Don’t Squeeze Your Arsehole

The Step 3 Auditions were on Wednesday night at Acting Coach Scotland. Former students and staff head the panel making the difficult decisions about whether people will head into the very challenging Step 4 Scene Study class.

During the night, after the scenes, we give feedback and my assistant, acting coach Ian said a hilarious comment which I believe was actually a piece of gold advice.

He said: “Don’t squeeze your arsehole.”

The class fell about laughing but let me tell you what he meant:

There are lines, in plays, in scripts that are really great lines. One of these lines is a line from the play/film Closer about the character Larry looking up Alice’s arsehole for meaning/the answer.

The trouble is, it’s such a GOOD line. And the GOOD lines are the trickiest to deal with. And unfortunately, the actress (we’ll call her Canada) couldn’t help but make something out of the line each time.

She’s not alone by any means. Most of us cannot help ourselves, when there are KILLER lines (not just GOOD ones) but KILLER lines, we can’t leave them alone, we have to push, we have to SQUEEZE them for their value and worth. And so we take a good line, or a killer line and some how we take all the truth out of it, we wring worth out of it, when it was good by itself.

So, the actress found herself squeezing the arsehole line. It’s something we all do. Hopefully we can all learning from this humorous lesson.

Leave the killer lines alone. Let them do their own work. You must let your TASK and the associated tactics and the moment, and your partner be the source for how to say the line.

So when you find one of those lines, a special line, a good line, a KILLER line. Don’t squeeze it. Let it be. Follow the task, and don’t squeeze your arsehole.