The curse of professional actor training programs
"Professional Actor Training Programs" are just awful. Fresh-faced children enter them full of hope and ambition. The strong come through relatively unharmed but four years older and over a hundred thousand dollars poorer. The weak emerge as a damp bundle of neuroses speaking in a beautifully articulated baritone that cannot be found in nature. It makes me sad.
So I'm going to fix it.
The following is the first in a series of articles that will tell you everything you need to know to be an outstanding actor. The rest is just practice. Read these articles and save yourself four years of your life and $120,000.
Transformational Acting
You want to be an actor. Awesome. Two paths lie before you. We will call them the “Star Path” and the “Transformer Path.”
The Star Path has worked beautifully for centuries and really took off with the advent of film. Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino and Mary Pickford were stars. Clark Gable, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn were stars. Today we have Angelina Jolie and, I don’t know, Zach Galifianakis?
A "star" cultivates a big, appealing persona – tough guy, femme fatale, lovable imbecile, etc. They play pretty much the same role in whatever production they do. Fame and fortune follow. If you can go down the Star Path you should definitely do it.
The Transformer Path is for the rest of us. We have to find a way to squeeze ourselves into a variety of roles in a variety of productions. The Transformer Path does not lead to riches as often as the star path, but there are other pleasures along the way. And Alec Guinness is our patron saint.
Ask Not What The Role Can Do For You...
As a bushy-tailed youngster I joined the actors of the Children’s Theatre Company thinking I was on the Star Path. Every role was a chance for me to show off and burnish my persona. I couldn't wait to act my guts out and share my creativity with my fellow actors. My fellow actors had other ideas. They were deeply uninterested in anything I did or said.
I felt tragically underappreciated. I admired the company members so much! And I had such good ideas! Why didn't they care?
Now I see that I had the wrong attitude. The actors I admired treated their roles very differently than I did. My attitude was “what can this role do for me?” Their attitude was "what does this role demand of me?"
During rehearsal breaks, I would squeeze my way through other cast members to stand next to Jerry Drake, Tom Dunn and Charity Jones and listen to them thrash through the play. What is this story? Why are we telling it? How does my character fit into this?
In performance, I watched these actors transform into the roles they were playing. They changed physically, vocally -- they changed their energy, somehow -- to suit the role. It was like magic. And I wanted THAT!
There are two steps to transformative acting. First, you need to answer the question "what are the demands?" Then, you need to do it.
To answer the question "what are the demands?" you start by figuring out how to live in the world of the play. It helps to know lots of plays and lots of stories. You should have a working knowledge of dramatic theory, from Aristotle to Stanislavsky, from Commedia dell'Arte to Viewpoints. You should know the difference between Classicism and Romanticism.
You should know what you mean when you use words like tragedy, comedy and drama. You should know your history -- political, religious, and artistic. How did people dress? Who served whom? What were the laws? Who enforced them? What did people eat? How did they get around? What's the education system? What were they dancing to? No one knows all this stuff, but the actors I admire are deeply curious about these things.
As you practice figuring out the demands of the play, you’ll find your job takes on a greater dynamic range. Often the demands are less than you might want them to be, i.e. no chance to show off. In school in New York (in a Professional Actor Training Program, by the way), I worked with a guy who was playing a tiny messenger role. He was very proud of the fact that he'd given his character a name, a family, a history, relationships to every character on stage and a slight digestive disorder. However, when his scene arrived, he was acting so hard that he was completely unintelligible. The demand was to deliver information and he didn't do that.
Distressingly for a young actor, the demand is often to "act" as little as possible. Just do the thing. But then there are moments when you have to put it all out there. The CTC actors call it the "pull your pants down" moment. (I should be clear that we called it that amongst ourselves and never in front of the children.)
Pull Your Pants Down
You've figured out the demands of the play. Congratulations. Time for the hard part. Unless the character you're playing is you, the play will have moments when it demands something that is not natural to you. But you have to make it natural. A prince of Denmark, Hedda Gabler, Blanche Dubois, a shy kitten going to her first Christmas dance (a role I played in Beatrix Potter's Christmas), the role is out there somewhere and you have get to it, then fill it up with something real and human.
This takes courage and determination. You've spent a lifetime struggling to become comfortable in the skin you're in. Now you have to throw all that away and start over. You will spend the rehearsal period making the long journey from who you are to who the character is. And because it's not natural for you yet, it will feel uncomfortable. You will be frustrated and full of self-doubt.
It's sort of awful.
If you're right-handed, try doing everything left-handed for a week. Now try doing it knowing you'll have an audience in two weeks.
And what's worse, if it's a good role in a good play, it demands more than you can give it. Sorry. That's why there's no such thing as a "definitive" Hamlet, or Mama Rose, or Willy Loman, or Mother Courage. Which is great for those of us itching to take a shot at those roles, but terrible for those who get the chance. Want to see me cry? Push me about my performance as Salieri, or the Fool in King Lear, or Don Quixote. I got as far as I could at the time, but, oh! the things I couldn't/wouldn't/didn't do!
When Good Actors Go Bad
This is the reason good actors give bad performances. They’ve tried to make the jump from the Transformer Path to the Star Path and landed in a No Path wayside without a working restroom.
Somewhere along the line, they've done everything I've described and been rewarded with applause, cheers, praise and free drinks from an admiring audience. (There's not enough of that, by the way.) Now they're faced with a new role. Do they start all over again? Risk going down the wrong road and looking foolish? Or do they repeat a good performance from another show? What if they were cast because everyone -- director, audience, fellow actors -- expects them to give that same performance?
And consider the actor system we use. Most of the time, you go from theater to theater, auditioning for specific roles in specific productions. You get cast (hooray!), and show up in a new place with a bunch of new people. You want to give them something good, right? Something that's worked for you before. (Of the many reasons to lament the demise of acting companies, this is one of the greatest. As a member of the company at CTC, any single performance was seen as part of a body of work. There was room to make mistakes. There was also the sometimes painful encouragement of your fellow actors: "Hey, John, I like what you're doing with that role. But I think I liked it better when you did the same thing back in Tom Sawyer." Ouch.)
How many of us have the courage to start from scratch every time? I certainly don't. I'm old and tired and scared. Tonight I'll go to rehearsal for a new play, never seen before, playing a role never played before. Yet I hear and feel myself galumphing through rehearsals doing the same crap I've done in a bunch of other shows. By the time this is published, the show will have opened and closed. Either I will have done something interesting and fresh or something stale and tired. I wonder which it will be?
When we, the actors, give into our fears in this way, you, the audience, might not notice right away. It will look and sound like a good performance. But it won't quite work. It will, most tellingly, bore you. What was once surprising, yet exactly right, is not so surprising anymore and not quite right.
But, to be honest, it's often good enough. Not many will notice what's wrong. And there are not a lot of people out there who will call us on it. It's up to us. We need to learn to get excited when we feel all uncomfortable and frustrated during rehearsals. And we need to get nervous when we're feeling nice and comfortable.
That's the demand we make on ourselves.
Next time: Conflict!
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Thank god for self
Thank god for self expression. Without it we would have no soul or heart, the ONLY places in us where true talent and feeling reside. But some of what I’m reading in response to this article continues to miss the bulls-eye for me.
We've all had a beginning, a rock bottom start; so we can all say that once you’re there, the only place you have to go is UP. You have to dream big in order to grow big, you have to daily get out of your comfort zone, you have to reach towards the stars if you want to expand your skill, and you have to believe in yourself when others continually doubt what’s inside of you. And if you truly believe that you have what it takes to do small, medium of big time theatre, then you will attract and seek out those who will truly see your heart. Why is there so much comparison to other people’s journeys? No one has your heart, YOUR story.
Athletes can’t compete without vigorous, intense training and preparation, right? I read somewhere that “Everyone who competes goes into strict training…operating on Discipline, Faith, Determination, and Accountability…” These tools don’t magically appear in your tool box over night and these tools are essential if you want to do any kind of artistry. The job of an actor is to compete every time you audition. So, if actors didn't have mentors to help train us, remind us of our individual gifts, encourage us to explore our inner capabilities, keep us curious of the craft, remind us about the work and tell us to go “Knock ‘em dead”…then we’d all go around imitating each other, imitations that are suppose to pass as good acting? I think not. These actors who condone this type of acting never fully reach into their souls so that they can reveal their true selves, challenging themselves to expose their truest gift of honesty, never really tapping into the most real talent that an actor can possess, that which is found in the heart.
Now onto professional actor training programs. It’s a two part equation; you can’t just have life experience without educating yourself and vise versa if you want to produce quality performances. I feel that it’s MORE than important that you set yourself up in an ivory tower of enlightenment, aka a college or a university in order for you to see the world from that view point, now keep in mind the next step is that you eventually have to come down off the pedestal with this intent: to gain the necessary worldly experience that is vitally important to us as actors. You have to want it all and believe that you can have it all, inwardly and outwardly…if you want to give your characters everything you’ve got, you have to stop judging yourself and cutting your dreams short. We have to stop comparing ourselves to the “most successful working actors in town” and focus on honing our selves, our hearts and our crafts without the comparing. Actors get lost in the imitation of the role because they constantly project what they think or feel on stage, never truly thinking or feeling their hearts in the first place. I ask you, develop your heart and you mind and your awareness in life so that you can do your character justice, allowing yourself to live and breathe a full bodied character on stage. THIS is your obligation to the work, not allowing yourself to get sloppy by phoning it in. The audience hungers for your honesty, a real connection from you, not just a half hearted rendition of the night before; not a tin type copy of what you think the character acts like. This type of acting is nothing more than mediocre work which limits your capabilities to feel in the moment.
The first step? Stop. Listen to your heart. Show your heart and your truth to the world AND THEN you are ready to step foot on the stage. A college education gave me a foundation to learn technique, professors to hold me accountable to do the work and a stepping stone that has been propelling me into the future. I am thankful for my degree because now I understand both worlds. As actors, it’s our responsibility to live life fully with all degrees of experience and training, with or without the dream of becoming a star. But this idea of “star path” and “transformer path” doesn’t mean bupkis without experience and training…the point is to learn and grow, otherwise you’re just stuck in that ivory tower with or without the professional actor training. Any actor shouldn't feel guilty or ashamed for dreaming of becoming a star, and every actor should always focus on advancing his or her ability to transform.
How do you dig so deep? How do you strip down the BS so that you can ride on more than just outer beauty, "who you know" or resume credits...or dare I say "natural talent"? It’s common sense to me. You've got to go somewhere; the first place you go is inward. Then you have to reach out to mentors who push you the most, surrounding yourself with people who bring out your absolute best. Because of a friend I have who’s been a big source of inspiration lately, my craft is continually evolving with the help of a mentor, my friend Bob.
Why should we continue hiding our luster? If you don’t reach for that next star and keep your dreams always in front of you, you’ll continually get lost in the clouds with all the other actors who are stunted in their growth, those actors who can’t feel completely alive in the moment, so they imitate life rather than really live it on stage. Riding on untrained instinctual talent is just insane if you call yourself a true actor.
Long story short, your journey ONLY depends on what YOUR HEART needs, wants and feels, regardless of what others say; but training? You have to train if you want to become a professional at anything. Only your heart can bring out your truest authenticity in life and in the life of the character, and your heart will tell you who to rub shoulders with along the way. What’s important is your heart in the work, not the destination of your career in this industry.
Claire Hayner
clairehayner@gmail.com
*sigh*
Oh, dear, the polarization over this issue! Zero-sum and either-or. As someone who graduated 30 years ago from one of these programs, I want to say there is no one true path to becoming a working actor. Ask 25 actors how they got where they are and you'll get 25 different stories. Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, Kevin Spacey, Liev Schreiber, Faye Dunaway, Robin Williams, Christopher Reeve, Joe Mantello, Tovah Feldshush, Isy Monk, Frances McDormand, Jane Kaczmarek, Richard Ooms, Barbara Kingsley, Roc Dutton, Angela Bassett, Mary-Louise Parker and Peter Michael Goetz,are just a few of the names I can recall off the top of my head who came out of Yale, Juilliard, NYU, Boston U, ACT, Carolina School for the Arts, the Goodman, SMU, UCSD, the U McKnight/Bush/BFA Guthrie and and other conservatory programs. Not to mention a host of British actors stretching back to John Gielgud, Judy Dench and Laurence Olivier coming out of British drama schools.
I could, if I thought enough, come up with an equally long list of distinguished actors who achieved their prominence without any formal training whatsoever. What separates acting from other performance disciplines is that it really is possible to be a “natural talent” and achieve success by a combination of luck, persistence, personality and good looks. In movies or television, at least. Less so on stage, especially when working in any performance style outside of naturalism. I doubt that an aspiring opera singer, ballet dancer or orchestral musician would stand any chance of securing work without serious and ongoing training. Similarly, I believe any actor who wants to succeed performing Shakespeare, commedia dell'arte, musical comedy, Greek drama or any other genre which requires technique beyond simply being natural had best spend a little time and effort learning the form and style.
In the end, nobody cares where or if you went to school as long as you are able to do the work. Drama schools, apart from whatever training they might offer and their and actor, are also useful for forging relationships and opening doors to opportunity that might otherwise take the young actor years to crack. In a business that has far too many aspirants seeking far too few jobs, talent agents and casting directors are always looking for reasonably reliable shortcuts to filling their limited hours seeing actors who will be worth their while. Along with personal recommendations from actors or directors known to them personally, the industry gatekeepers will look at where someone trained with the idea that if this person got into Yale or NYU they must be someone worth looking at.
I know from working with him that John Middleton is a terrific actor. He walked his own unique road to become what he is. But John's journey is John's journey. Find your own way. That may mean an apprenticeship at the children's theater, a stint at NYU, or thumbing your way out to Hollywood to hustle up an agent and an HBO series. My best advice is to always try to just get in the room where the work is going on, work with people who will challenge you, push yourself to try harder every time and make lots of friends. In the end, relationships are what keep an actor's career alive.
Corragio!
the truths
A number of wonderful truths within here. But just like the variety of actors' training, acting styles and efficacy, no one route is the true route. The true route is the one that works for the actor. We all learn different ways, need different things...and have different needs and strengths. I know of many examples of successful (ie: star bound) students who years later are not star-bound. Despite their best efforts. I know of many many similar opposite examples - those from whom no success or professional foothold was expected, yet success they've found.
Overall though, I'd agree I've learned so much more about performance (as both actor and director) in the years actually doing it, working with myriad and various people, than I did in those years paying a college for my degree.
As for the "articulate baritone" however...I'm fairly certain I needed to pay all that money to lose dat Chicago Accent dat I din't even know I hAd.
I look forward to further Middleton insights.
How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
When you grow up and live in NYC for 50+ years of your life, you get an idea of the hard work it takes to get to Carnegie Hall. NY's love visitors, and we love to give simple directions. So here’s the old cliche: “how do you get to Carnegie Hall?” Practice.
I remember at six years old having to drudge through piano lessons, learn my scales, my theory, then practice, then do it all over again, train, learn, practice, each and every week, for 10 years, and then I found musical theater, and then I found the guitar, and I did the same thing, train, learn, practice, then I found my singing voice, and I trained, learned, practiced, then I found my writers voice, so I trained, learned and practiced, and so I have done for 50+ years.
It costs a lot of money.
It takes a lot of time.
It hurts.
I was simply on a path, always having a hunger for fame and transformation, along with the joy (yes even after years of hating to practice my piano) of training, learning, practicing and doing.
And (oh my!) if fame, fortune and transformation were to come...
To this day I thank all the people who made a difference in my life from my first piano lesson, because (as my dear friend reminded me) I could have missed the most important catalyst in my life, a mentor who listens, and through wisdom and insight pushes you harder and harder to reach your fullest potential and asks nothing in return but your finest. There is no price for that.
So at 52, I fell in love again with theater, so I did the same thing, train, learn, practice, and do "and that has made all the difference."*
THERE IS A Carnegie Hall, and in my opinion you stay on THAT path, because without it, you may only have the ability to drop your pants if you ever get there.
Robert Marcus
Minnesota Productions
rsmarcus@gmail.com
*Robert Frost
I want to play the "make a list" game
Local actors who did not attend college, let alone specifically for theater, let alone go on to do further academic professional training, off the top of my head: Zoe Pappas, Stacia Rice, Sally Wingert. Probably three of the most successful working actors in this town. (Unless my information is wrong, which it may be).
I happen to agree that a certain amount of training is useful and beneficial. But I don't think it's the One True Way, and I think it has diminishing returns after a certain point. And it is also possible to apprentice oneself to masters where one finds them out and about in the professionally working world.
My two cents. :)
A respectful dissent
Though I appreciate and generally agree with the advice and viewpoints expressed starting at the “Transformational Acting” section, I must take issue with the title and first three paragraphs of this post.
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Professional training “a curse”? Mr. Middleton, you have every right to your own sadness in regard to your negative experience in a training program, but the hubris you display by projecting it on others and claiming to solve the problem by replacing actual training with explaining the art of acting through a series of articles is irresponsible and offensive. Acting is an artistic craft. One does not learn a craft solely from reading a few thousand words and then practicing. Surely you were being tongue-in-cheek and I am taking you too seriously. But as long as I’ve pulled out my soapbox…
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Professional training programs are the modern descendants of the traditional master/apprentice model — I would go so far as to say they are actually an improvement because students are exposed to more master craftsmen with more specialties than one company of actors usually contains. Of course there is much to be gained from emulating the seasoned professionals you may be working with, but this is not a replacement for daily lessons from masters in voice, speech, movement, dance, Alexander Technique, classical texts, mask work, dramatic theory and history, as well as the manifold approaches to acting itself. Yes, a lot of being a good actor is being a well-rounded human being, and much of that is accomplished on one’s own; but to be a great actor one also needs technique, and that is what one learns from a professional training program.
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Yes, school can be expensive, and perhaps some tuitions are excessive, but who is to blame — the concept of professional artist training itself? If money is your bugbear, you will find your opponent in the economy and the government’s funding of education.
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If you, or anyone else, remain skeptical, perhaps we should make a list of great actors, locally or nationally, and investigate their training? I’d be glad to save us all the time and state that great actors who have not had professional training are few and far between.
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—Joseph Papke
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PS: Alec Guinness attended the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art when he couldn’t get a scholarship to RADA.
an unclever subject that in no way summarizes the post below
While reading this, I found myself laughing frequently and nodding my head up and down saying "totally!" frequently.
And then there were those other moments:
Like when I tried to articulate to myself the difference between Classicism and Romanticism... "Well let's see: Uh, Greek plays are classical. And uh, well is the 18th and 19th century Romanticism and those plays had like melodrama n stuff?"
Or when I realized that I tried to "pull my pants down" when I played Servant #1 in The Good Natured Man...
So now I'm thinking "Uh oh. Maybe I'm failing the John Middleton school of acting, a school that I revere."
But then right at the end, I scored a big hit. "We need to learn to get excited when we feel all uncomfortable and frustrated during rehearsals." Awesome. I always feel all uncomfortable and frustrated during rehearsals.
Marvelous!
One word...and I said it in the title of my post.