Ethics & Aesthetics for Actors: Part 1 – Work Ethic
Success as an actor is a matter of work ethic and working aesthetics. This tricksy balancing act is what gives your average acting-shmo more than a fighting chance. Of course, there is a place for luck in this equation but without a solid, killer work ethic and a workable, practical aesthetic, you will not produce the conditions for, or opportunity to capitalize upon, that luck.
Today’s blog is about developing a killer work ethic and it starts with an Atlantic Theater Company-inpired guidelines for success in work and training. At Acting Coach Scotland, we call it, The Minimum, it is the least you can do to prepare for class, coaching, auditions or work.
There are 5 parts to The Minimum:
Be Prepared
Be Early
Wipe Your Feet at the Door
Don’t Complain
Help Your Fellow Actors
Let’s go through each one at a time:
1) Be prepared
Preparation is an essential minimum. Yet many actors adequately fail to prepare then blame everyone else, finally chastising themselves when their failure to prepare only prepared them to fail. This is the widest and deepest of the Minimums, because it includes taking responsibilty for everything that is within your control. In the blame culture in which we live, the dog ate my homework and other excuses are just failures to accept responsibilty. Be prepared, no excuses, remember that our industry is liberal and often indulgent but equally unforgiving in equal measure.
2) Be Early
No one ever thought badly of you for being early but being late is a crime in time based arts. If you are due to start work at nine, plan to arrive early, plan to overcome car trouble, rail strikes and snow on the line. Cultivate the habit of always being early and you will cultivate a professional working ethic. Don’t expect anyone to indulge your real but irrelevant excuses. Stella Adler used to make late students bring flowers, I’d prefer chocolate, but in the real world just be early. As the folks at the Poor School used to say: on time is ten minutes late.
3) Wipe your feet at the Door
What the heck? Well, what I mean is that you should leave it all at the door: your outside concerns, bills, finanicial or boyfriend troubles. Leave it at the door. We will indulge you but no one really cares. Leave the drama for the room, leave your shit at the door.
4) Don’t Complain or Moan
What is the collective name for a group of actors, it might be a company, an ensemble, even a cast, but more likely it’s a moan, a moan of actors. If you don’t like it, do something about it or shut the fuck up and don’t bring the while group down with your pessimistic shit. This is an essential minimum, you have no entitlement to moan. Turn up, do your job, go home. If you don’t enjoy it, leave.
5) Help Your Fellow Actors
This might seem obvious, but we are a very self centred type of people. Cultivate in yourself the habit of helping each other, supporting each other, we’re in it together.
This is the Minimum. The Minimum. I would add to this:
Don’t leave your common sense at the door.
Do more than is expected of you.
Tomorrow’s blog will cover successful working aesthetics
To You, The Best
Mark Westbrook
Acting Coach Scotland