You don't listen, and when you admit that, you're ahead of the game

Did you catch Kenny Leon's acceptance speech at the Tony Awards for directing "A Raisin in the Sun back in 2014?"  Even if you think you did, YouTube it and listen again.  I will love him forever for attributing the quality of the show to the cast going out every time and listening to each other.  "They LISTEN to each other!"  he repeated.

#omgtweetsniffleclaptext

You've at some point heard actors ponderously talk about how some actor or other is "generous and really listens."  But what is all this about listening?  What does listening matter if you know what your next line is anyway?  Don't you just make sure the other actor is done talking, then fill in the void with your line?  Or, if you're a real pro, you just slightly overlap the last word they say with your line?  You know, "picking up the cues?"

Umm.  No.

Listening versus Hearing - The Thrilla in Magilla, or something

Listening is not the same as hearing.  Unless you've been declared totally hearing impaired, you can hear.  And unlike seeing, tasting, touching, or to some extent, smelling, you can't pick and choose what you will hear.  If the sound is made close enough to you, you heard it.

So it makes perfect sense that your brain decides hundreds of times a day to ignore what you hear.  You'd lose your mind otherwise.  Unfortunately, though, when it's time to listen, you may find that you're far better at deleting and ignoring what you hear than you are at really taking it in.

Then there's the problem of choosing what you will admit you heard.  This is not unlike choosing what you will and will not see, which I discussed in an earlier, rambling post.  If you don't want to lose a friend, you may not hear the sarcasm in her voice, for example, and be utterly amazed that people in your life ask you why you deal with that condescending piece of  - BLEEP - .

Of all the five senses, the sense of hearing is probably the most fallible.  This is why comedy writers love teasing us about it, writing endless jokes with patterns like this:

NAG

 I want you to spend more time with my mother. She's good to us.  Good to you.

NAGEE

Yes, dear.

NAG

Give her a birthday card.  Invite her to have dinner with us.

NAGEE

Yes, dear.

NAG

  I'll make it easy for you.  

NAGEE

Yes, dear.

NAG

I've asked mother to move in with us.

NAGEE

Yes, dear.  (PAUSE)  WHAT?

The humor is based on what you might call "echo memory."  Seems our ears and brain echo what we've heard for a few seconds after the sound stops.  While the sound it is still clanging around in our heads, we can retrieve some of it - at least the last few words.  In the comic setup above, it's the Nag's failure to add anything else after the final "Yes, dear," that creates a silence in which the Nagee hears the echo of what went before.  By no means was he listening when she dropped the news that mom's going to be their new roommate.  He heard the echo of the words a moment later, then reacted.  This comic setup is older than the pyramids, but it will always get a laugh because people will always be caught hearing, but not listening worth a crap.

Then there's the tried-and-true "I refuse to listen to things I don't want to," comic bit.  It goes something like this:

ARCHIE

Edith, get me a beer, huh?  Make yourself useful.

EDITH

Oh, ARCHIE!!!  I'd be happy to!!!  (scampers happily to the kitchen)

Here, the words are heard and understood, but nothing of the tone is accepted by the listener. 
This comic pattern will be funny till the day they stop making people.  People's failure to listen fully is legendary and and nearly 100 percent reliable.

As an actor, though, if you don't actually listen during a performance, some day soon - tonight if you're in a show right now - you're going to do your canned, polished line reading and you're going to feel the audience stir ever so slightly.  A cough.  Maybe a cell phone screen comes on.  It's that moment when the audience remembers that they're watching a mere play.  You lost 'em.  Because the way you delivered your line did not take into account and actually respond to what was said to you and how it was said.  Best case, the audience laughs when the scene isn't funny.   But you can survive that.  Worst case is the audience thinks you're making a character choice, and they'll file it away with the expectation that all the loose ends will come together by the end of the play.  If the playwright didn't account for your failure to listen, nothing will seem resolved or sensible to the audience by the end of the play or movie.  Stay tuned for the bad reviews and the "Honey, don't you think it's time to get a real job?" coffee date with a loved one.


Why Can I Watch a 2 Hour Movie and Follow Every Word, but Hear Nothing Onstage?
or
Why It's Hard to Listen when You know You have to Respond 

One big reason you can listen well to a movie or play is that you don't have to participate or talk back.  You're not recalling a line and trying to figure out how best to say it to please the casting director sitting in the back row (within a single stride of the exit, usually.)  The mind can remain off self.  That's one thing.

On top of that, the action an audience member witnesses is far more limited than it is in the real life matrix where a typical morning moment might look like this: you're running late for work and scolding yourself in your head for it, while you're making small talk with a friend you bumped into at Starbucks while listening for your name at the pickup counter.  The CD that's playing in the background is the one your sister wants for her birthday and you're wondering if you should just buy it now and get it out of the way or come back during lunch.  Chances are you're hearing everything and listening to almost nothing.  Serious sound editing going on.  But a movie?  Ninety percent of the time, you're listening to two people talking in close up.  Period.

You have to train the listening muscle for it to work for the duration of a full scene, or one-person-show, or toothpaste commercial shoot. Listening does not come naturally - not in our culture, anyway. Then, once you've trained yourself to listen impeccably, you must allow yourself your real response to what you heard - AFTER you've heard it. Then you have to further train to respond using the line as your mode of expression. Then, while you're still feeling things, you gotta listen again, with no expectation that what you will hear next will be consistent with what just happened.

I'm going to get into all of this on this blog over time.  But for now, if you're in an acting class or in the classroom of life, just strive to listen.  That may sound corny, but do it.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.  I'm sorry, no - I'd like to listen to what you have to say! 

Love and drama -

Jill


   

Checking in With You!

This is going to be a quickie today.

Let me ask you one question.  How are you doing with your studies and career?  Are you doing all you are able to do right now?  (Okay, sorry:  that was two questions.)

I once heard one of those stock, Tony Robbins-type motivational phrases, but it stuck with me.  It was simply this:

"You don't have to do __________ today.  But someone else will."

So let's talk about your acting.  Are you enrolled in a class?  If so, do you attend regularly, especially when you don't feel like it?  Do you do the assignments fully and to the best of your ability, or just enough to fool the teacher?

Do you network?  If you're not the handshaker-type, get in an acting class and meet people.  Propose and work on projects together.  Write a monologue or a scene to expand your skills and to give your classmates something to do.  They'll love you for it. 

Are you looking for an agent?  If your acting is shaky, the chances of you sitting in an agent's office and nailing a monologue are not great.  If your chops aren't there yet, get in a class.  (Noticing a theme, here?)

Are you auditioning consistently?  That means looking for them, going to them, doing your best at them because you're prepared, and learning from each experience.

Do you have your goals clearly defined?  Break them down.  If you want to do films in Hollywood, have you done student and indie films yet?  Don't assume that taking a pricey film acting class is going to prepare you in any way other than technically.  You need to know from experience what the ups and downs of any given career choice are, then weigh them for yourself and decide if you want to take it any further.  Don't make the mistake of simply assuming that since you wanted something a few years ago that you still want it.  It may not be the case.  If you're not sure, check out your actions.  (OO, that's cold!)

You get my drift. 

In sum: 
1)  Figure out what you want to do. 
2)  Do it on whatever scale you can right now.
3)  Decide if you still want to do it.  If so, commit, dig in, and show up.  If not, let it go.  Come up with a different game plan, and go back to Step 2.  Lather, live, repeat.

Love and Drama -
Jill

Why I STRONGLY Recommend Meisner-Based Training

It occurred to me yesterday that I dove into writing this blog without so much as explaining why I'm here talking about the Meisner-based approach to acting training in the first place.  If you haven't been exposed to Meisner work, or you took a quick dip into the pool but didn't take the time to master it, consider the following.

The Meisner approach provides step-by-step, progressive and the most effective acting training that I am aware of.  (Feel free to jump in here!)  In Meisner, you start by mastering basic actions - listening, observing, and responding before you think.  Then you start riffing on those skills within given imaginary circumstances.  In a properly-taught class, you're never left with a script wondering how you're going to fake your way through it.  Instead, each exercise prepares you for the next.  It is the only technique I know where a cold reading can be as emotionally strong as a rehearsed performance.

The definition of acting - as adapted by Matthew Corozine at his NYC studio where I trained and now teach - is "living and behaving truthfully and fully under imaginary circumstances."  You've probably heard a definition like this.  There are two ways to get at truthful behavior.  First, you can go home, read your script and plan what you will do moment to moment, how you will deliver this line versus that one, etc.  This is known as a presentational or representational style.  One advantage of it is that it is "set it and forget it." The actor does not have to be 100 percent checked in during a performance, because his part is not going to vary much no matter what the other actors do, or if the set falls down.  So long as the other actors are the same every night, and if the actor can faithfully reproduce "realistic" behavior - which, make no mistake, is a craft in itself - the audience will buy it.  I once was cast way over my head - the director thought I could act - I knew better - but I got through it with a presentational approach. 

The other way to get at truthful behavior is to really do what the character is doing - listen, hear, and do, - and let your emotions flow from that.  A lot more work, and many more unknowns since the performance is open to change every time.  On top of that, the actor absolutely cannot check out mentally.  

So is it worth it?

If you want to give an audience something they can feel - then yes, it is.  First, when it comes to emotions, everyone is psychic.  When you feel something, unless I am in my own way or judging you, I will begin to feel the same thing.  

What this means for you, the actor, is that when you feel something, the audience will feel the same.  They go on an emotional ride with you.  Why does this matter so much?

The silent question every audience member is asking herself during a movie or play is this:  "If I were in this situation, what would I do?"  If the acting and direction are seamless enough, the audience suspends disbelief, enters the action emotionally and then asks, "Wow!  Now that I'm IN this situation, what DO I do?"  At this point, you, the actor, become their gamepiece in a virtual reality world. 

But wait.  How can you be a gamepiece if you're following a script rather than the audience's wishes?  First, people react more or less similarly on an emotional level to any given set of circumstances.  I know this RAILS against our ideas of individuality and   "specialness."  For this, I apologize, but not till I lay one other bit on you.  

As quiet as it's kept, there are only a few emotions.  Here's a pretty-much exhaustive list of them:

Happy

Sad

Mad

Scared

Everything else is a combination of the others.  

So, between the audience feeling what you feel, and you feeling what the audience would feel in the same circumstances - the audience experiences the illusion of living through you.

Now, let's look at how Meisner training helps with  this.  First, the repetition exercise works directly to heighten your awareness of what the audience is seeing and hearing by training you to listen and observe your fellow actors like your life depends on it.   So rather than  try to second guess the audience, you simply see and hear what they see and hear.  Next, the training demands that you respond authentically.  Since people are more alike than different, and there are only a handful of emotions, your authentic response is likely to be shared by the audience.  And if they would not have felt the same emotion you did, they WILL once they watch you genuinely experience and express that emotion.  

Did you notice I said "genuinely experience" the emotion?  Let's get into that a bit more.

The training teaches you to act before you think.  You may wonder what spontaneity has to do with performance and emotion, especially since there are  other acting approaches that teach you to conjure up a veritable mental storm of memories when it's time to feel something.  The problem with memories is that they can be foggy.  Worse, the mind tends not to keep them in alphabetized files.  For example, if I want to be "misty and sentimental," in a scene, my mind may or may not consciously recall a time when I felt those things.  More likely, it will intellectualize what "should" make me feel those things, and try to match a memory to that expectation.  Equally likely is that if it does hit upon the Misty File, it may be afraid to open it without reading through it first.  While you're onstage.  Either way, you end up in your head, searching for an answer you may never find and may not want if you do find it.

This is where the Head Monster will step in and "solve" the problem.  Being tied to your ego, your pride, and your sense of social standing (hey, those things are important out here in the matrix), your Head Monster will step up and serve the desire that draws so many actors to the craft in the first place:  the desire to be special.  More.  Better.  Different.  And here, ladies and gentlemen - in that void between the realization that genuine emotion is not happening and wondering "hell, NOW what do I do to be interesting?" - is where bad acting is born and suckled.  It is borne of the need to stand out and be something other than an ordinary, recognizable human, at sea in the ebb and flow of emotions.

I think this is where Meisner work helps most.   In the repetition exercise, you learn to express and then name what you feel before you get a chance to fix it or question it.  By naming her feelings, the actor begins to automatically associate those labels with the words, thoughts, and situations that bring those feelings about.  The actor can then use this information in emotional preparations, but the cool part is that it isn't conscious.  So in time, the mere act of reading or hearing text will arouse genuine feelings in the actor, and he need not know why, nor worry that the emotion will not be triggered again.  This is because the imagery and associations are not being overused, judged, or manipulated.  They are just there.  

Now, emotion for the sake of emotion is just painful to watch.  On the other hand, you're onstage.  The audience wants to see how you feel.  Big emotions tend to make it harder to listen and take in new information.  (Ever notice how a person who is weeping walks in slow motion?  Or how anger makes people stop listening?) Without training, the emotion becomes an iceberg that has to melt on its own schedule.  WITH training, the conscious mind is engaged in doing, not feeling emotions.  It can continue to listen and take in new information.  In performance, it's the difference between feeling and displaying ten emotions in a scene versus preparing one backstage and getting stuck in it, text be damned.

Finally - and I've said this in a previous posting - I recommend Meisner-based training because you get better week after week.  So it's a wise use of an actor's time and money.  

But here's the biggie.  Like anything, it has to be taught properly.  If you've been to a class where all you did was repeat exactly what you heard, the way you heard it, then made up witty things to say and repeat - you were in the wrong place.  Find a better teacher and give it another chance.   

Love and Drama - 
Jill