Ping Pong – the Future of Acting

Yesterday I went to the Commonwealth Games Table Tennis Finals. A fascinating, exciting afternoon and evening of fast-paced skills. If you know the studio, or read a previous blog, you may know that we have a table in the studio, and that in many ways, we believe that there is a relationship between ping pong/table tennis and acting.

This idea came to me a few years ago, when I was reading Del Close’s book Truth in Comedy, which described Improv as ping pong. It was then that I realised that the type of acting that I was advocating was so similar to this description, that I started to explore the relationship between ping pong and acting.

Traditional acting techniques advocate spontaneous performance, but the means and methods by which they practise almost ensure failure of this.

If we really want acting to be truly alive with spontaneity, we have to learn to rehearse differently. In ping pong, they train for years to create instinctive, moment to moment action and reaction. They must be present in the game at all times, or they will lose.  In ping pong, they watch the player, not the ball, responding to what the other is doing in this moment – all their cues come from what they see in the other person. Years of practise mean that they are ready to respond to what happens in front of them – there is strategy, but they cannot decide in advance how the game will go. If actors and directors could be brave, acting could have the same excitement, it could truly be a live moment to moment thing – but only if they are brave. In acting, most people work to fake the illusion of spontaneity, by practising something over and over again until it looks like it just happened. But inevitably, it loses all sense of liveness rather quickly. But since that’s what acting has been historically, that’s what audiences and critics have come to expect.

I think it could be something else.

Directors can lead the charge, but it means accepting that the future of acting is closer to ping pong than it is to chess.  I saw recently that there was a Jack Waltzer (famous Method/Meisner teacher) video on YouTube with precisely the same title, seems I am in good company in believing that the greatest acting can happen moment to moment just like ping pong – it was in fact the basis of the Meisner technique.

Those using mainstream traditional techniques believe they are working in the moment, but they are not for one reason – they’ve already decided most of what will happen next. If your acting is to be truly spontaneous, it cannot be worked out in advance.

So what does this look like in practise?

Wait until you see what the actor does until you decide what you’re going to do.

This takes a huge amount of faith on the part of the director.

But if you have carefully analysed the script and scene together, if the actor knows what they are aiming to achieve in this moment, if they know their lines well enough without predetermined intonation, then they can wait to see what happens in front of them. 

To work out how to say your lines in advance has always been the least satisfying solution.

 Now this will scare the crap out of most writers, directors and actors.  But there’s no need for fear, I have directed using this methodology, and actors, directors, writers and critics in the audience have all given fantastic feedback – they couldn’t tell that it was happening moment to moment – they loved it though!

But it takes trust, it takes understanding, and it takes technique. Trust from the actors, a technique that’s designed for this type of work, and a shared understanding of the scene. I’ve worked with actors that have full embraced this way, and received glowing reviews. I’ve worked with actors that didn’t trust that it could be this simple, and they struggled terribly. The ping pong of acting is a scary place to play, because anything could go wrong, it’s so much easier to decide everything in advance and then trot it out as practised, but it’s dead before it reaches an audience.

The question is, do you want the same dead performances, or do you want to start living? If you’re brave and you want to try working like this, get in touch. Directors or actors, we can revive the theatre!