Abstract thoughts on Acting

I’m sitting in a quiet first class carriage of the train from Glasgow to Edinburgh, finishing making some additional notes for the masterclass I am giving for The Actor’s Kitchen at Screen Academy Scotland.

As I’ve been drinking tea and scribbling notes to myself, I was bombarded with some random and abstract thoughts and questions, so today’s blog is sharing those thoughts with you:

Some acting training is fun and some is useful, can it be both?

Talent+Technique+Tenacity=Success?

Graft+Study+Guts=Success?

Bad acting lacks basic logic but good acting is spontaneous, can it be logical and spontaneous at the same time?

Strasberg=Emotional Truth
Stanislavski=Theatrical Trufh
Meisner=Behavioural Truth

Unconscious competence makes some actors lousy teachers.

Whether you can act depends upon your definition of acting, but can we agree on what good acting is?

The actor’s gut instincts are gold dust.

Acting is like dating, don’t give it all away at once.

The body is your greatest tool and is willing to betray you at every turn.

Risk+Vulnerability+Tenacity?

You can’t fake vulnerability!

Would you let your scene partner come up and punch you in the gut? That’s the metaphor for an actor’s vulnerability. You need to let the other actors punch you hard in the gut. Do you have that within you?

Charlize Theron and Halle Berry have two things in common, Oscars and their constant desire to improve themselves, which lead them to take classes on their lunch breaks during filming, they went further, pushed harder, trained smarter, and they have the little gold status to prove it.

Are you a faker?

It takes really balls to tell the truth on stage/camera.

Happy News, my old friend Paul Birchard (Spooks, currently in the London in Inherit the Wind) has agreed to teach a screen acting/acting for camera masterclass for us as ACS in 2010, I’m so excited!