The Placebo

I was listening to a podcast on NPR about Susan Batson, the legendary Lee Strasberg trained acting coach. At present, she is the go-to person in New York City when actors are having a crisis of confidence and need a bit of fairy dust to make them feel better. – sorry – when actors are struggling with a role, and need a professional to help them ‘find the truth of the role’ cough cough – wince.

Apparently, in order to help Nicole Kidman prepare for her role in the Blue Room, Batson took her to the seedier parts of Manhattan to chat to prostitutes.

Now while to the lay person somehow that might seem to make sense, if you’re going to play a hooker, you should spend time with hookers, it is not actually as sensible as you might first think. You didn’t think it was sensible? Ten points.

First off, Nicole Kidman did not want to BECOME a prostitute, her job is not to become a prostitute, but to act the scene as set down by David Hare. IF Nicole Kidman HAD wanted to become a prostitute, then chatting with the other ladies of the night STILL wouldn’t have been very helpful. What would be helpful is to BE a prostitute, which I do not in anyway advise her to do.

Second, chatting to prostitutes will give you a view into their world, to their lives, to their situations, but it is not a direct parallel to the world of the play. More specifically whatever the script wants you to do is already set out for you in that script, so whatever you learn from this ‘research trip’ is only beneficial to your understanding of the world of prostitutes, which is – particularly in the case of this script, of zero use to the actor. Hmmm.. how would a prostitute behave in this situation? It only produces a generalised stereotyped answer. In the end, this type of approach only appeases, placates the fear of failure. It’s a placebo.

What is does give is a kind of false confidence. It is based on the fact that the actor feels they have done their ‘homework’. It’s a neat trick, a sort of honest con, but it’s actually entirely unnecessary, just a placebo.

But didn’t Batson do a great job? Isn’t Nicole Kidman a fabulous actor? Yes, and she was long before Batson got anywhere near her. Now inspite of Batson, Kidman is STILL a great actor thankfully. The trouble is that actors are for the most part fairly thin-skinned, sensitive people who – like the rest of us – look for help when we face a challenge. The trouble is that for some reason, actors are more likely to trust the voodoo solutions of these charlatan acting teachers.

I’m sure she charges an arm and a leg too.