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


   

Listen, listen, listen!

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

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

Observing and Acceptance - The Importance of How the Meisner Repetition Exercise Begins

Observing and Acceptance - The Importance of How the Meisner Repetition Exercise Begins

If you've done Meisner training, you know that you begin the repetition exercise by taking your partner in and stating something you observe about them.  You don't need to go deep with this to start the exchange.  A simple, "red sneakers" will do.

However, it is interesting that, even in a task that is so focused outside of ourselves, the first place we go for a response is into our heads!  I have seen students (and I've done it myself) stare at one another for five, ten seconds, totally mute.  Sometimes one or the other will throw his or her hands up in frustration without saying anything.  I was conducting a seminar the other day, and partnered with a prospective student.  I purposely put a big, expectant grin on my face before we started our repetition, just to give him something to go on.

He stared at me for a long moment and finally said, "I'm not getting anything!"

What fills this kind of pregnant pause at the start of the repetition exercise can be one of several things.  First, we all ignore some of what we see.  In our judgment, it's either not interesting enough, doesn't fit our rules about what the world is and is not, or is or is not something we can deal with.  We've all known someone in love with a person that the rest of the planet recognizes as a jerk.  And who among us has never looked back on a failed relationship and had to admit to ourselves, "The signs were there from the beginning.  I just didn't want to see them?"

Ah.  But the observation problem gets still worse than that.  We also imagine things that aren't there.  It is not at all unusual for a new Meisner student to look into the pleasant face of a classmate and snarl, "You're looking at me funny."  Hilarity ensues, but . . . wow.

Then there's minimizing.  I've seen students in the middle of an emotional repetition, and one will suddenly say, something like "You scratched your neck."  Strictly true, but was that really the thing that is most riveting as someone screams in anguish?  Most likely there is some serious selecting and minimizing going on. 

As you train, it is critical to work on observing and listening as fully and with as much acceptance in your heart as you can.  It's a discipline, a muscle that has to be made strong and flexible through your training.  You're not working to eliminate your unique point of view on the world or alter your personality (but if you know you need to, go ahead!)  You're working to reach a point where, as you move into playing roles, you can add and take away the things that your character is and is not able or willing to see.  I believe most every play is about what the characters do and don't see, and how, why, and if they end up seeing the world differently by the end of the play.

Comedies will involve characters whose ability to see no more than a few things clashes hilariously with differently but equally tunnel-visioned characters.  Tragedies will have tunnel-vision clashes, the results will be horrific, and the blinders come off after all is lost.  Dramas will have big differences in how the characters see the world, and often one or more characters will be trying to influence the "sight" of other characters.  (Twelve Angry Men, any police drama, A Streetcar Named Desire).  In satires, all the characters will have viewpoints that differ absurdly from that of the audience.  In other words, the joke will be on every character.

If you as the actor can open your vision through your training, then close selected parts of it down to suit the characters you play, you've got something.

So, "black pants," is sometimes all you need to say in a repetition.  But if what you really need to do is yell Open fly!" please do that.  In class, that is.

Love and Drama -
Jill

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!