When We Act

One of things that I got out of spending time with Mel Churcher was the sense of what happens to people once they start ‘acting’.

They seem to get locked up and tense, you see the light go from their eyes, their free physicality becomes rigid. People start acting, they somehow become less themselves.

Now those people that are find of that old chestnut that is characterisation think that’s a good thing, but it’s not.

You need to be as fully you as possible, alive and at ease, ready to respond in the moment, as authentically as possible.

Mel does a great exercise (it’s in here great book The Screen Acting Workshop) where she gets people to tell a story from their life, records that and then gets them to do a monologue and records that and then compares the two.

They are like chalk and cheese.

A) Telling an anecdote = natural, energy in the eyes, whole body involved and at ease.

B) Doing a monologue = stilted, fixed, stiff, dead in the eyes.

I have started watching actors in close up, to see if they are alive or dead. Sadly they see B an awful lot.

When we act, we must be fully ourselves and give up on this idea of ‘acting’ as a separate self which kills our natural spontaneity and the humanity in our performance.

To You, The Best!

Mark Westbrook
Senior Acting Coach
ACTING COACH SCOTLAND