The Principles of Acting and NOT the Rules of Acting!
When I teach acting classes in Glasgow, I’m often very strict about the way that I approach Practical Aesthetics. It’s almost like there are a set of rules and I’m making the students stick to them. I suppose from the outside, that looks rather restrictive. In our journey from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence, somewhere, we have to learn the ropes. But I don’t think that it’s my job to teach ‘rules’. I don’t approach acting with a rule book in mind that people must stick to. Instead, I believe that I espouse the principles of pragmatism, a practicable approach to acting that we called Practical Aesthetics, the approach formulated by Mamet and Macy and developed by its practitioners ever since.
Principles? Rules? What’s the difference? A rule says THIS is the way that YOU (and all) MUST do it. Principles say ‘this works, take it or leave it’.
Firstly, acting is not about rules. Although the rebellious acting student wants to break them, usually before they’ve discovered if there are any. Anxious students, wanting to be perfect (the route to stiff, mechanical thinking, behaviour and action) try to obey rules, and get confused and upset when it doesn’t all work out like 2+2=4. Rules are easy to follow, but art and craft of the actor is based on principles, and these are a little more grey in their definition, but they work, time and again. If you’re willing to spend the time learning them.
We live in a get-it-quick culture. We want to take the shortest route anywhere. We will usually do the least possible to get the desired result. But becoming a professional actor, and I mean that in the fullest sense, means opening one self up to the richness, fullness and thoroughness of the craft. If asked to familiarise yourself with the work of Pierre Marivaux (or anyone for that matter), do you read one and scan Wikipedia? Or do you spend time reading his work, reading about his work and learning who he was and what made him tick. Most people wouldn’t bother, but this thoroughness permeates through your entire work ethic.
If you practice everything as if there is nothing to lose, when it comes to the real thing, you will flounder under the pressure. Thoroughness in everything, thoroughness in all. This is a principle.
Excellence in acting requires graft, perseverance and a thorough grounding in the principles of the craft. I believe and when I teach my acting classes in Glasgow, or anywhere in fact, it starts with the simplest principles and it ends with those self same principles.