And Then I Went To The Best Acting Class I've Ever Taken

There's a serious misperception in American film acting that you can either do it or you can't. That you have to "just be yourself" and "just feel the moment."

What I hate most about that idea is that it turns acting into some sort of pseudo-masochistic act of self exposure.

Acting is a form of expression. In the same way that an artist uses their training and technique to paint a picture of a dog sitting near the cattails of a soggy Minnesota river-bottom without actually being there, so too can an actor express the emotional life of the character without "being themself" or "just feeling it."

Acting is an art form that you can improve with technique.

I've been studying for a year now with Stephen Book. I'm about a third of the way through the curriculum.

Yeah, I can hear you thinking: three years!?

But unlike being an accountant or getting your MBA where you can study four nights a week and earn your certificate in two years, acting is a physical act of expression.

In that respect, it's a lot more like dance than people give it credit for, and Stephen's class is like a conservatory. You train your body to emote, much like a dancer trains their body to stretch, twist, and leap -- or a singer learns scales, breathing, and tone.

And you can't take an eight-week class and expect to sing opera.

The course is called Improv Technique but it has very little to do with the comedy creation skills they teach at Second City or other improv schools. It uses a foundation of improvisation to engrain feelings in body.

As you build up this muscle memory, you have an entire palette of emotions available to you which you can then spontaneously apply to scripted work -- without all that method-based headache of finding the right memory or reaching for the proper emotional reserve.

Sounds heady, right? Well it's just the opposite.

One of the things that is both wonderful and frustrating about the class is that it's experiential learning. You learn through discovery and doing.

This is antithetical to the majority of American teaching in general and certainly actor training in specific, where you typically have a coach/mentor who outlines what SHOULD happen and then passes judgment on your performance.

Instead, we are given an exercise with a focus (like "discover objects around you") and it is our job to simply fulfill that focus the best we can. The learning comes from doing the exercise, not trying to perform the idea of the exercise.

It's a tough class because the results are not immediate. It requires commitment -- and patience is in rare supply here in Los Angeles. And, because it's experiential, if you're not frustrated you're not learning.

But if it was effortless, you wouldn't need the class right?

Every time I hit a milestone in class, however, I'm more convinced about it's effectiveness. I don't respond well to heady method-based coaching about subtext and objectives. Those divert me into cerebral behaviors that have nothing to do with expressing something.

The body memory we're building up in Stephen's class, on the other hand, has nothing to do with coming up with heady strategies and tactics. If the writer has done their job, those strategies and tactics are already on the page. Your job is simply to use your technique to embody the emotional life of that character.

My friend Danica recommended the class to me and I was apprehensive because she wouldn't really tell me what it was about. It seemed a little coy and cultish.

A year later, I'm glad I took her advice and dove in. With experiential learning, you can't tell someone what they're going to discover because it's their journey.

So far, it's been a fruitful and fulfilling one.

-Tom, who's entirely aware that this may be the most grandiosely academic blog post he's ever written.