The Path to Excellence

“Make the difficult habitual, the habitual easy and the easy beautiful.” STANISLAVSKI

The skills you need to become a good actor are relatively few, but each needs transforming into a habit. Habit is built through a process of many hours, many weeks, many months – 10,000 hours to real expertise. On that way, you must pass through the following stages:

Unconscious Incompetence - you’re doing it wrong, and you don’t even realise that you’re doing it wrong.

Conscious Incompetence - you’re doing it wrong, and it feels terrible, because you realise it.  

Conscious Competence - you’re doing it right, not perfect, but much better, but you’re very conscious of the process.  

Unconscious Competence – you’re excellent and you have stopped thinking about the process, the technique dissolves and you’re just doing it.

But remember, it takes 10,000 hours – and just like the Ice Skaters, you’re going to spend a lot of that time on your arse. But if you can pick yourself up, pack away your ego, and get back to practice, you’ve got a chance to be exceptional, and if you can’t do that -well, at least you’ll be a working actor.