The Top 10 Things to Look for in an Acting Class

Listen, you can spend a lot of time and money with your butt parked in the wrong acting class.  Ask me how I know.

After YEARS of taking classes that failed me, I've come up with a list of things I think you MUST look for in a class.  If you're missing more than one or two of these things, itr might be tie to be up out!  This list is 30-plus years in the making, so think if over . . . .

Wannahearit?  Hereitgoes:

1.      The teacher is approachable.

We’ve all been raised on acting guru lore, where acting teachers wear black turtlenecks, chain-smoke and look at every student like crumbs that need to be swept off the floor.  Makes for great TV, but really, you need to be absolutely comfortable talking to and asking your teacher questions.  There is too much to learn.  The day you keep your mouth shut may be the day you could have learned the one thing that would get you the role of a lifetime.  Look for a smile and an open office door.

2.      You like the other students. 

You’re going to fall on your face many times while you’re learning.  You do not need catty, competitive classmates.  Ideally, your class should gel into a community in which you make both friends and professional contacts.  If you’re not feeling the vibe that’s going down, you will find it that much harder to feel free enough to take chances in class.  Plus, you’re missing out on what could be valuable networking time.  

3.  You start improving soon.  Really.

I can't believe this is a point of contention, but apparently it is.  In my opinion, if you’re going to an acting class, you should be getting better as the weeks go by if you are giving it your full effort.  I'm not into the 20-year plan. 

First, let's get one thing clear. The main purpose of an acting class is to lay the foundation of your technique.  Then you stay in class to practice building on that foundation - you experience plumb and true versus wonky and flimsy and learn to know the difference. 

What happens in most instruction is the students are presumed to have a technique.  Then the "Scene Study Two - completion of Scene Study One or interview with the instructor required" jazz starts happening.  You do a scene in class till you are able to fill it with the predictable line readings and put-on mannerisms that make it look a little better than awful.  This is not training; it's rehearsing.  The minute you pick up a new script, you're a beginner again. 

First, don't pay anyone to rehearse.  Second, you can embark on this 20-year plan and still suck at the end of it. 
 So though I may get skewered for this by the purists, I suggest you not sit in a class or theater program without being conscious of the pages of the calendar turning.  Especially you young actors who want to act in TV and films - that dewy Twilight demographic look doesn't last forever!  And, to paraphrase Dr. Phil, time doesn’t fix everything - it's what you do with the time.  If you’ve been working diligently in a class for a few months and don’t think you’ve improved and have a way of beginning to approach any type of script, it’s time to find another class. 

Last, let me say that the old saw about “Talent!  Either you have it or you don’t!” has provided haven and cover for many a teacher who wasn’t getting it done in the classroom.  Don't let a teacher convince you that you are somehow unteachable.  Anyone can skim the best students off the top, kick out the rest, and take credit for the predictably stellar results.  That ain't teaching a class.  It's casting a testimonials video. 
 

4.   You should be learning to take direction. 

In other words, keep an eye toward translating your teacher’s feedback into action.  Say your teacher says you don’t seem invested enough in a scene.  He or she may mean you need to find something in the scene and or the character that has deeper meaning for you.  Or she may just want you to talk louder.  Ask, then do. 

5.     Your personal life should not be on display. 

Acting may be therapeutic, but it ain’t therapy.  If you’re being asked to reveal deeply personal, painful events from your own life in order to arrive at some emotion in an acting class, watch out.  First, you never know when a moment of sharing will spin out of control, or simply leave you feeling so exposed you never return to class.  Second, an actor’s inner life is his gold.  Keep it out of direct sunlight.
 

6.      You should be learning a cold reading and audition technique.  The whole time.

Unless you have tons of time and loads of money, I don’t see why an actor would settle for separate scene study, monologue, and audition classes.  If you can get through a scene, but your cold readings are flat and your monologues have to be practiced aloud and calculated like a military maneuver, your acting class is failing you.  All these skills should be improving as you progress in class.  The end.

 

7.      You should be working on emotional preparation in class.  A lot.

Coming onto the stage as if something BIG just happened not easy, but essential to the illusion of storytelling.  Knowing how whip yourself into a genuine emotional state while you’re fixing your powdered wig and waiting for your cue is no joke, and worse yet, you may have to change your preparation from time to time to keep it fresh.  You have to practice emotional this.  You have to ask questions of yourself and of your teacher.  He or she should guide you in getting started.  “Come in ecstatic!” is an advanced note for a teacher to give.  You should NOT be hearing it before your level of advancement warrants it.  This is critical, since working for emotional results like this is where a lot of BAD acting is born.

 

8.    You should be learning even when you’re not working.

If you find yourself in a class where it’s fun to be a fly on the wall while others work on scenes and monologues, but the notes the teacher gives apply have no real application to the rest of the class, your time would be better spent watching one of those master class DVDs.  Make sure the teacher considers everyone in the room when working with actors.  And make sure you pay attention, even when you’re sitting down.  It ain't all about you.

 

9.    The teacher should not think you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.

You may well be, but you still need feedback and criticism.  Don’t be afraid to tell your teacher what you need help with, even if you fooled her that time!

 

10.   The learning process must be fun.

 Look, I know there's a kind of romance in the suffering of artists.   Have you gotten a load of that draggy, weepy music they play on The Actors' Studio?  SHEESH!  

You're going to deal with a lot of heavy material and emotional surprises as you train.  The crap playwrights write about will kill you if you let it.  So it MUST be fun for you to come to class.  You should want to come in and hug your classmates' necks.  You should be excited about showing off your budding skills.  You should want to talk about class after class.  Class, like life, should not be a drag.

 

Any other essentials you think should be on this list?   I welcome your comments!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding the right Acting Class - or not!!!

My journey to finding the right acting training for myself lasted YEARS.  I don't wish that on anyone, but I bet a lot of you will be able to see yourselves in this story!  Here it goes:

My first day in an acting class, the teacher told us to act like light bulbs.  Had I been four and in nursery school and not a 14 year-old who had begged her parents for both tuition and the freedom to go into Manhattan alone on the subway, it might have been okay.  The teacher caught me staring, fish-eyed, then pointed at me and shouted,  “GOOD!”  Everyone turned in their sockets to see which light had come on.  I looked like a crash dummy solving a crossword puzzle, but it was good.  The suspicion that acting classes were fake and random took root in me right then, to grow for many years.  A couple of terms later, I believed I was beyond repair. 

Screw this, I thought.  I’m going to college and majoring in finance.
Get a real job.

Not knowing when to quit, though, I took a few college acting classes.  My teacher was the late Susan Spector, with whom I remained friends until her passing.  She’d studied with and written about Uta Hagen, and she took me through exercises in which I was always doing something, and for a reason.  I began to drop some of my kooky habits, mainly because I was so busy.  Susan was encouraged with my progress enough that she asked me to play Joan of Arc, the lead role in “The Lark,” the following fall semester.  I'd have to audition, of course, but she was confident I could do it.  For my part, I knew that unless my own St. Michael came and walked me through that audition, and if I got the part, the role, I would be the one going down in flames.  I went to the Yellow Pages (that's what we had back then)  and looked under “Dramatic Instruction - Emergencies.”

I found Ernest McClintock of the 127^th Street Repertory, and we met for an interview.  This was a black man who’d done the classics.  I needed him, badly.  So, without a hello, I said:  “Listen.  I have the lead role in a play.  I can’t act.  I have eight weeks.  Help me.”  Ernie roared with laughter and over the summer, gave me enough tools to get by and get over.  The play went fine, people said I was good, but what shocked me was that, once or twice, freed by the externals Ernie had given me and grounded in the reasons for doing Susan had taught me, I actually felt something onstage.  Not more than here and there, but there it was. 

I hunted down that high for the next several years.  I knew that time alone was not a teacher - I was present when two actors from a hit TV show cackled about the acting skills of one of their long-running, beloved costars.  So I filled my time with effort.  I drank from imaginary coffee cups, fell backward into the arms of other actors who also couldn’t act, sang lines of Shakespeare to “keep them fresh,” and imagined my dog dying in order to coax out tears (turns out a little mineral oil would’ve done the trick - but don't try it at home, kids).  I read the first few chapters of Chekhov’s “To the Actor” more times than I’d attempted the Bible.  No cigar.  

Screw this, I thought.  I’m going to law school.  Get a real job. 

Little did I know, Harvard Law School had a full-time Ham – um, Drama Society.  I auditioned for everything.  I directed.  I acted.  I sang.  I produced.  It was in the course of producing and set-designing for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that I saw something that changed my attitude about acting forever.  I got a hold of a copy of a 1968 film of the play starring a fairly weak actress struggling through a leading role.  It was Helen Mirren.  That’s when I realized:  it’s not either you have it or you don’t.  Acting can be learned!  People are going somewhere and learning this!  My third-year paper was due, I had to study for the bar exam, and I had a job at a law firm lined up, but believe me, I did not forget that.

In 2000, an actress I’d cast in a staged reading for a TV network (I’m proud to say the network stole – I mean, “ran with” with the idea) urged me to come to Matthew Corozine’s class in NYC.  By that time, I had given up on acting, but enjoyed directing, and I wanted to learn to work better with actors.  So I came to class with, shall we say, "skepticism and emotional distance."  I hoped to pick up a little actor-y jargon so actors would know I felt their pain, and be out.  No way was I going to learn to act there.  I'd really given up on learning acting concept.

Matthew taught based on the Sanford Meisner technique, and lo and behold, the class I showed up for was his very first class.  I didn't know from Meisner at that point, but what grabbed me right away was how clear everything was.  We did this repetition exercise, and I thought, “I have been here one hour and I am using a kind of text and feeling real emotions.  WTH??”  There were no riddles and rhymes designed to confound and impress.  The work was not easy, but it was fun and the goals were defined.  As the months went by, everyone improved.  Everyone.  Having met actors since then who’ve studied Meisner elsewhere - including at big-name schools - and gotten little out of it, I know for sure that the technique is only as strong as its teacher.  

Eventually, I started to substitute teach, and I taught at my own studio as well.  Now, 12 years later, I'm still so enthusiastic about Meisner-based training that I'm teaching an ongoing acting class at the Matthew Corozine Studio in NYC.  Journey complete(?)  (smile)

I know from experience that anyone with the will and the right instruction can learn this acting thing.  

Like they say:  those who can’t leave it alone - teach.  So - bring your questions, perspectives, and acting problems.  Let's talk them out!