Sensible Acting

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This website is a place where actors can share some plain talk about the acting profession.  In it, you will find ideas that may challenge the traditional assumptions of our profession.

Hopefully, you will find things that encourage you to question some of the outdated methods and processes still being taught today.

You may find what seems to be a ‘new approach’ to the acting profession even though it has been around for more than thirty years, and has been proven effective by many actors, writers and directors who find it is simply better, faster, clearer and more comprehensive than processes they had used in the past.

You will find what I like to call the Acting Myths, why these popular beliefs found their way into our training programs and why they are either a waste of time or, more importantly, grossly misleading.

You will NOT find any ‘call to action’ on this site; however, I do still teach classes and seminars when asked by different schools and organizations, and those events will be posted as they come up.   If you are interested in the ideas presented in this website, you are welcome to contact me for further discussion, leave your comments, or start your own discussion groups with fellow actors to further explore how people in our profession can become more competent, confident and reliable in the art of storytelling.

Basic Premises of Sensible Acting:

Acting should be considered a discipline (or science) based on Human Behavior as are the disciplines (or sciences) of psychology, sociology and psychiatry.  Psychology and psychiatry ‘fix’ human behavior, sociology ‘predicts’ human behavior, and acting ‘re-creates’ human behavior.   This one assumption would eliminate most of the ambiguity and time consuming ‘creative exploratory’ process deemed necessary by today’s training processes.  After all, anyone in these social sciences must be able to understand a patient’s (character’s) psyche, motivations and processes before attempting to ‘fix’ or ‘predict’ their feelings and behaviors… we, as actors, need the same understanding of the character, but we don’t attempt to fix them, we simply ‘become’ them.

Acting is about believably BECOMING SOMEONE ELSE who has a unique history, beliefs and value system.  Psycho-therapy, on the other hand, is about ‘being you’ or knowing yourself.  Many of today’s acting classes are run as if they are some kind of psycho-therapy session by people who have no training in psycho-therapy.  There is NO VALUE in being able to confess ‘your deepest darkest secret’ with all the emotional garbage associated with that secret in front of a class of 25 would-be actors and an acting coach.  There IS, however, great value in being able to confess ‘YOUR CHARACTER’S deepest darkest secret’ with all of THEIR emotional garbage.  If you need psycho-therapy, find a therapy group (with a qualified group leader).  If you want to act, learn to leave all your personal beliefs values and biases behind, and BECOME SOMEONE ELSE with all their personality idiosyncrasies.

Story Structure DOES exist, and well-told stories adhere to that structure.  If actors were taught story structure, they would understand the function of their character in the story as well as in ANY GIVEN SCENE.  This would enable the actor to make choices that would advance the story properly rather than the actor simply making choices based on ‘instinct’ or the actor’s whim.  The knowledgeable actor also gains the confidence associated with having a grounded basis for choices made, and can also interact intelligently with the director and writer about the story development, plot progression and character arc.

Skills are built through Knowledge plus Repetition.  They say ‘Practice makes Perfect’… it doesn’t.  ‘Practice makes Permanent’!  In order to develop a skill (in anything), you first must LEARN HOW TO DO IT CORRECTLY, then do it and do it and do it until you can DO IT WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT IT.  Those who gain the knowledge to do it correctly, and then never practice it repeatedly, simply become great CRITICS of that skill.  They KNOW how it should be done, but never took the time to master the skills themselves, so they have become competent critics (able to recognize competent work, but unable to do it themselves).  Those who never bother to learn how to do it correctly and think that through ‘doing it’, they will become skillful, simply create permanent bad habits and become permanently flawed in their skill set (unable to differentiate between good and bad work and, therefore, unable to do good work consistently).

Two Parts to a Successful Career:

1. You must ‘Know your craft’
2. Others must know that you ‘Know your craft’. 

In other words,

• WHO you know will open the door of opportunity,
• WHAT you know keeps the door from hitting your rear-end on the way out! 

Meeting the ‘right’ people means nothing unless you have the skills they need.