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!