(Y)Our Guiding Principles
It’s important that any organisation has core principles which guide it’s activities. Google, Coca-Cola, the Royal Shakespeare Company – they all have their own guiding principles, which reflect their values and working philosophy. Actually, I think it’s rather useful for individuals to think the same way. And I would encourage you to come up with your own guiding principles and to put them somewhere prominent and use them to guide your future activities.
Today, I wanted to share with you the guiding principles which currently help us shape our direction at ACS. These were not invented from thin air, they emerged and evolved over time to represent the ACS ethos. Regular readers of the Acting-Blog will recognise them as the ethos that runs as an undercurrent throughout the many blog posts here. They are a living philosophy, not just something written in a book that no one ever looks at, they’re not objectives, they’re not corporate values, they are a living, breathing philosophy for the activities of Acting Coach Scotland and as such, we – the staff embrace them, teach them, and live them.
These can be found on the wall of my office, they can be found on the ACS website and the future of Acting Coach Scotland is determined by the direction they offer. I would like to take this opportunity to go through each one of the ten and explain what they mean to me, as they may become inciting or inspiring to you too.
At Acting Coach Scotland, our guiding principles are:
There is no place for bullshit in actor training and coaching.
You can be serious about what you do without wearing a suit and tie.
The price of success is sweat.
Part-time training does not signify less of a commitment to excellence.
Age and experience are not indicators of future success.
Our weaknesses are our students too, we always work to identify and eliminate areas of weakness from ourselves first.
Feedback should be practicable, so people can act upon it and it can be honest without being brutal.
Script first, script last. The answers are always in the script.
Talent is tinsel, what matters is expert knowledge and thousands of hours of practice.
Actors that are dependent upon the director are useless. Training must empower the actor to become autonomous.
Let’s take a look at these in some more detail:
1. There is no place for bullshit in actor training and coaching
Oh Mark, you’ve put a sweary word in your principles. No, I’m not trying to seem cool or annoying, that’s precisely what we’re aiming to avoid at ACS, any bullshit, the presence of which turns acting into something else. There are hundreds of thousands of acting coaches who talk absolute garbage and when you listen closely to what they’re saying, it’s meaningless drivel – or well-meaning hippy crap. Bullshit dilutes your training makes you do ridiculous things that make you leave your common sense behind. It also pervades your acting and ends up with your pretending and performing. Pretending doesn’t lead to good acting. The imagination is powerful, but the basis of good acting is the reality of doing – living truthfully, authentically behave as we do in life.
2. You can be serious about what you do without wearing a suit and tie
This summer the staff started wearing shirts to work. Being smart for work is one thing, but wearing a suit and tie to me has always denoted being a sheep, sorry – that’s my feeling. One can look smart and be appalling at one’s job, so it’s really not about how you look. If Steve Jobs wore a black polo neck, jeans and cons every day, then I admire the shit out of him for that. Some jobs don’t suit the suit, but I understand that some of us have to wear it, to project a certain image to the customer. The problem is that projecting an image is the opposite of what we’re about at ACS, we’re about authenticity, so while we’re going to be a bit smarter in our dress from no on, we were always serious about what we do and we don’t need a suit to show that.
3. The price of success is sweat
Okay, probably paraphrased or ripped off from Fame but not intentionally, because we know this is true. The true price of success is not talent or capacity, it is the ability to graft. At ACS we are grafters and that’s the ability we really admire in other people. Still, graft without intelligence is no good, you need to get good advice and have an intelligent direction to work in. But intelligence without sweat, is inactive, what really matters is SWEAT.
4. Part-time training does not signify less of a commitment to excellence
Some people look down on us, because we’re not a college or a conservatory. Actually, that’s our strengths, we’re not tied down by any of the institutional rules and regulations that kill the essence of most acting courses. We have a simple plan, train part-time so that you can afford it, learn the lessons and then you can start going for jobs, without having to starve. We can still demand quality and excellence from our students in a few hours a week. We know it will take them longer in general to attain their goals, BUT since we spend a LOT less time fannying about, actually, the part-time element doesn’t hamper them at all. We teach the essentials and those take about two years part-time.
5. Age and Experience are not indicators of future success
The acting coach that has taught for 50 years gets all the kudos. We’ve only been around for 3 years, and I’ve been teaching for 10. But in that time, I’ve changed and adapted and developed my approach, constantly dissatisfied with letting things become staid. Maturity and years in the business don’t mean anything to me. With the greatest respect, you can give me the beginner with the right attitude any time. Likewise, time served does not mean that the acting coach/acting teacher is any good. Listen to what they say, don’t just add up their years of experience.
6. Our weaknesses are our students too, we always work to identify and eliminate areas of weakness from ourselves first.
We acknowledge that our weaknesses as coaches become the weaknesses of our students. We must always work to identify those weaknesses and do something about them before we pass them on as deficiencies in our students.
7. Feedback should be practicable, so people can act upon it and it can be honest without being brutal.
Feedback is essential, it is an important part of the learning process, acknowledged in Kolb’s learning cycle. We need someone to tell us where we made mistakes and when we did things well. But that feedback needs to be angled in such a way as that it can be acted upon, otherwise it’s just words and words and ideas are not easily translated into action. Secondly, the feedback does not need to be brutal, it can be delivered with care and attention to the student’s development without being rude. So many so-called acting teachers deliver harsh and brutal feedback which damages the student’s confidence. Some students even believe they WANT brutal feedback, like some sort of masochist, hoping that the brutality.
8. Script first, script last. The answers are always in the script.
The script is the actor’s best friend, it provides all of the clues. That’s the bottom line. We often forget that. Trust the writing.
9. Talent is Tinsel. What matters is expert knowledge and thousands of hours of practice.
Blogged about this recently. Read it here if you haven’t already.
10. Actors that are dependent upon the director are useless. Training must empower the actor to become autonomous.
The relationship between actors and directors is usually one of child and parent and it’s unhealthy. You need to have an adult-adult relationship and this is best for the collaborative nature of our industry. But being an adult means you need to have parity of skill in the room and too many actors have been trained to ‘need’ the director. Stand on your own two feet, but an adult.
That’s a long blog, but I hope it makes our principles clear. Now, how about you think about 5 principles that you can work/live by? Don’t make them things you aspire to, don’t set them as objectives that are out of reach, you know your principles, you can live already live by them.