May 30, 2008
Honest Criticism or Feel-Good Reviews?
One thing I’ve always wanted from my friends and co-workers that I never receive is honest-to-God constructive criticism. It’s just so hard to get people to tell you what they think of the shows that I’ve done. No one will give a straight answer when all is said and done.
Your parents will always love your performance, no matter what. And even if they didn’t, they’d never tell you.
Your friends and castmates don’t want to hurt your feelings (or ruin future networking ops).
Your director doesn’t want to lower morale and/or admit that he/she screwed up in casting you.
Any random audience member is going to say SOMETHING positive to your face.
Critics’ reviews, if any, are generally going to focus on the show as a whole rather than individual things you can do to improve your own performance.
When I took my first Directing class and had to direct a one-act, one thing that Doc told us was that we were not allowed to perform in our own show. His reasoning was simple: you can’t see yourself on-stage
In film and TV, you often have directors making cameos or even starring in their own shows. This works because of the simple fact that they can see themselves on screen and see if it works or not. An actor on stage can’t do that.
As an actor, I rely on someone else to tell me what I can do to better my performance. Not a show has gone by where I haven’t asked the director on multiple occasions what I could do better — ESPECIALLY on nights when he doesn’t give me notes at all. It’s imperative to me that each performance be better than the last, and there’s no note that I hate worse than “You’re fine”.
Fine? That doesn’t help me at all. First of all, the entire performance can’t be “fine”. There’s always, always room for improvement. So what parts are “fine”, what parts are “good” and what parts are “not-so-good”? Help me out here, man.
As a director, I strive to provide as much honest criticism to my cast and crew as possible. If I’m not happy with the way something is going, I speak up. If someone is talking too fast, I slow them down. If someone keeps changing the blocking, I put them back on track. If someone is seriously misinterpreting a character or doesn’t understand a punch line or is simply reciting his lines or seems to stumble over her lines, I’ll speak up. I’m not going to be rude about it, but I’m going to be firm.
“Matt, you need to slow down.”
“Okay.”
(later)
“Matt, you need to slow down.”
“Okay.”
“No, listen. Your character is setting up all of Zoe and Adam’s punch lines, so the audience needs to be able to understand you. You’re speaking so fast that nobody will get the punch lines, because they didn’t understand the joke. Make sense?”
“Ohhhh, i see.”
“Yeah. Slow down.”
The above example is a true story from my last show. I had to tell his one guy to slow down every five minutes. It was insane. Opening night, he was still a little fast, but he had slowed down considerably — enough for the audience members who paid attention to get almost all of the jokes. He often came to me after rehearsals and said “How am I doing?”
I refused to answer with just “You’re fine.” On the nights when he did well, I told him so. “You were a lot slower tonight, which is good. You didn’t miss very many lines at all, which is good. You’ve got the personality of the character down pat, although he’s a little more sarcastic and a little less nice. Overall, good job. I have some specific notes that i”ll give you tomorrow.”
I’m pretty sure he appreciated my candor.
I want YOU to be the best actors you can be. I’m going to do everything in my power to make that happen.
So why doesn’t anyone else do the same for me?
February 11, 2008
18 Simple Reasons Why You Should Date An Actor/Actress
Stole this from a Facebook Group. Funny stuff!
You should date actors/actresses because:
- we practice until its perfect
- we’re used to role playing
- we work well in big groups of people
- we’re trained how to scream loudly
- we’re used to performing in front of large audiences
- we’re used to adding to the scene
- we love to use our props
- we work for the pleasure of others
- we do it on cue
- after a brief intermission we’re ready to go at it again
- we always wear our costumes
- we’re used to quick changes
- we work onstage and Backstage
- we know how to put on a GREAT show!!!
- we do it on the spot
- we may take hours to get ready but in the end its all worth it
- we can stay in one position for hours and still make it enjoyable
- our mouths know just how to move
- we can make you stand up and scream for more at the end
January 21, 2008
MFA: A Dilemma
I don’t know how many of you actually follow the professional theatre blogs out there, but I’ve been trying to keep abreast of the latest and greatest in the theatre world. One of these is a blog by Scott Walters.
Scott has an intriguing viewpoint in theatre. He believes theatre has failed America, that there is a new regime change, so to speak, in sight. He believes that the status quo is about to change, and a new order will arise.
I’m not going to rehash everything Scott believes. Instead, I’ll refer you to his blog.
In other news, my friend William is having difficulties in his first year as an MFA student. He’s one of the more capable people I know, so the fact that he is having trouble scares me a bit.
As a result of Scott’s blog on MFA programs, the subsequent discussions, and William’s troubles, I’m having second thoughts about joining an MFA program. There are dozens of programs out there, and I’m unsure which is the best to join. I’m not even sure an MFA program is the best direction to go. I’m writing this to sort of lay out my plan, my ideas, and see what I can come up with.
Pros:
- I want to teach college eventually, and I need an MFA to do that
- I want to direct, and my undergraduate training was sorely lacking in that area. An MFA will provide that training.
- I need to make connections with the theatre world, and my undergraduate school was so far removed as to provide no connections at all.
- I need to see more diverse views on theatre than what I saw in my undergrad program.
- Looking at Broadway billings, it’s painfully obvious that the most successful artists are those who have MFA’s and extensive training.
Cons:
- It costs a lot of money
- It’s extremely tough, and given William’s experiences, I’m afraid of getting into a program I don’t fit well with
- I could theoretically get directing training by working independently or professionally
- Working professionally could gain me some networking connections without the hassle of an MFA program (which, according to Scott, is outdated anyway)
- Broadway, while a nice idea, isn’t exactly a priority goal for me, so an MFA wouldn’t help me in that regard.
Oh geez. It’s tougher than I thought. I’m going to say that the training will probably be equal either way, so that’s out. The connections are probably equal either way, so that’s out too. The Broadway option cancels the MFA authority out. So that basically leaves me with one criteria: I wish to teach college at some point in the future.
I need an MFA…
..or do I?
January 18, 2008
A Plan: Ten Minute Play Mini-Festival
(I’m breaking my posting schedule with this, but I’d like to get this out today.)
This is my last show in my current location. Once this show is over, I’m moving away, either home or to wherever I’m going to grad school. There is a lot I’m going to miss about this place, but honestly, it’s just time for me to move on. However, I intend to go out with a bang.
I have an idea, and I’m hoping some of my friends will be willing to participate. The whole idea of this exercise is to improve ourselves as actors by getting criticism, suggestions and feedback from our peers, our faculty, and from random people who show up to the performance. In addition, this project will be huge brownie points in the eyes of the faculty, for anyone who participates.
I have a book of a collection of 10 minute plays. I’ve been reading through it, and I’ve found several plays that would be fairly easy to do, yet fun as well. The question is: will they be interested as well? Here’s my proposal.
Mission Statement: We intend to produce multiple 10-minute plays for free to anyone who wishes to attend, for the intents of A) having fun, B) becoming better actors and C) helping generate interest in the theatre.
The Plan:
1) Get three or four people together (actually, the more the merrier)
2) Assign parts
3) Either take turns directing or I’ll direct all the plays
4) Spend 2-3 weeks practicing (they’re 10 minute plays, so not a lot of practice required)
5) Perform them (for free) one afternoon in the black box studio
6) Ask the audience for their criticisms (either written or verbal). To increase participation of this aspect, anyone who participates gets a coke and cookie or something.
7) Have a Post-Mortem meeting with everyone involved, go over the criticisms and suggestions. 
Become better actors
The key here is to offer them for free (to encourage attendance and participation), and to GAIN MEANINGFUL FEEDBACK from others. One of the problems that I see in the department is a lack of feedback from our instructors. Very rarely are we told what could be done better (especially after a play is over with). Every other industry out there does something similar, and it helps them avoid making the same mistakes over and over. Since our instructors won’t give us feedback on their own, let’s do our own project and generate our own feedback.
Hopefully, I’ll get enough participants (only need three!) to get this off the ground and running. And hopefully, this will be such a success that it happens every semester, even after I’m gone. Perhaps, in the future, it will become a 10-minute play festival or something.
What do you think? Do you have better ideas, or perhaps some suggestions to improve this? I’d love to read your comments!
January 16, 2008
January 7, 2008
January 2, 2008
How To Become A Great Actor, according to Sir Ian McKellen
If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
“How is it that I am a good actor? What I do is I.. pretend to be the person I’m portraying.
You’re confused.
Case in point: in Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson comes to me and says ‘I would like you to be Gandalf the Wizard,’ and I said ‘You are aware that I am not really a wizard?’ and Peter Jackson said ‘I would like you to use your acting skills to portray a wizard for the duration of the show.’
So i said ‘Okay’ and then I said to myself ‘Mmm.. How do I do that?’ And this is what I did: I imagined that I was a wizard, and then I pretended, and acted, in that way on the stage.
How did I know what to say? The words were written down for me in a script. How did I know where to stand? People told me where to stand.
If you were to graph my acting, it would look something like this: Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian, action — wizard! “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” Cut! — Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian…”
–Clip from the excellent BBC/HBO series Extras (Youtube).
As stupid as this scene is, it’s brilliant. It’s brilliant, because it’s true.
Acting is really simple. You pretend. That’s it.
There is a catch. It, too, is simple: there’s no science to acting; it is an art.
Granted, you can teach one how to use the tools that are available to you, but without the instinct there is no art. There’s a reason why the School of Theatre is a part of the College of Arts.
You can give me the absolute best box of crayons and the highest quality paper, and I still can’t draw worth a shit. You can give me oil and canvas, marble and chisel, or piano and music, and I still can’t paint, sculpt, or sing. Like the previously mentioned subjects, acting is an art — you can’t teach it, per se. You can teach the methods, but you can’t teach the instinct.
I’m not a huge fan of method acting. Yes, I use aspects of Stanislavsky’s method in my own acting, but my own acting is much like Sir Ian McKellen’s: me, me, me, me, action! (say lines) cut!, me, me, me, me.
One of my instructors keeps trying to cram into our heads that actors should “really do what you’re doing.” This is wrong. Absolutely wrong. The minute you start to really do what you’re doing, you’re no longer acting — you’re no longer pretending — you’re just YOU on stage dressed up like someone else.
In the end, however, I don’t particularly care how YOU act, so long as you act well. I have friends who can’t act worth a shit, and I’ll never cast them unless their actual, real personality fits with the character. I’ve had friends that I could’ve sworn the author was thinking of when he wrote that play — they’re that much alike.
But when I hold auditions, I look for good actors. Actors who do different things, who behave differently than they do in “real life”, who can show me a range of behavior. After all, the best characters in a play change over the course of the play: they grow. If an actress can’t act, if she can only portray herself, then how can she grow on stage?
The simple answer: she can’t.
As stupid as Sir Ian’s explanation is, it is brilliant. It’s true.
Acting is pretending.
Stumble It!
December 24, 2007
How NOT to Fail
If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
“You know what kills me?” Casey asks, while we’re eating at our favorite fried chicken joint. “When you care so much about something, and nobody else gives a shit.” I nod. He’s talking about an improvisational theatre group he tried to start last year that pretty much bombed. Not for lack of trying, though. Casey hit the problem right on the head: nobody cared, nobody participated, and nobody put forth any effort.
That has been an ongoing problem in the theatre here. Too many new people come in, expect to get lead roles, and when they don’t, they stop paying attention, they stop participating. Even if they get roles they want, they participate only as much as necessary.
One of the biggest ways to piss me off is when you find out I’m an actor/director, you say “Oh, I was in Grease when I was in high school…”.
No.
No, no, no, no, no. Don’t even try to compare your little fun high school popularity stunt to what I want to do for a living. Theatre is my passion, it’s my life, and it’s my career. The same goes for Casey and numerous others in the profession.
These new people, they come in and think because they were Annie in the high school production that they only have to participate if they want to. If they feel like it.
I hate to break it to you folks, but you’re never going to get anywhere with that kind of attitude. People like Casey and myself do our best to further our own careers, to offer opportunities for people to perform, to work within the profession we love, to have a chance to participate. And what do most people do? They give us assurances that they’ll participate, then haul ass the other way.
That’s the problem. A big problem. The next question, obviously, is what to do about it. How can we fix this? How can we improve our situation? How can we get these apathetic individuals to care? I don’t have all the answers, but I do have some suggestions.
1) Have a plan. When I decide on a project, the first thing I do is figure out exactly what I want to do with the project.
- How many people do I want to be involved?
- How much resources do I want?
- How long do I want to get the project completed?
2) Have a backup plan. Once I’ve asked myself those questions, I come up with my backup plans. This is just in case I can’t get what I want. I ask myself some more questions:
- How many people do I need to complete the project?
- How much resources do I require?
- What is the minimum amount of time I need to devote to this project?
3) Offer incentives. For example, if I can’t get the minimum number of people that I absolutely need to complete the project, I need to figure out a way to encourage and entice people to participate. Perhaps I could offer some sort of financial compensation, a letter of recommendation, or some other sort of reward.
4) Offer to combine your project with someone else’s. One of the blogs that I’ve begun frequenting lately is Sobrietyland by madmargaret. In a recent entry, Margaret complained that the other local theatres are terrible. This is also the case around here. A possible solution would be to create a local one-act contest or scene contest or playwriting contest — whatever fits your project. Perhaps rather than starting your own project, you could offer your expertise to local theatres to help them become better. After all, we shouldn’t just be out to make ourselves better, but the entire profession.
Those are my suggestions for fighting apathy and non-participation in the theatre. Casey’s big mistake was that he hadn’t planned for a lack of participation. His project essentially failed, and he had to explain himself to the producer. Had he planned for this contingency, he might have been able to salvage the project.
I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I do claim to have some knowledge of failure and success. Planning, ingenuity, and open-mindedness will help you succeed more than putting all your eggs in one basket will.
So what do I do to help my buddy Casey out, when the weight of the world has crashed down on his shoulders, when he’s looking for assurance and support, when he needs a steadfast friend?
“That blows, man,” I mumble, as I take a bite out of some delicious fried chicken. Mmm.
December 21, 2007
Mandatory Auditions? Never!
“You know,” David says. “At the school where I used to work, auditioning for performers and working in the shop for techs were mandatory.” I look at him and sit down on the sawhorse in the scene shop. All around us are the technicians working on the set for the next mainstage show. All three of them. The work-study students never show up, and the students taking the shop classes don’t show up either. Needless to say, David’s not a happy camper.
“Really?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, looking at me with a sideways glance. He scratches his balls. He does that a lot. “Of course, the program there’s a lot bigger. The students there actually have to apply to get into the program, and if you don’t participate, you’re out.”
“That’d be so nice,” I say. “It’d be great to have an actual choice when casting.” This is true. Whenever we hold auditions for a play with, say, twelve roles, only about fifteen people will show up. Often, the director is forced to cast everybody who showed up. Having mandatory auditions would allow the director to actually have a choice in who is cast.
“You could sign a waiver that said you weren’t interested in a part,” David continues. “But you still had to audition.” Of course. Auditioning should be mandatory. It’s a process that you have to do if you want to be successful in the theatre world. It’s a crappy system, but nobody has managed to come up with a better one.
I nod as David keeps talking. My mind drifts off a little, as I think about the ramifications of this type of system.
In the department in which I have worked for several years, there are about fifty theatre majors. Roughly fifteen of them are techs, the rest are performance majors. That is, they’re actors. The sad thing is that only about fifteen or twenty of them are active in any capacity. The other fifteen or twenty rarely show up for strike, much less for auditions.
I mention the idea of mandatory auditions to someone I know who is a major but has never participated. She grows indignant, as if to say, “What? Me? Audition? Never!” In fact, I have yet to see her audition for anything. It blows my mind. Why major in a field in which you don’t intend to participate? Why take classes in a field that you don’t intend to pursue? Why waste your own potential and someone else’s time and money?
Here I am, a graduate stuck in this shit-hole town, struggling to stay active in the local theatre, but keeps getting pushed aside by the faculty because I’m no longer a student. Here I am, trying to further my career, and I’m getting pushed aside for people who don’t show up for auditions, don’t show up for work-study, don’t show up for set strikes. Here I am, a thespian, being denied my calling for the sake of people who would rather use their creative energy to think of new places to sing karaoke and get wasted.
“I think it’s a good idea,” I say to David. He looks back at me and scratches his balls again.
“It is a good idea,” he replies. “Too bad it’ll never happen.”
Too bad.
December 19, 2007
Tom Cruise Syndrome
I often get into discussions (I guess you could call them arguments) about the best actors and whether so-and-so is a good actor or not. Usually, my definition of a good actor isn’t the same as the other person’s. In fact, I would go so far as to say that my definition is not the normal definition of a good actor.
I consider a good actor to be one that can change personalities, change physical behavior, and change their reactions to fit the part of each character. In other words, a good actor is someone who, when you see them in two different roles, you don’t recognize them.
There are plenty of good actors out there — unfortunately, most of them are not in movies or on TV. In fact, I’m going to go out on another limb and say that most movie actors aren’t good actors. Popular favorites like Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, and Denzel Washington aren’t good actors. Before you jump up in horror at my blasphemy, take a minute and see my reasoning here.
Let’s take Julia Roberts as an example. There is no doubt in my mind (or anybody’s mind) that Julia Roberts is a movie star. She’s a very bankable actress. Actually, she’s one of the most bankable actresses out there, making something like $25 million per film (Julia Roberts’ Salary). This is not an opinion, this is fact. Julia Roberts is a movie star.
Is she a good actress though? I sincerely doubt it. You can find a sampling of reviews at Defamer.com. As you can see, they’re pretty negative. She was boring and intimidating, she couldn’t maintain her Southern accent, she was awkward and tense, and she was unsatisfying and ultimately ruined the play.
You see, the difference lies in the method through which the audience sees the performance. Julia Roberts has been in several blockbuster movies, including Erin Brockavich and Runaway Bride. She did a pretty good job in those. However, for any given shot, she had to maintain character for as long as that shot lasted. Should she make a mistake, no problem! Just reshoot the scene.
On Broadway, or any live theatre for that matter, you only get one shot. You have the whole rehearsal process to screw up, but come opening night, you better have it down. And it’s not just for a few minutes either. You have to hold that character in your mind for hours. It’s not easy. It’s not supposed to be.
There are plenty of actors out there who have made it a point to be different, to be able to carry a variety of roles. Some of my favorites include Leonardo DiCaprio (salary), Kevin Spacey ($4.5 mil for The Negotiator), and Michael Caine (no salary listed). These guys are definitely paid what they deserve, if not too little. There are plenty of others, sure. Johnny Depp ($20 mil for Pirates 3) is amazing, but he has what I call “Tom Cruise Syndrome.” TCS is when I can’t stop thinking of the character as the actor.
When I see a Depp movie, I always think of him as Depp, not Willy Wonka or Sweeney Todd or Inspector Whatever-his-name was. When I see Mission Impossible, I don’t think Ethan — I think Tom Cruise. Kate Winslet has TCS (for me, anyway), as well as numerous other actors. Morgan Freeman, Adam Sandler, etc. I will admit that each of these actors I’ve mentioned has had performances that completely blew me away (Adam Sandler in Spanglish, Tom Cruise in Collateral, Depp in the first Pirates of the Caribbean, etc). But by and large, I attribute those changes to directors, not to the actors. I could be way off on that, though.
A friend of mine has this terrible habit of rocking on his heels when he gets nervous. Every single time he’s on stage, he’ll rock on his heels at some point. He also has some other mannerisms that repeatedly show up in his performances. Often, I’ll point those out to him, and he works hard to reign those nervous behaviors in. When he manages to reign them in, he is a phenomenal actor. It’s distracting, though, to see six performances in six different shows, and he has the same physical mannerisms in each one, when the characters are completely different characters. Sometimes the rocking on heels works — like Nicky in On the Verge, but sometimes it doesn’t, like when he played General Whats-his-name in Arms and the Man.
Of course, my definition is slanted towards stage acting, but theoretically, it should be able to carry both ways. After all, many actors have transitioned from film to stage and back again with no trouble at all. The trouble truly lies with the producers and with the fact that some actors are hired because of their performances in other movies. I’m sure Tom Cruise could be a phenomenal actor if he chose — but people don’t want him to play Collateral roles. They want to see Cruise in roles similar to Minority Report and Mission Impossible. They want Maverick back. And until he pushes himself to become a better, more diverse actor, that’s what they’ll get.