-acted characters and respectful treatment of its spiritual theme, along with some tastefully comedic elements. My general impression was favorable but somewhat hazy, and I was not overly delighted when I received an invitation to the opening and felt obliged attend.

Certainly, I was in no way prepared for the stunning impression I received from seeing the final cut of God’s Land in an actual movie theatre! As I’ve said I’m no critic, but I do read the NY Times reviews religiously every day, and I feel that the criticism of God’s Land– which I had read the very morning of the day I saw it in the theatre – missed the point. Here is the sentence which concludes the review, “… Mr. Miller is far too leisurely — and takes far too much time — with a story largely blind to the sometimes fatal cost of fanaticism.”

I beg to disagree. In my opinion, the story doesn’t avoid the problem of fanaticism; instead, it provides much food for the thought that this particular cult may not be fanatical – although they propose ‘unreasonable’ ideas and wear funny hats. Many of the ‘apparently normal’ people in this film, under Miller’s prodding, exhibit extreme behavior – like a father and son from India, whose deep fear of the cult provide a touchingly ludicrous moment.  They, along with the Garland, TX police, believe that the group may be suicidal – although the spokesman for the group, in a wonderfully modulated performance by Wayne Chang – gives sensible assurances that they are not. There is a refreshing balance and lack of stereotyping to this film. It reveals strong personal attitudes about being black, white, male, female, elderly and youthful – including a sly, amusing portrayal of an Asian child by Matthew Chou. Miller uses an interesting device – yes, it adds to the length of the film, which by the way isn’t overly long, and I wasn’t bored for a second – that lends depth and illuminates the fundamental purpose: the main characters, at various times, peer into the camera for a long moment. They seem to be regarding us, wondering, perhaps, who we are and where we stand in relation to them and what they are experiencing.  I can’t recall a film in which I’ve felt an interaction like this. It invites us to contemplate, rather than judge, deepening our reaction to the film’s message about the possibilities and limitations of spiritual belief.

Speaking of ‘inviting,’ I felt, as a viewer, that the protagonists were asking me to join with them, not only in their criticisms of each other, but in understanding how difficult it is for them to disagree with the people they love – and there is an abundance of genuine love without a smidgen of sentimentality, in this film. And here I come to why I feel that a discussion of this sort belongs in a blog about acting. It is seldom that I have an opportunity to see a film where actors are directed this well – especially when working under such difficult, low-budget circumstances. Families act like families, and in close relationships alternate between gentle probing and bursts of anger, but when push comes to shove the agony of shame and loss is sharp and definite. The principle relationship between the husband, Hou Ming-Tien, who believes in the cult, and his doubting wife, Hou Xiu, is given a steely performance that turns suddenly heartbreaking by the expert Shing Ka, with his movie star good looks, and the poignant, Jodi Lin, who illuminates each moment of her character’s vacillations. Outstanding also, is Jackson Ning, giving a very un-fanatical and credible performance as Teacher Chen, the leader of the cult.  He is caring, while seeming to float above it all and is supported by a well-written characterization and an extraordinary defining moment – which, by the way, gives a terrific jolt to those of us who are following the rapid extinction of species. The aforementioned Wayne Chang maintains a cheerful naiveté without a whiff of caricature, and Gloria Diaz, who plays the not-entirely-skeptical teacher of English, Maria Ruiz, gives a performance, which is both warm and consistently astute.

There are times when this film reminds me of Vera Farmiga’s ‘Higher Ground,’ in which nuanced attitudes toward relationships are challenged by spiritual matters. There is one bedroom scene between Ming-Tien and Xiu, which brings to mind the complications of a similar scene in Charles Burnett’s heart-wrenching ‘Killer of Sheep.’

Unfortunately, ‘God’s Land’ has left the Quad - but do watch it when it comes out on Netflix. Just turn off your phone and give your cat a tranquilizer - this film demands your full attention!

BLOG #14 THE INTEGRATED ACTING PROCESS: (3) A Slight Detour into Why I Think Learning a Personal Acting Process is So Important

As I have mentioned before, my acting training began at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, arguably the most famous acting school in the world. I’m not sure how I got in – or, in fact, how almost anyone else in my term made it through those illustrious doors – we were a shockingly lazy and untalented lot.  My audition was forced and showed nothing beyond earnestness and the ability to remember my lines in spite of crippling nerves. During my sojourn of two and a half years at the Academy, I gained very little information about acting other than the ineradicable belief that I wasn’t any good at it – I even lost the ability to remember my lines.  There were some good things about the school: the opportunity to perform  Shakespeare, learning the social mores of Restoration Comedy, a good speech teacher from whom I gained a grasp of British accents, but as far as a useful acting technique, itself, was concerned – nada.

Other people fared better – I had the opportunity to play a small part in Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano with David Bradley – an excellent actor, most famous for his portrayal of Filch in the Harry Potter films.  Michael Kitchen, star of the popular PBS series, Foyle’s War, was obviously able to cope – he was a term below mine, but we had occasional chats. And some others – Leigh Lawson from my own term - have made good careers for themselves in England.  Of course, there is a long list of famous RADA graduates.

So, why do some acting students thrive in a school that lacks a systematic, comprehensible acting technique and requires them to perform constantly in an atmosphere of intense competition and criticism? One answer is that these students are so confident and/or talented that they would do well anywhere. But in the case of my experience at RADA, I would say that I was at a grave disadvantage being an American. (I just checked the RADA list of famous graduates to see how many might be American, and noticed that they fail to list several British actors I personally know, like David Bradley - although they did include Michael Kitchen - so I imagine the list would be even less reliable in relation to Americans, although I did find, among them, Maggie Gyllenhall.) The fact is RADA frowns upon accepting Americans; I was told when I was there that one reason I did not do well was my ‘American-ness.’ Also, during my time, they actually forced out a student, who had the courage to ‘come out’ as a gay man.  However, they couldn’t come up with a logical reason why they were unable to train either one of us.  In the case of the gay student, it was prejudice, and they felt entitled to act upon it. In my case, it was more subtle and more baffling, both for them and for me, why they couldn’t just ‘knock me into shape.’ They certainly tried.  If corporal punishment had still been allowed, I would have had one helluva bruised a**.)

Subsequently, when the shame began to wear off, I realized that there was something about being American that made it impossible for me to get my foot in the door.  The structure of RADA itself and most of the plays we studied there were based in the British class system, which I understood intellectually, but had no ‘feel for;’ in fact, I had an unconscious antipathy towards it. There is a reason why the psychological acting techniques, which I encountered later, took root in America and not in Europe. They may still lack popularity in Europe, although I have little knowledge of current European acting, aside from the Eastern European physically based methods, such as Jerzi Grotowski’s work in the ‘seventies and ‘eighties.  

Why does the ‘class system’ – or any kind of social ‘system’ make training more manageable.  It creates order out of chaos for the student actor.  I had been brought up on the idea that we are all created equal. It was in the air I breathed – although I experienced inequality all around me – racial prejudice, poverty, class and gender distinctions in operation - but I was taught that it was wrong. It was written in the Constitution of the United States (except slavery, but we didn’t know about that then) and every sentimental Hollywood movie pretended that America punished people who ‘put themselves above others.’  So when I entered RADA’s hallowed halls I was deeply confused about this issue. The plays I worked on at RADA critiqued inequality, and my fellow students, being mostly British, knew exactly where they stood in relation to the system in which they lived. I had no idea where I stood in relation to anything.

While I was struggling with artistic representations of these lofty concepts in England, my fellow Americans were staging sit-ins at the Berkeley and Columbia campuses. Multiculturalism was about to burst on the American scene, but I was caught psychologically between two worlds – trying to understand the expressly stated class system in which I found myself, before I had an opportunity to deal with the ‘fake ideal of equality’ in the society in which I had been raised.

I suffered mightily from my inability to find any personal basis for the artistic concepts I was supposed to be learning at RADA. I suppose this is why I have endeavored to create an ‘acting process’ that allows universal personal values to operate as a basis for the art and the technique of acting.   

Next week– before continuing with my analysis of The Integrated Acting Process – I will discuss a wonderful film some of you may have heard of called God’s Land, directed by Preston Miller, and starring Shing Ka, Jodi Lin, and Matthew Chili along with some other wonderful actors…. 

BLOG # 13 WHAT'S IN A NAME: (2) Why The Integrated Acting Process?

Total Theatre Lab: Pretty boring name, actually. And sort of grandiose. It would have been nice to have been all clever and elliptical with something like ‘Telephone Repair Service Acting School’ or ‘Malibu Mines for Actors,’ but our primary purpose is to instruct, so our name, I think, should reflect our intention. ‘Elevator Repair Service’ and  ‘Mabou Mines’ are the names of first-rate avant-garde theatres – they are producing art and their names reflect the off-the-wall nature of their creative output. But our purpose is to produce actors, who can act – and get jobs.  It is necessary to state our intentions clearly, reminding us of our mandate to create a ‘laboratory,’ a place of experimentation and searching, related to the ‘totality,’ or all- encompassing nature of theatre. The fact that this ‘acting process’ is also appropriate for film and television comes, I believe, from the fact that acting is always basically acting, whether it appears on a stage or in front of a camera – much as the way in which both ballet and hip-hop are ‘dance.’ Of course, major adjustments are required to accommodate different media.

I had been teaching for well over a decade when I began to feel the necessity for naming the technique I was teaching. I have always believed that artists take whatever they can from teachers, but in the end what they gain from the teaching is more than the sum of its parts. Without really thinking about it, I assumed that I was doing the same thing – taking from the various acting techniques I had studied and read about, including the avant-garde methods that focus on the use of voice & body, and that my teaching method was an amalgam of these various influences.  They were taught in separate classes – Meisner, Sensory, Voice & Speech, Cold Reading, Text Analysis with Subtext, Grotowski –based Physical Workshops, etc.

Eventually, however, the idea of an ‘amalgam’ proved too vague. In order to teach something, it has to be precise. Meisner, for instance, is ‘Working off the partner’ using ‘Repetition’ and ‘Knock at the Door,’ which is great, but when we get to ‘Preparation’ I was moving over to ‘Sensory Recall’ which is anathema to any devout Meisner-ite.  I’m not saying Meisner ‘Preparation’ is wrong, I just don’t find it specific enough for the job nor is it a natural fit with the other more spontaneous Meisner exercises.  

There is nothing wrong with any of these techniques in themselves, but it has been my experience that with every new generation the world changes and the way we teach artistic methods must roll along with the times. There was an era back-in-the day, when Meisner and Method, although they were at war with each other, could be employed separately and then stuck together.   Basically, and this is a gross generalization, if you were an introvert feeler, it was better to study Meisner, since it pulled you out of yourself. However, if you were more in touch with the outside world, it was necessary to get into yourself through ‘Method.’  Obviously, these generalizations are crude, but they worked – sort of. Good teaching for receptive students of either methodology could help students develop into decent actors.

But the longer I taught, the more the world changed. Gender discrimination, racism, class distinctions, differences between old and young – were being significantly reduced, it seemed.  Television, the great purveyor of fake homogenization, told everyone what to feel – but not how to think. (One of the reasons why people failed to notice the 1% taking off, while leaving the other 99% in the dust.  Or is it 2% and 98%? ) This has been very confusing for actors –  their characters no longer have ‘norms’ for their feelings. They have to actually separate one individual character from another. We’re no longer rich and poor, white and black, upper, middle and lower – it was always more complicated, but now that complexity, itself, is incrementally more complicated.

One might say of the great acting techniques – principally Meisner and Method with their opposite approaches, which are reflected in one way or another in most of the others, except for those that are primarily physically based like the Michael Chekov Technique - that all roads lead to Rome. By this, I mean that if you go all the way with one technique you’ll run into another at the other end. For example, if you do enough sense-memory, you’ll end up working spontaneously off your partner. The problem lies in the fact that the roads aren’t going to Rome any more. We need to get to London, Paris and New York and the methods have become too cumbersome for the journey. 

I can see it may take several weeks to even scratch the surface of how the Integrated Acting Process came about. I hope you’ll continue the ride with me next week…       

BLOG #12 WHAT'S IN A NAME: (1) Why Total Theatre Lab and (2) The Integrated Acting Process?

Back in 1989, when I first got the idea of having my own acting studio, I thought a lot about what I would name it. At that time, I was deeply involved with the teachings of Jerzy Grotowski and The Polish Lab Theatre. In the earlier part of the decade, I had traveled to southern Poland, and attended life-changing workshops both at their center in the city of Wroclaw at Rynek-Ratusz, 7, and in the forest at Brzezinka.

So ‘Theatre Lab’ came directly from their name ‘Teatr Laboratorium’ in Polish - and Grotowski described all aspects of his theatre work as ‘research,’ in the same way as a scientist  in his laboratory deduces principles from patient study and practice.

I added the word ‘Total’ for two reasons. I wanted to stress the importance of supplying a training that could be used in all media from ‘Commercials to Shakespeare’ as I said in one of my ads.  And I was determined to provide a system that included a ‘totality of methods.’

As an acting teacher, I struggled with the same issues that I had encountered as a student; i.e. how could one method dovetail into another without crippling confusion – since they often appeared to be mutually exclusive – but all useful in one way or another. Honestly, how could two approaches appear more different than ‘Method’ and ‘Meisner.’  The first includes a lot of ‘navel gazing in order to feel stuff’ while the other devotes itself to ‘pushing other people around and screaming at them to get them to do what you want.’  Aficionados would have you ‘put acting into the body’ and of course it has to be ‘expressed in the voice.’ On top of all this there is the text, which has to be explored and broken down into objectives, beats, actions, subtext, and research has to be done on ‘the world of the play!’

Slogans abound such as:  ‘Acting is other people.’ ‘Being yourself in imaginary circumstances.’  ‘Acting is doing, not thinking.’ ‘Acting is believing.’ Mamet, one of our greatest playwrights, has gone so far as to say: “There is no character. There are only lines upon a page…,” which makes some people rejoice and others wish he had stuck to playwrighting.

In spite of the difficulty involved, I continued to work at creating a workable system. And as the years passed, thirty by now since the very beginning with four students in my living room – one has dropped from memory, another disappeared, the third became an editor of books on the performing arts, and number four a Broadway producer – I have had some success linking the various methods and belief systems. I am able now to teach the four main areas - as I see them – of acting training, switching frequently from one approach to another, while easing students through the transitions. Actually, it’s not so much a question of transitioning as shifting points of view.  It seems to me that at the end of one methodology appears the beginning of another.  Or, you could say, all methods are constantly present supporting one another, but the awareness of the actor has only one focus at a time. In the beginning one tries to plan this out, but ultimately, with a lot of experience, the focus shifts back and forth with the ease of a major league player throwing, catching, pitching and hitting a baseball. And each actor is a team player, who excels at one part of the game, but must be highly skilled in all areas

Next time I’ll discuss how I formed the ‘Integrated Acting Process’ out of the four major elements that made up the ‘Totality’ of teaching methods at Total Theatre Lab.   

BLOG #11 ACTING COACH OR ACTING TEACHER? (2) How are they the same? How different? Does one need to be good at both to be good at either?

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?

BLOG #10 ACTING COACH OR ACTING TEACHER? (1)

People contacting me for the first time have often had a questioning tone in their voice when approaching me about coaching for commercials or an audition for Law and Order, a role in Centerstage, their final call back for A Streetcar Named Desire.

But no one has ever asked me if I teach acting - when they’re looking for an acting teacher. Does this mean that teaching acting is considered less complicated than coaching or possibly that a teacher is subsidiary to the person who actually positions an actor to get – or perform well in - a job?  In other words, you start out as an acting teacher and then you gain the skills to be a coach.  Or in even plainer words, the person who connects you to a paycheck is thought of as a coach rather than a teacher.

And how is the art of acting differentiated from the skill of acting in this hierarchy? Does art really matter? There are at least eleven definitions of art in the dictionary, but they seem to agree that art is the ability to make or create something. Nowhere do I see the definition of art as the ability to imitate or follow what someone else thinks is the way to make or do something…  I wonder if anyone has ever been coached into being a good actor. Even in sports, athletes have trainers as opposed to coaches when they have to work on a particular aspect of their overall technique – or get one aspect to integrate with another.

So what is the difference between an acting coach and an acting teacher – really?  Well, I can state categorically that one of the greatest frustrations in my work as a private acting teacher is that I’ve often been called upon to coach actors who hadn’t had the opportunity or desire to learn basic acting.  Indulge me in a little digression here…

Like so many things in my life, I got into teaching through the back door.  For the first ten years of my acting career it never occurred to me that I would ever be an acting teacher.  A director that I was working with on an avant- garde production of Goethe’s Faust had more work than she could handle, so she asked me to help some of the actors with their parts. So I did, and it was fun.

The next thing I knew I was being invited by a Polish director friend to cast an independent film called Anna.  And, as I mentioned before – indeed, I have already mentioned all of this - the leading actress, Sally Kirkland, did a marvelous job in the leading role and was nominated for an Academy Award. In fact, that unusual stroke of luck afforded me the opportunity to commence my career as an acting teacher and can only be explained by the phrase, ‘Only in America!’  It had nothing to do with my ability as a teacher, but rather that agents and managers supposed I would continue to be a casting director and sent me students in the hopes that their clients would be cast in film and theatre roles! 

But casting was not for me – for one thing I didn’t have an office – a friend, Debby Brown, who was a real casting director, had kindly allowed me to share hers when I was casting Anna. In any case, I didn’t find casting anywhere near as interesting as teaching, which I took to like a duck to water.  I had studied how to play characters when I trained at RADA, and I’d had a good background in Meisner, as well as scene breakdown, from the Neighborhood Playhouse teacher Mordecai Lawner, and I’d explored some very helpful vocal and movement techniques in workshops with Jerzy Grotowski and his associates, but I didn’t have a clue in those early days how all this training fitted together into a usable acting technique.

So when I say I took to it like a ‘duck to water,’ that’s not exactly true. Ducks hit the water and they automatically coordinate so they don’t drown. I went through some pretty fancy footwork in the beginning in order to learn to teach the skills – which eventually turned into the artistry - of acting.  When I worked on acting just for myself, I got mired in a lot of navel gazing, but as soon as I started projecting acting training onto other people, there was enough objectivity for me to see how the process of acting could be accomplished. And I was immediately fascinated by the precision of the discipline and felt a great obligation – and desire – for my students to learn this amazing, well, art. Through teaching others from this new viewpoint, I was finally able to grasp for myself what had so frustratingly evaded my comprehension when I was trying to learn acting for myself…

In next week’s entry, I will discuss my views on teaching vs. coaching the art of acting.