The Beige Middle

The Middle. In the Beige. The Vanilla. Your comfort zone. Actors like it there. It doesn’t test them, it doesn’t stretch them and they can feel at ease.

When I use a basic directing tool like size and speed combinations, I may ask the actor to be big and fast in this part of a scene. Their normal response (not always but often) is to give me The Middle. Not Big. Not Small. Not Slow. Not Fast. The Middle.

The fear of over-acting and under acting is present in every actor I have ever worked with. From school kids to professionals.

They don’t trust themselves to play, to risk and release and let the director rein them in if necessary.

Actors must play, must take risks, or everything ends up a very beige kind of Middle Ground.

When asked to attack an actor semi-commits to it, not wishing to ‘go over the top’ but in doing it as a sort of super-naturalistic-middle, they are miles away.

You must trust your director, your teacher or your coach to help you and not hold back.

Most of us these days grew up in the world if television naturalism, so we’re all ‘experts on acting’.

But in our head we have a kind of false horizon that tells us wrongly that we might be over-doing it.

You have to take risks, be unafraid, try stuff out.

It seems like an actor’s neutral is beige middle and that’s okay as neutral but then they must know that NOT ONE SCENE should be played in neutral.

Don’t be afraid. No one wants to embarrass themselves, but you must be beyond embarrassment, willing to make a fool of yourself, and give it another go.

It won’t hurt you.

- – - – -

And Happy Birthday to the Captain, our own Mr Ian Watt has come to the end of another line on his Life is Not a Rehearsal Grid. Here’s to the squares that are full and the many yet to fill.