Cool

Acting is not about being cool. You can't get up there and "be cool" any more than you can get up there and "be funny" or "recreate that spontaneous moment." It just doesn't work. The harder you try to "be cool" and the more you focus on "being cool," the less the audience cares about you and the harder it is for your partner to connect to you and the scene just falls flat. The brilliant thing about acting is that the more you are uncool on stage (or screen), the more the audience loves it and thinks you are then a cool actor. Think about it. When has Michael Cera ever played a "cool guy?" Would Al Pacino or Jack Nicholson be as respected as they are if they didn't know how to just completely lose their shit in movies like "The Shining" or "Scent of a Woman?" We, as audience members, sit and wait for the characters in front of us to just lose it. And when they do, we lose it with them and have that beautiful cathartic moment that lets us go home feeling like we just experienced something great. But if they keep it all in and just play "the cool guy," we never get to have that experience and we walk away dissatisfied.

This is my current issue with the new Doctor - I think he's kind of caught up in "being cool" and hasn't figured out yet what it is about the Doctor that makes him cool. And in class last night, several of us were concerned with "being cool," and it made our scenes flat. But once we got over that and started working moment to moment and trying to affect one another, the scenes totally came alive and it was wonderful.

That being said, acting is also a very giving activity. As an actor, you have to give your partner things to work with. You have to let them know what your point of view is so they can have a point of view about that and you can have a point of view about that and so one and so on and so on. I was called out on Saturday for not making my point of view clear, and it's true. I got caught up in judging what my partner was saying and I couldn't find the right words and I got flustered and lost. I should have just observed what I saw, and let him know how I felt about it. On the up side, right after I was called out, I jumped right back up and did another scene, and then got called up into a third. Like the old adage about falling off a horse - if I hadn't gotten back up immediately and tried again, I would have over-analyzed what I did and I would have gotten self-conscious. Acting is a very active thing. You have to do it to get good at it. Sitting and thinking about it just starts to drive me crazy.

But the whole giving thing. You have to give your partner things to work with, and they, in turn, give you things to work with. And then a scene comes alive. And you give the audience that experience of feeling something or witnessing something grand. When you decide to "be cool," or "be collected," or "keep your shit together," you have already decided to disengage from your partner and nothing will go anywhere fun. I was guilty of this last night just as much as the next guy. I decided that my character was strong and sort of protective of herself and that was that. I don't know that I was giving my partner anything to play with. And by the same token, he had most of the dialogue in the scene, but I don't feel like he was really saying a lot of it to me, it was just sort of being said. But then the teacher tweaked our scene and gave us some things to think about so by the end, he was physically threatening and I was really afraid, which added this wonderful dimension to the scene that had been completely lacking in previous weeks.

I dunno. There was another woman who got sort of reamed in class on Saturday because we couldn't see her face through her hair. I had one teacher in high school, I think, who used to yell at all of the girls to tie their hair back in class so we could see their faces. There are some women in these classes I've been taking for whom hair issues have been present since day one and it wasn't until this current class that anyone said anything and I'm glad she finally did. I'd like to be able to see what my classmates are doing, but I can't see emotion through hair. The instructor on Saturday, though, took it a bit further and talked about how actors want to be seen and they want to find their light and they want to be visible and they want the person in the back row to know what they are feeling and that if someone would rather be up on stage hiding behind his or her hair, maybe he or she should think twice about pursuing an acting career. I felt for the woman who was being told this - I really did. But I think there is merit to what the teacher is saying. And I think it also applies to the "being cool" and "giving" aspects of acting, too. If all you want to do is be in movies so you can "be cool," please stay home. If all you want to do is be an actor so you can make money, please stay home. If all you want to do is be on stage so you can be in the spotlight, either write a decent one-person show or stay home. If you want to get up there and connect with someone else so you can experience things and you want to play and experiment and give and receive and learn how to (safely) just loose your shit so everyone in the room can have that catharsis with you, then please look me up and let's do a scene together. Because that is what acting is about. It is about all of those moments that we don't allow ourselves to have in real life. It is about wanting things and doing what you have to go get those things. It is active. It is about pursuing objectives. It is about effecting and being affected. In other words, it's not about "being cool," and it's not about you. So get over yourself.

Myself included.

Scene Study

I'm really nervous about my class tonight. This one is a contemporary scene study class and I've been partnered with a man who gets nothing but rave reviews from everyone who has worked with him, doing a scene from a show that actually made me sick to my stomach by the time I finished reading it. It's a play about a stalker and the stalking victim. There is no actual violence in it, but the threats are there and they're disturbing.

We read some of the play in class last week. It starts with a blind date and I told the class in discussion that I have been on that date a million times. And that maybe she said certain things just to be nice even though she doesn't want to be there. And that maybe she agreed to go out a second time because as a single woman in her thirties, maybe she's starting to wonder if she let Mr. Right go already for some stupid reason so she should be more open to the quirks of others instead of dismissing people outright. And I realized as I read this play that I am the stalking victim. I have not had to change my name or move cities to get away from someone, but I have broken up with people who had problems letting it go. And I have been on that date a million times and I have said those things to be nice and I have started to wonder if I should give the creepy hairy guy a second chance because maybe I'm being shallow and all of that kind of thing. And I think that's why I was assigned this scene - because I am this woman in so many ways.

So I'm nervous. Because I've not worked with anyone in this class before. Because this is has the potential to be gut-wrenching. And because they're all really good performers and I know any of you reading this who know me would say I'm a really good performer, too, but I felt almost out-matched in class last week. I'm really going to have to bring it and that scares me.

And excites me. It's scary in the good way. This is what I wanted, so this is what I shall get.