Selling you a Placebo?
Acting teachers are charlatans. Not all of them. Most of them.
Wikipedia states that:
“A charlatan (also called swindler or mountebank) is a person practicing quackery or some similar confidence trick in order to obtain money, fame or other advantages via some form of pretense or deception.”
I think that these acting teachers are like the fake psychic who knows her own duplicity, but convinces herself that she is helping her troubled visitor, acting teachers across the world have convinced themselves (or how would they live with themselves?) that they are helping. And when their techniques don’t work, it is because of poor efforts on their student’s part and when it does work, it is through the great gift they have bestowed upon their student.
And yes, as a placebo, the fake psychic may actually do some good. And yes, a placebo, the acting teacher may also do some good. But most of the time, they have less of a clue how to help you become the best actor you can be.
The trouble is that a placebo only cures by accident and it generally only works once.
At Acting Coach Scotland, we’ve been developing our technique for a long time. I’ve been teaching acting for 12 years, and right now, we believe that we are in possession of an incredibly powerful technique that liberates actors from all the ‘pretend harder’ bullshit that you’ve wasted your money on before.
My problem? I want to share it. But I know that if I walk around saying “I’ve got the secret of acting” – what will happen? People will call me a charlatan.
If you visit our studio, if you take a class, and if you put your ego to one side for a while, we can teach you something, a very simple mechanism, a tiny little process – hardly even worthy of calling a technique – that once learned, once habituated to a level of automaticity – its going to boost your acting immediately. Immediately. I know, I know – they probably all promise that too. I can’t argue a negative, I can’t persuade you that I’m not a charlatan – but I can show you.