So of course I watched the Tony Awards last night, which, in my opinion, still feels like the only awards show geared to entertaining an audience instead of just a parade of celebrities loving on themselves in public.
The true standout moment for me was Kenny Leon's acceptance speech for "A Raisin in the Sun" in the Best Direction of a Play category. Seemingly bent on getting every Meisner-based teacher and acting student in the land tweeting, texting, whooping, and weeping simultaneously, Mr. Leon attributed the success of the show to the cast going out every time and listening to one another. "They LISTEN to each other!" he repeated.
Surely you've heard the "old generous actors who listen" chestnut on one award acceptance speech or another. But like eating right and exercising, we've heard about it, we know we oughta do it, but how many of us really do it in our acting? Or even know why we must?
I recently came across an advertisement for an acting book that talks about how your acting won't look real unless you look like you're reacting to something. In the interest of full disclosure, I have not read the book, but is this what it's down to? "Looking like" you're reacting to something?
Sigh.
I hope there is more to the theory than that, but on the other hand, someone chose to advertise the book that way, so that may well be the highlight. Even more concerning to me than the premise were the reviews saying that this concept of reacting had opened their eyes to a new world of performance.
Sigh.
If having a perceptible reaction on stage is groundbreaking information, it tells me that the listening part of acting is still rarer than chocolate diamonds. If you're listening the way a trained actor does (Meisner-based training offers the best ear-training available for actors, in my opinion), and you know how to leave yourself alone and express what's really going on, your reactions will be perceptible to the audience and to the other actor(s).
If you think you listen well - or suspect that maybe you don't - take this little test to see where you stand:
1) I'm often surprised by the way things come out of my fellow actors in scenework and/or in performance. ____ Yes ___ No
2) I'm often surprised by the way things come out of me in scenework and/or in performance.
___ Yes ____ No
3) I have gotten legitimate feedback on one or more occasions that I was "great" when I thought I was barely doing anything externally. ___ Yes ____ No
4) No matter what character I'm working on, I often find that my own emotional responses fit the scene well. ____ Yes _____ No
Okay, enough with the skewed questions. You get the idea. If you were saying No a bunch, or saying Yes when it wasn't true, chances are, you're not listening in your work.
Listening versus Hearing
One of the many things I love about Meisner training is that, through the repetition exercise, a teacher always knows when a student is listening and when they are merely hearing. When one actors says, "No, I don't particularly care for that tone!" and the other replies, "You don't like my tone," there's just no doubt about it. The listening has broken down and the actor has to get back on quick or lose the audience for the remainder of the scene (or the entire show).
It's so easy and intoxicating to get caught up in an emotional drift with another actor, and think that since you're both emoting, you're acting. No. You're emoting. Because the moment will come when one guy says or does something just a little differently. There'll be a touch of irony during in a tender exchange, a sarcastic twinge, inadvertent humor, or even dash of resentment or ridicule. If an actor-in-training misses that, it tells me as a teacher that he was not listening.
In the real world (my students know I call it the matrix, so I'll do the same here), there is entirely too much going on to take it all in fully, much less react to all of it. You would lose your mind shortly after your morning coffee. But in theater, the world exists in an extremely limited and controlled quantity. Free from the extraneous noise of the matrix, the audience gets to relax and focus on every little thing that happens. Emotional responses follow, we hope.
But if an actor misses something - anything - that is said in that tiny little world, the audience knows it, because they do hear it. So let's start our list of "Reasons to Listen When You Act:"
Reason #1 You must listen on stage so as to look like a fool in front of the audience.
Now let's get back to that burden of having to react. You can't react truthfully to something you didn't listen to. Notice I didn't say something you didn't hear. Hearing is not going to get you far. Unless you've been declared deaf, you can hear. Big deal. Hearing is not active. Have you ever been in a room where an announcement was made that you knew didn't apply to you, then had a stranger walk up and ask you what the announcement was? You have, I'll bet. What did you do to retrieve the information?
Echo memory, that's what. Your brain seems to allow sound to echo around in it for a few seconds before it dies off and is forgotten. So when you try and retrieve something you heard but didn't listen to, you usually can recall the last few second of what was said, like an echo. This is why comic bits where one character launches on a minute-long tirade that doesn't perturb a non-listening bystander, then says one thing at the very end that doesn't fit, there's a pause (while the echo of the last words chime in the brain) and then the listener reacts. You know the drill:
Nag: "I just don't understand why you don't like my mother-in-law! You never call her, you don't send her a card for her birthday or anything. Well I'm tired of bothering you about it. From now on, you don't have to call her.
Nagee: Great.
Nag: You don't have to send her a card any more.
Nagee: Great.
Nag: You don't have to go out of your way one bit ever again.
Nagee: Great.
Nag: Because mother is moving in with us.
Nagee: Great. (Pause) WHAT?
Right? This gag is older than the pyramids, but it will always work because people will always block one another out and hear rather than listen.
So make sure you listen when you act. If you don't know exactly what all that entails, stay tuned. But in the meantime, get in a good Meisner-based acting class.
Love and Drama -
Jill
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