Less Thinking, More Doing

I recently completed my studies with Stephen Book. Let me tell you five things I learned.

1.) Talent is something you have or you don't. Technique is something you can learn, strengthen, and -- if need be -- rely on when your talent fails you.
The American approach to acting largely seems to be based on "feeling it." There are two problems with this: 1) Feeling it may not be showing it, and 2)Your emotions are, by definition, irrational and reactive instead of disciplined and intentional. Try "feeling" a solemn, tender scene at 2am when you're on hour nineteen of the shoot, the crew is impatient, and the director is openly feuding with the producer about the overtime.

Technique gives you a baseline and framework to approach your craft. Without it, you're inconsistent.

2.) There's a difference between being relaxed and open in an audition and just "winging it."
The big difference is preparation. If you're solid with your lines and your choices, you're better able to cope with that thing that is GOING to happen which will throw you off. CDs and directors have a duty to shake you up and stretch you.

If you come in un-memorized and un-rehearsed, not only are you dealing with that inevitable curveball, but you're also dealing with your own lack of preparation. In the interests of "feelin' it", you just made your job THREE times harder.

Which brings us to the next point...

3.) Actors often get in their own way. Consciously or not, actors exhibit behavior that is self-defeating.
We want to be liked. We want to be hired. We want to control situations that are, largely, out of our control. And that makes us seem clingy, desperate, and neurotic. People will put up with that if you are a star.

They won't like it, but they'll put up with it.

If you want to be taken seriously in this business, you have to act as though you are serious about it and not like you're some desperate teenager lobbying to be prom queen.

4.) "Failure" and frustration are opportunities for growth.
One of the things that is unique about Stephen's class is that it's experiential learning. You learn by doing. You get a goal or focus for an exercise and you try to fulfill it. There are a couple of noteworthy points about this approach:

1) There's no "right" answer spoon-fed to you. You take the tools that you've learned and try to MAKE the answer that is right for you.
2) Your best growth occurs when you hit a wall and can't find the answer. It's hard, and it can be frustrating, but that's where the real development happens. Solve your own problems, and you become master of your own problems.

Moreover, if you think you're doing everything right all the time, WHY ARE YOU TAKING A CLASS?

5.) Being a professional takes hard work, commitment, and a willingness to analyze and improve. "Good enough" is, in fact, not good enough.
Nobody gets fired from being an actor, they have to decide to quit. This is an incredibly low barrier to entry for the business. It floods the marketplace with people who are average -- and no one ever got hired for being merely average. (Although there is a career in being exceptionally average. Mostly in commercials.)

There are many, many, many actors and very, very, very few paying jobs. It's a high-risk, high-reward profession. And if you're not willing to learn a technique, and commit yourself to preparing and performing to the best of your ability, you're lowering your already-slim odds.

Finally, I should say that these are largely realizations I've had over the course of my studies with Stephen. It's not drilled into you, it's experiential. These are things I've learned and observed about myself by doing exercises, performing scenes, trying, failing, and breaking through. The class will not make you a better actor, you make yourself a better actor through the class.

I've covered very little of the actual classwork or curriculum. That's intentional because of its nature. You can't learn it from the page, you have to do it. (Sounds kind of irritatingly mysterious, right? Well, it's like sky-diving: you have to jump in order to understand it.)

If you're interested in hearing more, I recommend you sign up for Stephen's free seminar. It's one of the first things I did when I moved to LA, and I'm glad I did.

-Tom, who likens the whole thing to grad school -- only much, much cheaper.