Advice for Actors: What Skills Does an Actor Need?
Since yesterday’s blog, I’ve had a number of emails asking “What skills are you talking about?” and “if you think most training is fruitless and nonsensical, what is it that we’re supposed to practice?” Here’s my best advice for actors:
The problem comes from acting coaches, teachers and other acting industry experts associating your performance with completely the wrong skillset. They want you to employ a skillset that includes giving birth to the life of a new soul. They insist that you must believe in the imaginary circumstances. They assure that you must believe believe believe if you want the audience to believe. They maintain that you must transform yourself into another. They honestly believe that stepping into someone else’s shoes is a tangible skill.
I believe that these skills are not skills at all. They are things we believe because we like them. And which of us doesn’t enjoy make believe and play-pretend, I certainly do. But for all my longing for the days of my youth, the job of acting, the actual skillset required has nothing to do with this.
The skillset that you are trained to use is not a skillset for the job you have to do. You have learned to drive a train and are now sitting at the controls of a passenger plane. They’re both vehicles, but you and everyone else would be surprised if you could get the damned thing off the ground.
So what skillset?
These are the 5 Core Skills that we teach at Acting Coach Scotland, there are 10 minor skills that we also teach, but these are the skills that we think are primary to the development and training of an actor.
The ability to transform/translate words/ideas into action.
The ability to notice and acknowledge psychological change (registered through behaviour) so that it can be worked off on a moment to moment basis.
The ability to embody the Mindset of the Task.
The ability to acknowledge psychological change through the Mindset of the Task.
The ability to acknowledge psychological/behavioural change, while embodying the Mindset of the Task, working through someone else’s words.
What does this mean?
The first skill is the cognitive skill of taking the words and ideas of a script and turning them into something that you can act. The trouble is that most actors mistakenly believe that the lines of the script are the actable part of the script. But actually, they are the speakable part of the script. Since the verbal represents less than 10% of human communication, over 90% of your performance is non-verbal and although derived from the script, is not derived from the words themselves.
As such, this is an important skill, the ability to understand the intention of the character.
Once we have perceived their intention, we must learn to translate that into something that can be acted upon. Words, ideas, thoughts, and feelings, none of these translate into action. We must convert them into an achievable real-world task.
The second skill is the ability to focus our attention outside of ourselves. A tricky thing for a self-conscious profession. We place our attention on the other actors and we learn to see and hear those psychological changes that occur in them beneath the level of the words and perceived through their behaviour. When we can identify these changes, beneath the 7% of what is being said, we can learn to work off what the audience are sensing in the other actors. Our next line is always a combination of the two-way street of what do we need to achieve (the task) and what is the other actor doing. The other actor’s behaviour is the trigger, the energy for our own performance. And by placing our attention outside of ourselves we are released from a great deal of our mental and physical tension too.
The third skill is the ability to behave in line with our task. If we have the task of clearing up a misunderstanding in a scene, we must first behave like there has been a misunderstanding. We do not need to pretend this, instead, we need to focus on what we do to the other person if there had been a misunderstand and we needed to clear it up. These things we would do, psychophysical tactics, are the same whether we use our own words, or those of the writer. If we commit to these things, we will act through the words, embodying the task and bringing the words to life.
The fourth skill is the ability to do skills 2 and 3 together at the same time. The ability to work moment to moment off the other actor’s behaviour, not listening to what they are saying – which is the same every time, but perceiving their behaviour as it relates to the Mindset of the Task. If I want to clear up a misunderstanding and the person is irate and difficult, I must deal with that, as they calm, I can change my tactics, if they get snippy or snooty with me, I can respond as I would if I were clearing up a misunderstanding. Having a task is like having a purpose in the scene. It is of course a two-way street, with traffic flowing in both directions, you must work from the mindset of your task, but take into account the behaviour of the other actor, deciding in an instant whether to encourage or discourage the other actor’s behaviour – in line with the mindset of the task.
The fifth and final skill is the ability to do the 4th skill through someone else’s words. Tricky because the words are seductive, we hear their meaning instinctively. Yet, words can have their meanings confirmed, modified or entirely contradicted depending upon the context in which they are being spoken. This week in class, Benjamin in The Graduate went from trying to get away from an amorous Mrs Robinson, simply by changing the Mindset of his Task. The same lines as before, but this time with a different task. Words change meaning in context. So, you must work through the lines, and not on them.
Almost seems easy. It’s not. It’s still a set of 5 skills that need to be prepared to a level of habit. Except the difference between this skillset and the make believe skillset is that this is a learnable set of skills. Believing in the imaginary is not a skillset, it’s hocus-pocus at best, tricking yourself and acting as a placebo. My best advice for actors? Learn a real skillset. Act with confidence, ditch the lies.