The Great Acting Blog: "Only Worry About Action"

Check out this quick teaser for our new short, Phone Box Gun. 

My action in the scene above, was to get my scene partner to agree with me (within the fiction of script, this amounted to Bob getting Vincent to let him buy him a ticket to Mexico). Now, the scene itself is a fiddly one because I want the guy to agree with me, but sometimes I want to be forceful in order to accomplish that, but not too forceful, otherwise he's going to be offended, and then my task will be made that much harder. So, in a gentle scene as is the one the above clip is taken from, the actor needs to be very self-aware, self-controlled, yeah sure, there'll be moments when passions rise, and the actor will lose self-awareness for a moment,  but he will quickly need to regain his self-control or risk blowing the deal. That's why the whole notion of “becoming somebody else”, or “losing yourself in the character” is such utter nonsense: a) you cannot lose yourself because you've got a performance to give, which requires discipline and precision, and, b) you do have an actual task within the scene to complete, and you mustn't take your eye off the ball.

Actors are told “not to think”, but to “just do it”. When we are acting well (which is to say, truly) we have rhythm and grace, we are energised, the performance seems to carry us along, as though riding the crest of a wave, but we still must observe ourselves to ensure we remain on the right track. Again, these are not special rules which only apply to acting, they apply to real life aswell – when we function well, we seem to be self-conscious and instinctive at the same time. When we're doing a task we enjoy or is important to us, we may become engrossed and forget ourselves, but it is beside the point to actively not think, so why should actors not think in performance? The counterbalance to not thinking, is “characterization”, whereby the actor plots out everything, every little movement, every little gesture, every emotion, and does it in the way they think “the character would do it”, and regardless of what is actually taking place in the scene, thus murdering spontaneity. In the scene.

When playing, overdoing instinct or self-awareness can be damaging – if we operated purely instinctively, then our work may lack shape and become a meaningless mess, or alternatively, trying to control the results of our performance too much, can lead to a bland stodginess (ergo: most acting) – the pressure is removed from the actor, he becomes complacent. I say, don't worry about thinking, don't worry about not thinking, and don't worry about how instinctive you are or lack thereof, but concentrate only on doing your action as fully as you can, and putting your attention onto your scene partner, adjusting your performance in relation to his responses to you. This will bring you, an thus the scene, alive.

I hope you enjoyed the clip.