Developing Acting Skills and Technique

Being a good actor looks easy, but getting really good, that takes more than just talent. A recent sporting experience explains the problem:

I love Table Tennis. I’ve played it since I was a kid, it’s great fun and I’ve always been ‘naturally’ good at it. At school, I could beat the teachers, even with my ‘bad’ hand.  In youth club competitions, I was always first or second, easily beating players older than me. I enjoy it very much, I get a tremendous sense of satisfaction just knocking the ball around with other people, I get a real gratification from being good at it too.

This year, I will be going to see the finals at the Commonwealth Games here in Glasgow, and I am excited about seeing people play at an international standard.

We have a league in my acting studio where staff and students play together. It’s a nice healthy bit of competition and there’s enough ability to keep things interesting. Recently, I lost an important game and I decided that since I had always shown a natural ability at table tennis, I should attempt to top-up the talent that I have always had, with a bit of professional table tennis coaching.

It was awful.

Table tennis has always been fun, I have always excelled, I had always beaten most people that I was playing. For as long as I can remember table tennis has been really enjoyable, even when I was losing, but mainly I won.

In this first coaching session I was, there’s only one word for it.

Rubbish.

And to top it off, my opponent during coaching was.. 13.  13 and killing me. No, not killing me, annihilating me. I couldn’t serve, I couldn’t hold the bat, sorry paddle, I couldn’t get it over the net, I couldn’t place the ball where I wanted it to go, I couldn’t spin it properly, I couldn’t return it properly, and I hit the net more often than not – that was when I managed to keep it on the table or hit the bloody ball in the first place.

Until I had coaching, I had been happily ignorant, and my ignorance was bliss. It had been so much fun, I had loved it, I loved the feeling of playing, I had experience huge gratification from being good at something.

But now it was too complicated, I had too much to think about, what was once easy, fluid, and fun, was now awkward and wrong – it was much easier when I just let my instincts take over and do what I had always done, except then the 13 year old kid hammered me.

I had just experienced the painful transition from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence. 

Whenever any of us are forced to develop real technique, in order to take whatever ‘natural’ ability we have and take it to a professional level, we have to go on this journey:

IT STARTS AS FUN – You are unconsciously incompetent, blissfully unaware how rubbish you actually are. Perhaps you are surrounded with similar, which hides your own real level of expertise.

THEN IT’S NOT FUN ANYMORE - You are consciously incompetent, you are painfully aware how rubbish you really are and you feel like a failure. What was once natural and fun, is now awkward and distinctly not fun.

THEN IT STARTS TO BE A LITTLE FUN AGAIN - You are consciously competent – you become aware of your strengths and weaknesses, and you can start to enjoy some minor triumphs while working very hard on those areas of technique that are poorly developed.

THEN IT’S LOADS OF FUN – You are unconsciously competent, the state of bliss is regained as natural flair and technique come together to deliver greatly enhanced instincts.  You do not think about what you are doing, it has become instinctive once more, it feels natural again, and best of all, it’s fun, and its gratifying.

Amateurs and dilettantes never want to go on this journey, because the transition from FUN to LOADS OF FUN is bruising, often embarrassing, regularly painful, and instinctively humans move away from pain and towards pleasure. We have to see ourselves differently again, we have revert to the fundamental skills, often unlearning bad habits, and learning things we didn’t know that we didn’t know, often changing our opinions and beliefs on the way. None of this is easy.

When actors with any level of experience come to ACS to learn a technique of acting that will propel them to be better than they ever dreamed they could be, they must take this journey.

Most people’s egos will not withstand this trip.

But those with character, not those with talent, those with the mindset to succeed, those that can swallow their pride, delay the need for gratification, understand the need to lay the fundamental basics and develop enhanced instincts – they will become great.

There’s a reason there’s a table tennis table in our studio. And it isn’t because I love the sport.