On Lessons Learned
Today’s blog is a reflection on Practical Aesthetics and her past and present acting career by assistant acting coach Catriona Evans…
I started acting young, by the time I turned 17 I had performed across Scotland, New York and in London, twice. I enjoyed a successful modelling career and by 18 was watched by a million viewers a week as a soap regular. Some said I was freakishly lucky, working on average 10 months out of 12 for nearly 20 years. Even while at Glasgow University, where I first met Mark, I worked all the time, it got me chucked out.
But I felt abit of a fake, if I’m honest, a fraud and the reason? I had no formal training.
I auditioned for drama school, I got in but my producer offered me a years contract and I wasn’t going to argue. I had got a little too used to the money and the newspapers attention.
When life intervened in the shape of serious illness and forced me out of the work I loved, I decided it time to do something about it. The mighty Google uncovered Mark Westbrook, a name I was familiar with and I signed up for Step 1.
I arrived at class abit of a cliché to be honest, a pick n mix actor, quite used to pondering for hours the eternal questions of how my character took their coffee, delving into squishy feelings and yes I have to admit obliging directors with the colour of a characters socks.
I panicked, stressed and fought my way through Step 1, even having a memorable hissy fit about week 3 during repetition, completely dropping out and having to be ordered by Mark to stay up and finish. This was not what I signed up for. I questioned everything, I couldn’t see the point and how was I going to make this work in the real world. I “acted” pretty much all the way through Step 2 and 3 and if I’m honest my first round of Step 4. This was bloody hard work, I rarely got the glowing feedback my classmates got who seemed to click with it all.
The turning point came one evening at the theatre. I realised as the play went on that the actors were truly not listening to one another. They were reacting to all the wrong things, if they were reacting at all, it all seemed lazy, false and boring. Everything I had been learning in class was there I was just too afraid to let go and do it myself.
It was time to take the fingernails off that ledge! Finally after over a year, I let go of everything I had clung to about acting. And it was scary shit, I’m not going to lie. Actually relying on the moment to work, barely rehearsing with the lines and doing the scene for the first time was terrifying. What would come out? How would it come out? What would the other actor bring to the table? Week after week, attempting to make lines come out differently, landing tactics and allowing yourself to be changed as the scene went on. All a world away from directors notes of, “You didn’t do it the same way as last night. Could you go back to that please.” But the difference, the freedom, the discovery of something I could rely on, a way of getting better at what I loved.
This technique quietly takes over and I’m not just talking about carrying David Mamet around in my handbag. You learn to become an expert reader of people, you apply moment to moment to everyday living (an excellent way of dealing with stress by the way) you recite complicated tongue twisters in public places and you will see the joins in acting everywhere. You will even ADRA at the movies without realising you are doing it.
Most importantly it transforms your acting because you aren’t consumed with yourself, you are forced to pay attention, to react truthfully and instinctively.
I am a little evangelical about this, you might have guessed but so what, ACS and PA have given me much more than acting training. So I say get in there and get it wrong, fight it, question, feel like a failure but never, ever stop. Sometimes you just have to start from the beginning again and it is right where you are meant to be.
Graft over perfection. Cat
Catriona Evans is an assistant acting coach at Acting Coach Scotland.