Ethics & Aesthetics for Actors: Part 2 – Aesthetics

With our work ethic established, we must have our developing working practices based on aesthetic principles. I worked many times as a director with an amazing minimalist designer called Carrie Southall. We grew up 40 miles from each other and met 200 miles away at university, and although we weren’t particularly friends until the last year of our degree, once we started working together, I knew we shared a basic aesthetic, one that projected our joint, and own, careers.

What does having an aesthetic mean? Technically it is a theory of art, but it can also be a shared perspective or paradigm for making art.

When you work with people with a shares aesthetic, you speak a secret language, one that excludes others and reinforces the group, but more than anything, it develops a practical working language with which to effectively communicate with your fellow artists. It becomes a short hand and in the acting business, we have long spoken many and confusingly similar tongues.

Every group must develop their own practical aesthetic. What must a practical aesthetic be?

Primarily PRACTICABLE, meaning capable of being put to use.

Otherwise it must enable and empower, it cannot do this if it creates confusion.

Stanislanski’s systematic approach was a practical aesthetic based on some simple ideas for truthful acting.

In my opinion, he took a wrong turn, but he had an aesthetic that he shared with MXAT. Just like Boley and Ouspenskaya shared their aesthetic with the Lab. Likewise Strasberg shared his vision of Stanislavski’s work, Adler upset the apple cart by sharing her version of that aesthetic.

An aesthetic is a way.