How to STOP Acting

What I found interesting and worth taking away from this book is a lot. This is by no means a plagiarism or an attempt to summarize the entire book. This is simply my notes during my reading of this book.
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PROLOGUE

The Actor’s work is not to create a character, but to be continually, personally responsive to the text, wherever his impulses take him, from first read-through to final performance. If the actor trusts that, he will be transformed into the character through the text.

Acting is a constantly evolving exploration rather than a progression toward a fixed goal. This exploration moment by moment, begun alone then continued through rehearsal and into performance on stage or before the camera, becomes the character.

1. TAKING IT OFF-THE-PAGE

In the conventional view, the actor’s work on the character begun with his reading the script for himself and then talking about the character and text with the director. The problem with this approach is that from the beginning of the process it places the actor outside the script, and outside the character.

That is because reading the script is an intellectual process that inevitably leads the actor to approach both character and script as we have been taught in school – in an analytical way. Analysis weakens the actor. Analysis is not really what actors are good at. It should be left to literary scholars and critics. Actors are about feelings, imagination and improvisation.

If the actor can be in the moment, in the script, and in himself as the same time – floating with the line – his instincts and the script will take him where he needs to go. He must reject intellectual choices at the beginning of his work. He must allow himself to be in an exploratory state, unsure of what he is going to go, this forces him to trust his initial responses to the dialogue. If he is analytical, his intellect will stifle these reactions.

The actor looks down at the phrase and breathes in and out while he reads the words to himself, giving himself time to let the phrase into his head. Then he looks up from the page and says the line, no longer reading but speaking. The actor is accessing his unconscious response, in much the same way. As soon as you exhale, say the phrase before you have a chance to censor whatever thought or feeling surfaces. Don’t deaden the line by trying to be sincere. Exhaling before you speak ensures that it is your own voice. It is the way we speak when we are not acting. Once the feeling has surfaced and been expressed, feel free to drop it so that that next line can take you to a new place. Holding on to a thought or feeling evoked by one line, limits the possible range of responses the next line can elicit. Sometimes, the honest response to a line is, I don’t feel or think anything. If so, that’s what you must say – with the writer’s words.

In real life, we don’t know what we feel or think, or whether we have a response at all. Courage is needed to avoid manufacturing a false feeling to please those around you. Nothing is powerful when admitted in front of an audience or a camera. Doing nothing puts the audience on notice that the person in front of us is real. But what matters most is that you say what you mean, whatever it is. Most important of all, don’t be careful.

Most actors don’t trust themselves to just say it, however, they don’t trust that what they are thinking or feeling is enough. They want to do something with the line. They want to show us their thought or feeling. He must forget about the author’s intention first. The actor is responsible only for what the line means to him right now. And so, he must only say what he means, without embellishing it, or fixing it up.

Letting the line become mine means I don’t need to justify what I do. I let the words, thoughts, and images stimulate me so that I lose myself in the lines. My imagination takes over, and I am connected to the words of the writer viscerally, not intellectually.

That’s what taking it off-the-page is about – being free to let the phrase or line take me wherever it goes at that moment. I do this before I know anything much. I have read the play out loud, the beginning of my work on the character. So making mistakes, doing stupid, outrageous things, and exploring my responses to the text are not only acceptable but also necessary steps. It’s easy for an actor to think he is past this initial step, but he never is.

I believe the actor’s relationship to what he says, his dialogue, his words – is the most important connection he makes. The text unearths previously hidden places within the actor, giving him a broader range of choices and characters.

Actors are physical creatures, and it is necessary for them to feel physically free in order for their instinct and imagination to surface on a given line. If the actor feels a separation between his physical and verbal expression, he will be blocked emotionally as well as creatively. All he will feel is self-conscious and awkward about moving and talking on stage or before the camera.

Taking it off-the-page is not a performance. And after the actor has done it once, he may not need to do it again.

If the actor has difficulty freeing himself physically, I may ask him to move after each phrase – walk, lean, sit or even lie down.

Use your own voice – this will help you keep it touch with yourself as you explore the text. Don’t try to memorize. Don’t try to run lines. Just take it off-the-page from beginning to end until you feel used up, frustrated, or unable to concentrate. Don’t force it. Do something that will refresh you, not tire you out. Then when you’re clear, go back to the monologue. Do this several times a day, even if you can only work twenty or thirty minutes without break. You will fins that each time you work you will have real concentration, even if it’s just for a short time. Training your concentration is one of the most important things you can do as an actor.

After the first day, read the whole play. Never read for speed; it’s useless for actors. While reading, keep going back to the monologue, taking the lines off-the-page several times each day.

It’s more important to know what feels free than to know what is right. Let each moment take you rather than you taking it.

2. EXPLORING THE ROLE TO UNCOVER THE CHARACTER

The best acting in theatre should be no different from the best acting in film. And to my mind, the best thing is no acting at all, just real characters full of the variety and complexity of life.

I worked hard at Stanislavski’s technique to find the emotions I needed to fill the character, but it didn’t truly work for me. It pulled me away from my true, free response to the script and the moment. By forcing me to favor memory over imagination, it shutdown my connection to my unconscious thoughts, images and fantasies.

I have come to believe that the “consistency” Stanislavski valued so highly is not necessary, or even desirable. It is certainly not worth the loss of spontaneity, if that is what it costs the actor. We want the audience to be lost in what we say and do, not standing back, judging whether we are acting the character well or badly.

So the lines must be ours, or the audience will see us acting a character. The actor doesn’t have to take responsibility for the character in the same way. The way the action and lines go from one line to the next, one action to the next, creates the character. The actor’s responses remain in pieces, changing moment by moment, and with each repetition.

They come together as the character only for the audience, as the lines, action, and story unfold before them in performance. That is not the actor. The moments are the actor. The character is the text.

Choices like rhythms and character traits must be explored continually by trying out different choices while preparing and performing. The good choices keep coming back even when the actor is not trying to repeat them, and the bad choices are so obvious to the actor that he’s the first to know it. In the response moment by moment, the character becomes clear to you. There’s a sense of the character in your body, in your reactions, in your words. But you must not force it. If we trust what we hear from the character and from ourselves, the script will take us the rest of the way. We will feel it and not have to act it. Working from the negative helps you find out what a character is, I have first got to find out what he is not, exploring without fear or self-censorship.

I think research has its place, which I’ll discuss later. But to approach the behavior of any character as a case-study seems too single-minded, too obvious, too binding, and not stimulating enough for me. So, I negate choice. Then I am free to go deep into my imagination, thoughts and feelings.

Working from the negative means negating not only what you assume as a character is but also what you assume he is not. If the actor tests it, he will find out. If it doesn’t work, the actor will know it in his gut, not just his head, and he will throw it away. But if he thinks a choice is wrong and doesn’t try it out, it will continue to play on him until he does. We have to respond personally to the script with whatever comes, no matter how foolish it is to others or even to us. The only rule is you must never physically hurt another actor or act out in a physically threatening way that enters into the other actor’s space – touching or moving him – without having discussed and staged the physical encounter. That is not acceptable in class, rehearsal, or performance, no matter how much you may want to act on an aggressive impulse when you are in the moment. I’m not careful. In fact, the more arbitrary and outrageous I am, the better. If the choice doesn’t work, it will be spectacularly apparent. And if it works, it will be simply spectacular.

Most actors don’t believe the character is saying what he means. They immediately look for the sub-text – what they think the character is really saying, below the surface of the line. I think that characters often mean exactly what they say, just as we do in life. And just as in life, the words may carry a sub-text, which will resonate on its own if I mean exactly what I say.

Leave no line of dialogue or moment unprobed. I don’t want the actor to analyze, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want him to think about the character and the text. On the contrary, I want the actor obsessing passionately over the character and text. But I want him thinking about them in. away that isn’t neat or tidy. I want him wandering around the character’s dialogue, thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Every character has to be us, or they won’t be believable. The actor has to recreate himself every time out, with each role. He has to have the courage to start work on a new character as if he knows nothing about the character, nothing about himself – and nothing about acting.

Each character is different. We have to discover the difference by breaking our comfortable rhythms and discovering a new rhythm for this particular character. And we often have to do this consciously. Use research to inform the character without overwhelming the character’s specific qualities. Creativity occurs when things that don’t seem to belong together make something new when joined. It’s what I call the “illogical conclusion“. That’s what we want in our acting – characters who are not just recognizable but surprising, unexpected, stimulating. I know the process of getting there takes patience, bravery, and concentration. Don’t rush it.

If you have the courage to take your time at the beginning, you will find that rest of the process goes much faster.

Work every day on your acting. This means verbalizing lines every day, not just thinking about the character. The actor’s work is always connected to the text. You will find that the more you trust yourself when verbalizing a line, with no preconceptions or control, the free-er you will find yourself when you are on stage on in front of a camera, with no lines to say – the more life you will have in the moment.

3. I WANT THIS PART, HOW CAN I GET IT?

Glenn Close says: “It’s insane to go in and think you’re going to give a performance.” Instead she says, “You come in with your own calm agenda, which is, I’ll see what I can do.“

Auditioning is the beginning of the actor’s work on character – a free, responsive exploration that allows the director or casting director to see the instinctive connections between the actor and the character.

What casting directors really need is to be surprised. They need to discover the actor right there in the audition. In order for this to happen, the actor must be open and responsive to the material – that is, to the script and the dialogue as they affect him moment by moment. Since it is the beginning of his work on the character, the fewer decisions he makes in advance, the more possibilities there are to surprise himself and the observers.

Don’t look for the right choices. Do what interests you and what you really believe at that moment, because that is the best you have to offer.

I believe it is better not to memorize the lines for an audition. I know this is not the general view, but I think memorizing lines creates an added concern. – you’ll be afraid that you will forget them. You should always have the script open and in front of you. If you really know a line, then say it. Otherwise, just look down and take it off the page.

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