Know your Job

Greetings, apologies for the lack of blogs recently, been very busy, but which of us isn’t and excuses don’t cut it.

I’ve been reading Larry Moss’ book, The Intent to Live. He’s got some amazing clients and speaks a lot of sense, although personally I disagree with about 70% of it. His distaste for Mamet is evident, and many times his examples are born out of clear misunderstanding, but there’s still much to learn from Mr Moss.

I was thinking about at what point the actor’s own ideas begin to encroach on the script itself. Certainly my own experiences of the recorded media indicate to me that encroachment is the norm. There are so many opportunities for the actor to flex their creative and imaginative muscles in each role that it seems that impinging on the text is unnecessary.

It is when the actor’s choices damage the text and their relationship to it that it starts to become a problem.

It isn’t your job to ‘help’ the script, 9/10 your helping is a knee-jerk reaction to having to deal with the difficult part of acting. But you do not need to help the script. You need to develop the solid skills to open it up and fully explore it as an actor. If you think you can do better, then go write something but don’t be lazy and don’t feel that your creative domain includes the writer. How would you feel if the writer gave you performance notes? Precisely.

Do your job, leave the others to do their own.