Suspicion of Acting Technique
People are afraid of technique. To many it’s a dirty word. Others don’t understand that technique takes time, and with the learning of something new, that actors and acting students must go through a process from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence. During the period of incompetence or even conscious competence, the actor may appear to go backwards, may appear to lose their instinct, may appear to shut down. That’s because they are struggling to learn something new, to make it their own. To expect quick fixes in short time is a complete misunderstanding of technique, education and human beings. People who fear technique have none themselves.
Konstantin Stanislavski mentions technique when discussing the attitude of the amateur in the theatre in his autobiography My Life in Art:
“The worst enemy of progress is prejudice: it holds back progress, blocks the way to it. In our art, one such example of prejudice is the opinion which defends an amateurish attitude of an actor towards his work. There can be no art without virtuosity, without practice, without technique and the greater the talent, the more they are needed. Amateurs reject technique, not because of conscious conviction but out of unbridled laziness… Indeed, among professional actors, there are many who have never changed their amateurish attitude towards acting.”
It may be lazy, but it may also be natural to presume that since living truthfully comes easily to human beings, why would we need help in acting? If we can all do it instinctively, who needs any training? But it does not prevent, does not constrain, does not damage. Technique provides for us a way to control, nurture and develop your innate knack for living truthfully under imaginary circumstances. It also provides us a route to the solutions when we are bamboozled by an acting problem, such as a scene we don’t know how to play. If we don’t need it, why would we slavishly insist on using it? As Sandy Meisner used to say:
“Technique is something that you use if you need it, otherwise to hell with it”
The director and internationally renowned voice coach Barbara Houseman knows that people writes inspirationally on technique:
“Technique does not need to lead to work that is artificial and studied. Technique does not need to be an enemy of truth. Technique can help you fly. When you have a role you are happy with, in a play you believe in, working with a director and fellow actors you feel at ease with and stimulated by, your voice and body, imagination and creativity work wonderfully well. However, when all these elements are not in place and you feel less secure, that is when technique comes into its own.”
Houseman knows that technique is not the actor’s enemy. But it is the enemy of those who would have acting be some mystical, mythical, voodoo mumbo-jumbo art form with no tangible, practicable elements. It’s true no technique will create this type of acting, and if you were unfortunate enough to have one of these techniques thrust upon you in drama school, you probably don’t believe in technique either.
Meisner was fond of saying “acting is simplicity”. Too much of our technique has become mired in unnecessary complexity. As William of Ockham in his famous Razor has stated “all things being equal, the simplest solution is probably the best.” This is known as Ockam’s/Occam’s Razor. If we are to learn from Ockham and Meisner, learning to act should be simple.
“Keep your principles simple and few so that you can rely upon them at a moment’s notice” Stoical Philosophy
Acting with technique is simply reconnecting us with what we already know, understand and patently do in every day life. Re-learning to do this under the imaginary circumstances of the play is the key to acting. Books written by actors are often delightful but offer nothing practicable – capable of being put to use. The reason for this is simple. Living truthfully is something that we all do without thinking, without conscious action and so it’s impossible to explain how we do it. All the great confusion, the debate, the disagreement, the methods, systems, techniques and approaches comes from the second part of the Meisner quotation – the Imaginary Circumstances.
Some might ask – with all of this technique, where is the art? Where is the beautiful, the intuitive, the intangible part that creates art?
It is rather simple, the intangible part is what you bring innately. It’s your personality, it’s everything about you. That’s the intangible part.
The craftsman makes the beautiful ornate chair, undeniably this chair is a piece of art. The craftsman makes this thing of beauty utilising years of their experienced, honed to a level that it is intuitive, at this stage, years of technique combine with the intangible, with the personality, experience and proficiency of the craftsman and produce art.
But the craftsman works hard on technique for many years before reaching that level of expertise. The craftsman doesn’t spend time improvising around a piece of wood hoping it will become something. They learn the precise skills that will be part of their every day job and perform those tasks with diligence. Stanislavski reminds us that the best actors “work unremittingly on technique”.
Technique should liberate us. A technique based on common sense should simply give us the tools to do the job and then dissolve. The technique should serve the actor, not the other way around. Technique is intended as preparation. The rest of the actor’s process is personal, internal, intuitive, instinctive, spontaneous and utterly intangible.
Since most actors feel uncomfortable with the techniques that they are taught in the conservatory, they tend to disbelieve that technique can actually produce results. Their experience of these techniques is that they very rarely produced the type of result that one expected, if any result at all. So, the actor secretly tries to find other ways, whilst pretending all the other stuff was great. On the odd occasion that they or another actor has produced great results, they have viewed this as luck or the possession of that innate gift for acting. Luck and the gift are the same thing to us and they are outwith our control. Being good becomes about trying to tempt the muse to rest on you. Acting then becomes voodoo. No wonder many of its techniques are intangible and bizarre. If a technique, studied rigorously and correctly applied does not work, it is not technique, it is just something to fill time, parlour games, fake work.
Of all the techniques wide and varied, successful and lunatic that they learned in theatre school, university or conservatory, how much do you think the average actor uses in the business of their daily job as an actor? Okay, there will always be the die hards (Daniel Day Lewis is Daniel Day Lewis with or without his technique) out there trying to become a prostitute, or the third Duke of Albany but the average actor? I imagine it is less than ten percent because in the end it is superfluous to the task, and we are conservative with our energies, we use them when we feel it will benefit us.
To you, the best
Mark Westbrook