MENTAL HEALTH and THE ACTOR

An Excerpt from the book The Actor and the Spirit (Soon to be published)

 

Why is it that so many artists suffer mental health problems? It is quite possible that they don’t suffer any more than anybody else. We hear about the suicide or overdose of a well-known actor or musician. However, without their celebrity status, we may never have heard about it at all. It would be interesting to survey different occupational groups to find out if mental health issues are more prevalent in the Arts than in other sectors.

 

Reflecting on my experiences of these issues with my students over twenty-five years, I have noticed that some mental health issues are addressed by the learning of the technique, even though that was never the intention or objective of the technique or its teaching. So why might that be?

 

Here are some observations I have noted over the years. I hope they might be of use.

 

For most people, the mind seems to be divided into several Minds. This is a general observation of course, but most people dwell in one of eight different minds at different times. Let’s break these down.

 

1. The Negative Present Mind. This Mind is the place in which we find stress, panic and anxiety. Everyday chores, jobs and troubles of life live here. In this Mind we worry about things like money, family and the day-to-day running of our lives.

 

2. The Negative Past Mind. This Mind is the place in which we find regret, guilt and shame. In this Mind we dwell on our past decisions and actions and feel bad about them such as bad auditions, poor performances or simply a stupid thing we did or said that causes us to cringe.

 

3. The Positive Present Mind. This Mind is the place in which we mark and enjoy the good things we have. In this Mind we stop to smell the roses and appreciate the roof over our head, the beauty of our children, or the simple pleasure of a walk on the beach. Some refer to being in this mind as “mindfulness”.

 

4. The Positive Past Mind. This Mind is the place in which we remember the good decisions we’ve made and the good fortune we have had and feel grateful and pleased about those. In this Mind we remember a good audition and a job we got, an impressive performance we gave or simply a great holiday.

 

5. The Conscious Creative Mind. This Mind is the place in which we contemplate new ideas for the future and develop them. In this Mind we come up with new ideas for stories, films, songs and plays and consciously think about what they could be. In this mind we fantasize, whether it be an erotic fantasy, an artistic one, or an ambition for future success.

 

6. The Conscious Destructive Mind. This Mind is the place in which we contemplate a negative future for ourselves. It is riddled with fears of failure and destitution. In this mind we invent horrible scenarios for the future in which our partner perhaps cheats on us or leaves us, we lose our job, never find any success and end up homeless or dead.

 

7. The Unconscious Creative Mind. This mind is the place of dreams. In this mind we sleep and our mind unconsciously explores our world and life. It’s similar to the Conscious Creative Mind in that it is seeking order and new ideas except that we have little or no conscious control over it most of the time.

 

8. The Creative Pool. This mind is the enormous pool of untapped creative space. In this mind we experience deep rest, which allows the brain to open up new pathways to creativity. This mind is usually only experienced in very deep sleep where no dreaming takes place, coma, or deep meditation.

 

Minds one, two and six, that is the Negative Present and Past Minds and the Conscious Destructive Mind, take up the most energy. Dwelling in these minds is exhausting and releases toxic feelings and emotions such as fear, self-doubt, self-hatred and loathing. Dwelling in these Minds for too long will cause mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety and panic attacks. If the Negative Past Mind harbors memories of trauma and abuse, this can lead to even more serious mental disorders such as bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders and psychosis. The Negative Past Mind is probably the most dangerous of all and we can actually add to it by exposing ourselves to trauma by watching disturbing images of war or pornography. If we go out on the town and drink far too much and end up in a fistfight where the police need to intervene, we have created a Negative Past memory to add to that Mind. So we can limit the power of this Mind by not fuelling it with disturbing images and experiences. In the same way we can add to the Positive Past Mind by building up positive and peaceful memories and experiences that we can dwell on instead. One of the major issues that has arisen with the advent of sites such as Facebook is the over saturation of concentrated extreme imagery. For example, if a person is an animal rights activist and is very sensitive about the issue of cruelty to animals, they will join and like pages about that topic that will inevitably show traumatic images of animal cruelty. Posts and related images then flood this sensitive person’s newsfeed daily. Essentially that person is building up multiple images of animal cruelty in their Negative Past Mind and dwelling on them, without the balance of happy puppies running through fields of grass and other positive images. This overload of disturbing images, focused directly on the issue they are most sensitive about, can cause deep upset, depression, anxiety, and a feeling that the world is horrific and barbaric and not worth living in. Feelings like this can of course lead to self-harm and suicide.

 

Of course we are going to have some Negative Past experiences that will dwell in this Mind, and most of those will not be our own fault. If there is child abuse present in that Mind for example and we feel a sense of shame and distress as a result, that is not our fault and we can choose not to give that memory power by dwelling on it. If it is deeply disturbing and impossible to ignore, we will need to seek the help of a professional psychologist or psychiatrist to help to resolve that event and make it endurable. Some people however, take small, negative memories, such as calling someone by the wrong name or slipping over in the street, and dwell on them to such an extent that they make themselves sick over them. It’s in these instances that we can choose to control how much we dwell on those memories in the Negative Past Mind. We can rationalize these memories by telling ourselves meaningful truths like, everyone forgets a name from time to time, anyone can slip over in the street and more than likely the witnesses to either of those events have long forgotten them anyway and the only person who’s dwelling on them is us. We can choose to disempower the Negative Past Mind and spend less time there.

 

The Negative Past Mind is also a place where we regret certain decisions, such as the course we chose to study, the place we chose to live or the partner we chose to be with. Those past decisions cannot be changed, so again there’s little point in dwelling on them and feeling bad about them. What decisions we make now and next are the ones we can have some level of control over. Feeling shame or regret or guilt is only useful insofar as these feeling help us to not make the same mistakes again, but any further immersion in those feelings is utterly unhelpful and unhealthy. Changing your thinking to what you might do now or next is literally changing your Mind. You are changing from using the Negative Past Mind to using the Conscious Creative Mind.

 

Many people who struggle to free themselves of the grip of the Negative Past Mind resort to alcohol and other substances to relieve the weight of the negativity and exhaustion. Such drugs help to block out the Negative Past Mind or make it seem less venomous. Heroin is the obvious drug of choice for this, however the Arts seem to be more influenced by Cocaine. Heroin blocks out feelings of shame and regret, thus disempowering the Negative Past Mind. Cocaine enhances feelings of confidence and energy, shoving the user into the Conscious Creative Mind. However alcohol and substance abuse is equally tiring for the brain and body and will inevitably lead to addiction and worse distress rather than relief as the user begins to regret their choices and feel increased levels of shame and guilt while not stoned. Hence, the user defaults back to the drug to get that relief, except the dose needs to be increased. This will obviously result in serious health damage and possibly death. Quitting becomes incredibly difficult and recovery can take years.

 

The Negative Present mind is also toxic because it leads to fear and self-doubt, which can lead to negative self-image and depression, but of course it too is necessary to some degree because we need to get things done and it keeps us on our toes. If we didn’t have it we would not do things, promote ourselves, get our bills paid and do our work well. The best way to describe this mind when it becomes toxic is the feeling that we are not able for the world or not worthy of being in it. Everyone else seems to be handling these day-to-day stresses well, except us. Once again, this is where we can choose to disempower this Mind and spend less time in it, firstly by recognizing that we are all in the same boat. We all have bills to pay and jobs to go to and things we have to do. No one is special and no one is separate from those troubles, even those with more money than us. Money is a problem when you don’t have it, and often a bigger problem when you do because you have to manage it and you can be sure that other people like the taxman and the accountant are going to want a slice of it.

 

One of the most striking misusages of the Negative Present Mind happens among teenaged girls. They are bombarded (by media and each other) with images of fashion and beauty that are not only unrealistic but are literally not real. They are computer designed and airbrushed. When a teenaged girl looks in the mirror and sees how far they are from that idealized image, they are caught in the Negative Present Mind and may start to indulge that dissatisfaction. They may then start to take action to try to bridge the gap between themselves and the images they aspire to through dieting and spending enormous amounts of money on the right clothes and make-up to try to achieve the image. When they inevitably fail, great upset and depression can be caused. Extreme cases will result in eating disorders, self-harm and suicide.

 

When we suffer bereavement we get stuck in the Negative Present Mind. Grief is that feeling that the person we loved is now gone and our present world has been lessened, diminished or even utterly shattered. There’s very little to be done about it unfortunately, except to take your time and slowly but surely start to shift out of that Negative Present Mind and into the more positive Minds. It takes time and patience, but eventually the experience will move into the Negative Past Mind where you can try to visit it less and less. However it will be there forever. The good memories of the person, however, will always be in the Positive Past Mind, and we can certainly try to spend as much time as we can there instead, which is of course what the deceased would want for us.

 

The Negative Present Mind and the Conscious Destructive Mind are intrinsically linked. The Negative Present Mind tells us we are not worthy of life. We then imagine ourselves failing as a result of that unworthiness. I believe there is some truth in self-fulfilling prophesies. If we see ourselves homeless or alone or despised and dwell on that, we can inadvertently, subconsciously travel in that direction.

 

The upside of all this is that there are eight minds and only three of them are negative, destructive and exhausting. The ideal situation then would be that we spend as little time as possible in the Negative Past and Negative Present Minds and the Conscious Destructive Mind, and as much time as possible in the Positive Past and Positive Present minds, appreciating the positive things we have in our present moment, spending quality time with those around us, and remembering the good times and experiences we have had.

 

So what are these other three minds? The Conscious Creative Mind, as I’ve already said, is that mindset in which we contemplate a creative idea, like a new film or play or song or sculpture or picture, or whatever our art might entail. Most artists spend a great deal of time in this place. It’s a very healthy place to be. The only problem is that this place is not always furnished with good ideas. Sometimes it takes a while for an idea to come to the Conscious Creative Mind and there can be long periods where this mind seems to be bereft of creative fuel. But there are ways of getting those juices flowing.

 

The Unconscious Creative Mind is our dreaming. While sleeping our mind seems to be able to create all sorts of wild and wonderful ideas and scenarios. I dreamt the other night that I moved into my dream house in Sydney and two of Ireland’s best Casting Directors who I know well moved in with me and held their castings in different rooms of the house. The place was buzzing with life and energy. At one point one of the Casting Directors needed me to change her baby’s nappy, which I did and found that the baby had bad nappy rash, so I went down to the shops to get her some soothing cream. What does it all mean? You could analyse it till the end of time, but really it’s just my Unconscious Creative Mind having fun with the facts of my conscious reality. Sometimes the dreams seem less wacky and more realistic and the seeds of good creative ideas can be harnessed if remembered.

 

Sometimes we have bad dreams. Often those dreams come from too much time spent in the Negative Minds during our waking life. On a simple level, a child who watches a scary movie might have a nightmare because that negative image has become part of the Negative Past Mind and has not yet been resolved or come to terms with. Too much time spent in the Negative Present Mind can lead to insomnia, as we lie awake worrying about our troubles. For the most part, dreaming, even if the dream is not entirely pleasant, is healthy.

 

Over twenty-five years of teaching, I have come to be quite astute at guessing which Mind a student is in when in the studio, even if they haven’t said a word. I can see a student dwelling on the past, for example, and before too long they will be sharing a negative screen-test or audition experience they had that day with the group. That experience has drawn them deeply into the Negative Past Mind and they are stuck there, like a child who can’t shift an image of a scary movie. Drawing them away from that Mind is important if any positive progress is going to be made that day. I can also tell which students are in the Conscious Creative Mind. They have done their homework and are armed will all sorts of ideas to experiment with. They are itching to rehearse with their scene partners and are using the studio time to its fullest potential.

 

When actors audition for The Applied Art of Acting, I can easily tell if they are in the panics of the Negative Present Mind, the terrors of the Conscious Destructive Mind fearing the future, or in the energized wonder of the Conscious Creative Mind, ready to show me their creation. Too often actors prepare their audition at home in the Conscious Creative Mind and then switch inadvertently to the Conscious Destructive Mind or the Negative Present Mind. This can be avoided, or at least lessened, if the actor understands what their Minds are doing and when.

 

So the Positive Past Mind, the Positive Present Mind, The Conscious Creative Mind and the Unconscious Creative Mind are good places to be. So in short, good, simplistic, advice would be to dwell on the good things you’ve done and the good things currently in your life, daydream about what artistic things you might like to try to achieve, and get plenty of sleep. A good piece of parenting advice would be to try to fuel your little one’s childhood with as many positive experiences as possible to add to their Positive Past Mind and try to limit experiences where they feel embarrassed, ashamed or afraid, thus disempowering their Negative Present and Past Minds by starving them of fuel. Rather than exhausting us, the Positive and Creative Minds tend to energize us and make us feel reasonably good most of the time.

 

The first step I suggest to all my students is to try to recognize which of these eight minds they are in and when, and then draw a graph or table for themselves to come to an understanding of how long they are spending in each mind each day. This can be a rather eye-opening experiment. Some of my students are very surprised at how long they tend to dwell in the Negative and Destructive Minds. Sometimes up to seventy or eighty percent of their day is spent in them. Suddenly they realize why they are feeling so bad and low so much. Once you have come to an understanding of how you have been dividing your time up between each one of these Minds, you can start the process of readjusting the percentages and choosing to spend more time in the positive and creative Minds instead.

 

The only problem is that none of the Minds I’ve mentioned so far feature deep rest. Even when you’re asleep in your Unconscious Creative Mind, your mind is working. This is where the Creative Pool comes into play.

 

The Creative Pool is a deep ocean of Mind that is vastly bigger than all of the other minds combined. Most people don’t even know it’s there and even those who do rarely access it. This is a place where the mind truly just rests. It’s not a myth or a mystery. Human beings have been accessing it and trying to understand it for centuries. Religions have tried to claim it through notions like prayer and meditation, and some religions believe that this is where the human mind can connect with God or the god-head of that faith, but it doesn’t belong to any religion and it’s not a myth or something that requires belief. You go there when the brain or body is damaged and requires total rest in the form of a coma. You may have experienced deep sleep that featured no dreams and no restlessness during the night. These of course are unconscious versions of it, but there is a conscious one too that anyone can reach through fairly simple, non-religious meditation.

 

It’s important to say at this juncture that I have no agenda or investment in the commodification of meditation. I have never paid anyone to teach it to me and I do not charge anyone who asks me to teach what I know of it to them. I don’t sell it and I don’t offer it as a service. I am an atheist and a skeptic. There is no magic in the following ideas and you don’t need to join a cult of some sort to partake in it. The closest kind of meditation to what I’m about to describe is called Transcendental Meditation and you can look it up for yourself. As I said, I have never studied it officially or paid to be taught about it. Oddly, many professional actors and Dramatic Arts professionals use TM as their go-to for meaningful mental rest. There are practitioners than can teach it to you and help you to find your “mantra”. I don’t want to belittle their vocation and I’m sure they are very good at diagnostically doing that, but for me it was not necessary to pay a professional to find mine. Remember also that what I’m describing here is not according to Hoyle TM. This is my own method of reaching the Creative Pool. It is however, very similar to TM and I would highly recommend researching TM and its origins.

 

The “mantra” is a very simple series of words or sounds that you can focus on. It could literally be anything. The ticking of a clock, the chime of a bell, a series of words like apple, banana, cucumber, fish. The purpose of the mantra is simply to give you something to focus your mind on so that your mind won’t wander to any of the other seven Minds. All you need to do is close your eyes and repeat the mantra over and over in your mind. You can sit, relaxed on a chair for this or lie down, but I do find that some of my students tend to fall asleep if they lie down. (I work them pretty hard.) Now what happens next is very important. As you repeat the mantra over and over in your mind you must try your best not to read any meaning into the mantra. You are simply focusing on the sound of the bell or clock or the sound of the consonants and vowels in the words. You are not picturing a banana, for example, or trying to understand the nature of the banana, or going off on an imaginative trip about how or why a banana exists. If you do, you will drift towards the Conscious Creative Mind, which seeks theories and answers. You don’t want to be in any of the other seven Minds.

 

Now the other important direction here is that you should not become aggressive in any way. Don’t try to block out the other thoughts of the other Minds or force yourself to concentrate. Just gently encourage yourself to focus only on the sounds of your mantra. Other thoughts may come to your mind. I haven’t paid that bill! I need to finish writing my short film! I need to contact my agent! I said something stupid to that girl at that party! If these kinds of thoughts come in, allow them gently to pass through your thinking and pass away. Don’t get angry at them or yourself for thinking thoughts that are not to do with the mantra. Just forgive yourself and let the thought pass through and return to the mantra and try again to focus only on its sounds. By doing this you will give yourself the best possible chance of reaching the enormous, quiet Creative Pool.

 

Some people tell me that they can’t meditate. “I’ve tried it but it’s not for me”. They say they can’t quiet their mind. With this method, you don’t have to. Just focus on the sounds of the mantra as best you can. Don’t try to quiet your mind, but let thoughts from the other seven minds pass through rather than stay.

 

It takes a bit of practice and patience, but if you can stick it out, you will notice that the pace of the mantra will slow down. In between the sounds will be quiet space free of all thought. It’s as if there are long moments of “nothing”. Soon the mantra will fall away completely, or you can choose to stop repeating it at this point and you will realize that you are in a place of deep, thoughtless rest. Some people report feeling a sense of falling, or dropping over a ledge when they fall into this place, except that the falling is not frightening, albeit a little strange at first. In the same way as before, if a thought from one of the other minds intrudes, allow it to dissolve in the giant pool, or sail away and into the distance. If everything goes according to plan, you will soon have no connection to the other minds. You won’t know where they are. If anywhere, they might be far away above you, as if they are on the surface of an ocean that you have sunk many miles down into.

 

If it helps you, I like to think of this Pool as the primordial Mind that all the other seven minds sprung from as I grew up and matured. It was there when I was a baby, possibly even in the womb, before any of the other seven minds existed. As I matured, the other seven minds were slowly formed as I gained experiences and memories.

 

As you near this point, you may begin to see or hear unsolicited images or sounds. These are images and sounds that you did not consciously decide to focus on. They seemed to arrive out of nowhere. You may know the song “The Rainbow Connection” as sung by the great Kermit the Frog. “Have you been half asleep and have you heard voices? I’ve heard them calling my name.” This is not actually Kermit going mad, but hearing unsolicited sounds as he’s in the halfway world between sleep and waking. Many people report this and it’s not unusual. So if you see unsolicited images or hear unsolicited sounds, these are coming from your Unconscious Creative Mind, which thinks you are falling asleep and mistakenly tries to take over from your Conscious Mind by presenting images and sounds for dreaming. It’s at this juncture that some of my students who lie down for this do drift off to sleep. If that happens, they have to sit up next time. If this happens to you, again just try to let those images and sounds float away and allow yourself to be immersed in the deep quiet pool of nothingness.

 

In this deep, restful place, your mind will recharge and your brain will rest. You will be free of all worries about the present, regrets of the past, thoughts of good things or bad things, or indeed anything. You will be completely aware of the world around you. You will hear the real sounds of traffic outside or birds or wind or whatever there is to be heard, but those sounds will not be distracting or inhibiting to you. You will feel at ease there and you will not have to concentrate or aggressively try to stay there.

 

Stay in that deep Pool for around twenty to thirty minutes. TM advises twenty minutes twice a day, which is good advice. You can set an alarm for yourself if you wish, but you’ll probably find that you will feel so at ease and calm that you will effortlessly judge the twenty minutes to within a few seconds without an alarm.

 

Why am I calling it the Creative Pool when you’re not creating anything there? The reason is that this place is the source of all creativity. Any thoughts you have in the Conscious or Unconscious Creative Minds comes from here. By spending time in the pool, you are giving your mind time to rest and create space for new creative thoughts to surface throughout your day. If your mind is constantly tired from working on the problems of your present and past and in between consciously working out creative ideas, it has no time to rest and allow new kernels of thought to rise from the Creative Pool. This is what happens when you feel you are in that awful place of writer’s block, bereft of ideas and creative thoughts. Your mind isn’t coming up with them because it doesn’t have room to. It hasn’t had time to rest, recharge and reconnect with that primal Pool of creativity. Again, on a simple level, writers with writer’s block will recognize there’s no point trying to force ideas to come. They will step away from the page and go for a walk up a mountain or along a beach and think of anything other than the fact that they can’t think of anything to write. Once the mind has had time to recharge, even a little bit, the ideas have a chance to come through. This meditation within the Creative Pool daily gives the potential for masses of well- formed creative thoughts to come through. With practice, an artist can have them on tap.

 

So going back to my original musing, why does the technique of The Applied Art of Acting seem to alleviate mental health conditions like depression and anxiety? I believe that there’s a number of factors here. Doing an intensive course requires creating a simple life in which the Negative Present Mind has little fuel. They are going to the course, going home, eating, learning lines, sleeping and going back to the course. It’s only three months in duration, so most of them have saved up enough money to not have to work part time during the course. For that three months, life is pretty straight forward and the course is the anchor for that stability.

 

The student’s mind is almost entirely immersed in the Conscious Creative Mind throughout the course. They are working constantly and consistently on the application of the technique to scripts and the creation of characters. When they are not in this mind, they are spending periods of time in the morning in the Creative Pool, which is providing deep rest and a untapped fuel for creative ideas. This of course fuels the Positive Present Mind and the student enjoys the rare opportunity to be completely immersed in the thing they love, albeit for only three months. By the end of the course they are looking ahead to exciting future projects, that is, immersed in the Conscious Creative Mind as they leave. If they can maintain that prevalence of the Conscious Creative Mind in their lives after the course and remember to visit the Creative Pool daily if possible, they will be able to maintain their newly found mental health and sense of well-being.

 

It’s important to stress once again that the course was never designed to help students with mental health issues. It seems to be a happy side effect of being intensively creative and finding meditative rest periods habitually too. That said, some people have serious chemical imbalances in the brain that cause serious mental illness that require medical intervention. While this system of understanding these eight Minds might be useful and helpful, some people will always unfortunately require some form of medication or deeper therapy, or both.

 

So Imagining Liam, Company D’s newest project is now coming to the end of its two week run in The Teachers Club. Towards the end of a run I like to put out there what exactly I was aiming to achieve with a play that I write. I wouldn’t do that early in the run, only at this stage as it’s unlikely that any more reviewers will come along now, but audiences still will roll in to see the last three shows and perhaps they might like to come with some of these thoughts in mind. We did have three great online reviews of the show from respected sources, but I would have very much liked some of the mainstream newspaper’s theatre critics with their vast experience to have seen and commented on the work, but alas, despite many emails, we didn’t register as important to them this time around. Company D plays certainly have aroused the interest of the establishment in the past and I certainly hope they will again.

So in brief my aim with Imagining Liam was to explore the nature of self-knowledge, or perhaps better-said, self-truth. In this frenzied world, I find that people are too quick to define themselves. They do this on social media especially, setting up “profiles” for themselves that then project them to the outside online world. Further than that, people entrench themselves in beliefs far too quickly also, and usually those beliefs have not come from a source of truth, or even from oneself, but rather from the media or from another radicalised voice. For example, a voice tells us that all Catholic Clergy are violent child rapists and the Church is evil, and another tells us it’s just a small minority and the Catholic Church is really very wonderful. Depending on who we listen to and believe, we entrench ourselves in our positions and stick to them, no matter what, even though we have never gone looking for the real truth, beyond the media, who let’s remember have a job which is to “sell” their news and is often deeply agenda driven.

Moreso, we do not look within ourselves for truth either. We don’t take the time to stop and meditate and think about the real us, the real self within, the child that still lives deep within us. If we take the time to listen to it, it will whisper and speak again.

So Robert in the play has been imprisoned for killing a child while driving drunk. Sure, that’s an interesting frame for a play, but Liam is an Imagining. We never see him and we never hear his voice, other than through Robert. Robert comes to us as a victimised, homophobic, sexist bully who has been thrown in the can for having a few pints. He is entrenched in his hatred of religion, fags and women, all of whom are bitches because his own girlfriend has left him during his trial. “Frailty, thy name is woman”.

However, within the space of a couple of scenes, and indeed often within single scenes, I have illuminated the contradictory nature of Robert. He emerges not as homophobic, but in fact quite the opposite. Not sexist, but a defender of women’s piss-weak gender roles as handed to them by religion and society, and his anti-religious fervour is based on quite thoughtful problems with indoctrination and the ill effects that can have on society.

His cellmate, Steve, is as one reviewer said, “remarkably zen”, yet here’s a man whose past haunts him and who fears the outside world. He too is “a walking contradiction, partly truth, partly fiction” Kris Kristofferson.

As the play progresses and children’s toys proliferate around the space, we see the children within Steve and Robert. We see the little boy who needs his mother, who needs to be forgiven, who needs love and acceptance. We see him them both play

cry, child like, at different moments and in different ways. As Robert slowly realises that his entrenched positions might be flawed, that his memory of that fateful day that he killed Liam might be invented as a self-protection mechanism, we see him look within. What better place to do that? A prison cell. Four years to think. Four years to take the time to see within. Four years to listen to the voice of the child within whisper and then speak. Time to take the time to go down those rabbit holes.

We choose what rabbit holes we go down. That’s all it is. That’s all I think it is anyway.

Imagining Liam. The Teachers Club Theatre, 36 Parnell Square West, Dublin 1. 7:30pm shows nightly till Saturday June 10.

“Imagining Liam” is the newest production by Company D Theatre.

Imagining Liam follows Robert as he is imprisoned for killing a child while driving under the influence, his journey to the truth and freedom within himself.

May 29-June 10, Monday to Saturday nights at 7:30pm in The Teachers Club, 36 Parnell Square West Dublin 1.

Preview May 29 – 10 Euro.

May 30 – June 10 – 15 Euro and 12 Euro Conc.

Bookings on E: davidarts@eircom,net. Ph. 087 759 6715.

Hi all. I’m having a day of doing nothing to try to recover a bit from this awful bug that has kicked the hell out of me and my wife over the past few days. I’d like to thank all those at Nurofen for their kind support and also Jameson’s.
So while I sit before a warm fire in a lovely B&B in Rush, soaking heat into my back and speaking as little as possible, again, I’d like to write something that may be of interest or help to some… a response to several conversations of late with actors.

It’s timely I think after last night’s Academy Awards for us to realize that the distance between us and “them” is not as great as we may think it is… or as great as Hollywood may want us to believe. There are no gods. Often it feels like and seems that we will never be on that red carpet. But those people are just like you and me. There, in the glamour of it all was a girl I saw on stage years back here in Dublin. I met her briefly so long ago and I don’t know her, but I wonder how many times she was told there’s no point trying to be an actor in white Ireland when you’re black. Acting opposite her is an Aussie I made a short film with years and years ago, the pair of us skulking around a set with barely a few bucks to our names.

You see, I’m not dropping names or claiming connections. I’m really not. Joel probably wouldn’t even remember me if he saw me and Ruth certainly wouldn’t. I’m trying to offer this to my students who come out of The Applied Art of Acting’s immersive and immensely creative environ to then have to face down the real world that all actors have to face. And that can be depressing and difficult. And it’s deeper than just being concerned about whether or not you will succeed. It can be crippling. It can shove you into a dark room. It can make you not want to leave it. It make it impossible to even come to the Studio to practice the thing you love the most in the world. But you have to come. You have to get up and go in. Otherwise, you’re lost.

What you have to do, at the core of it, is remember that wonderful full-time, creative playground you found in The Applied Art of Acting and make the WORLD your playground. This industry is now your creative playground. The course is over. You may be a new kid in the playground, but the playground belongs to you as much as it does to anyone else. There will be bullies in it who will tell you that you don’t belong, but go around them. They’re only doing that to defend their own corner of the sandpit. They’re just afraid. Go play with someone else.

I’m not saying you WILL make it big. For obvious reasons not all of us can. But what is a true and absolute and unalienable fact is that you CAN make it big. Not that you WILL but you CAN. The potential is there. The possibility is there. It was there for Joel and Ruth and they worked hard, probably against enormous odds and got there. Did they have terrible times of doubt and despair? I don’t know them well enough to know. But I bet they did. Did they let those times defeat them? Possibly yes… momentarily… but certainly not permanently.

Are there great shed loads of actors out there equally as good as Ruth and Joel who haven’t made it to those echelons? Yep. You betcha. And that’s the way it goes. But you see, even if you don’t get to that red carpet, guys, it’s just a red carpet covered by people who worried and struggled just like you. Most of them have had or probably still do have therapists on the payroll. Under those gowns and tuxedos are artists with skin and bone just like yours. All of them would have had to go the toilet during the ceremony at some stage and take a piss. Crude I know, but that’s the facts of it.

The last thing I ever want any of my students to think is that I’m filling them full of crap when I say they can make it. Because it’s not crap. Will they make it? That I don’t know and can’t control in any way other than to promote them at every opportunity I get to those connections I’m lucky enough to have made in this business. But I can’t promise success. Nobody can. And if they do, go play with someone else. Quickly!

I think about sitting on the steps outside the old Gaiety School with Mo Dunford, smoking a rollie and him asking me what I thought his chances would be. Should I give it a year and give it away? Should I give it 5 years? I suggested 10. 10 years later he looks like he’s home. But is there ever such as thing as that either?

We all have our stories. I was the ugly kid, the dumb kid and the untalented kid. I was the kid who was told he was an idiot and a fool to think he could have a career in the Arts. I was told this by many, many awful people and also by several people who actually cared about me and thought they were helping. I STILL have people throw blockages in the way of the things I think I can offer, and I probably always will have those in my life. Along the road, however, there was one teacher… just one… at the end of my high-school days, who pulled me aside and said, David, let’s talk about what you can bring to the world. Not what you WILL bring to the world, because no one knows if this will work at all, but what you potentially CAN.

All it takes is one voice to slice through all the other noise. And then it takes you. You, and your voice. The voice inside you that despite your depression and anxiety, quietly reminds you that you have something to offer. It’s that voice that draws you out of that dark room, to look around the corner to see if there’s anybody out there you can work a scene with, write a short film with, film a brilliant monologue with. It’s that voice that says, go on, knock on that casting director’s door again. They might tell you to fuck off, but hey at least you knocked. And then knock again in a few months time and let them tell you to fuck off again (and by the way I’ve never been told to fuck off by a casting director in my life. But I know that’s the fear.) It’s that voice that says, you might mess this screen-test up, but hey lets throw the kitchen sink at it anyways.

You see, you never know what’s around the corner, but you have to keep going round them. It might be a dead end, it might be a little job. It might be something that seems ordinary and turns out to be extraordinary. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidentally run into huge opportunities by exploring what seemed to be a kind of banal avenue. Just go there. What’s to lose?

Around that corner could be your dream job, or another thing you never imagined yourself doing, but found you loved. Hey, the love of your life could be around that corner! But you have to get out of bed and look.

Nobody gets anywhere alone. Very rarely anyway.

I try to be that teacher’s voice for you guys, because it is a true voice, not a voice of false encouragement and platitudes. I can try to help you cultivate your own voice, and during the Applied Art, of course that voice calls strongly! But once you’re out, you have to keep it lit. You have to keep it lit yourself, and you have to let it call out brightly inside you.

See you in the Studio.
Rock on.
D.

A note on casting today, again following some interesting discussions.

Every actor wants to know why they can’t get a gig and there’s always a very specific reason why you can’t and don’t and it all depends on the gig you’re trying to get.

Most of the time the reasons why you don’t get the gig are out of your hands. Some of the time, though, they’re not. Obviously if you give a wooden and contrived performance in the audition, you’ve shot yourself in the foot. Easy fix there is to get some actor training. But what if you give a perfectly believable performance and still don’t get the gig? If it happens often enough over a period of time, you’ll start to think you’re a bad actor, which, if you have trained and learned a solid technique, isn’t the case. Let’s look at the reasons why then.

First of all, let’s look at TV commercials and demystify “type”. Type is not a dirty word. It’s a method of relating very quickly to an audience. What the casting people and the client are looking for is type. Let’s take an example. I recently went for an ad with my 6 year old son. I was to play a Dad and he was… you guessed it, my son. So what the casting director and the client want to see is a “typical” father and son pairing. Why? No, it’s not because they lack imagination. They are thinking of their audience. They have a 90 second ad (if that), and in that 90 seconds they need a very large audience to relate to what’s happening in the ad. They need recognizable characters. As such they are looking for the average or typical mean of the father/son pairing. Now I’m not a typical Dad. I don’t tell stories by sitting on the bed with a book all that often. I kind of leap around all over the place and play it out. My boys aren’t typical boys. They cook meals and light fires at the age of 6. So me and my lad had to, as best we could, try to be as typical a father and son pairing as we could be. We didn’t get the ad (partly as well because the boy had to be 7) but we did our best.

So what’s typical? Typical is the middle ground where there is nothing extreme on either end. Not too big, not too small. Hair not too long, and not too short. It’s an image of a grouping of people, say, accountants or teenaged girls. It’s “middle” in your society. Ironically, and this is a bigger argument for another day, it is the media that partly dictates what typical is by presenting the typical notion of father and son, husband and wife, or whatever it may be, to the audience repeatedly. The more you see a type on the TV over and over again, the more you’ll envisage that type when someone asks you to “imagine a typical father and son”.

So if you went for an ad and didn’t get it, it might have been because you weren’t quite typical enough of that character, or someone else who went was more typical than you in the eyes of the casting director and the client. There’s not much you can do about that except to try to be as typical as you can. You can practice it if you like and some people become very good at being that “typical guy” or “typical girl” and get quite a lot of ads. If you look closely enough you will see the same heads pop up repeatedly over a period of say 5 years. Then those heads will be gone because they will have gotten too old for that type. Then they pop back up a few year later because they have become typical of a new age-range or type. While you’re in a transition phase of type, it’s very hard to get ads. It’s also hard to get ads that are casting to type when you just aren’t a typical looking person. That said, there will also be ads that will require anti-types, but its not typical… pardon the pun.

Have a think about what age you are, your size, your shape, your facial hair and ask yourself if someone was to look at you and name your type, what would they say? If they say you don’t seem to have a type, you probably won’t get too many TV ads, and that’s ok too because there’s other stuff out there and you’re just a different kind of actor. I’ll get to that in a minute. If they say, you look like a bank clerk or, you look like a young fella who you’d see in the pub watching the match, or you look like the girl next door, or you look like the secretary to the president, keep an eye out for those ads and apply to audition. Pick three types that others tell you suit you. Your agent, if you have one, should be sending you to all of those that suit your type. Remember that your types will change throughout your life. If you’re 25, you won’t be playing grandads of young children just yet. But one day you will. The actor’s career is as long as his or her life.

So then we move onto TV series. If you’re auditioning for a soap, once again more than likely its going to be about type. You’ll be asked to play the typical lawyer or typical cop or typical taxi driver or typical drug addict in your culture. Again, casting people will mostly be looking for the actor who looks most like the type they’re after. I found it very hard to get work in Australia because the typical Aussie is bronzed, blond and blue eyed. I have red hair. I’m never going to be cast as the “typical Aussie larakin” which was the description of about 80 percent of the roles out there for young men. However, I then moved to Ireland and walked into 4 TV commercials in a row because of my typical Irish looks, much to the consternation of the poor Irish guys around me at the time. For mass produced soap opera TV series, pretty much the same rules apply. Again, these shows are aimed at a mass audience of working-middle-class home viewers who prefer TV to theatre and even cinema. They’re looking for instant recognition and connection between the viewer and the character. They don’t want the audience to have to do any “work”. In a TV soap, the description will be very much to type, even down to the general bracketing of antagonist/protagonist, that is, goodie/baddie. But once you have the role and are working on it, you will find more complexity through your own characterization once you apply your technique to it. The character will also have objectives and feelings, which leads to a more satisfying characterization too. On the surface, however, the character will seem like a cliche. The skill in soap acting is to take a type of say, “ditzy blonde” or “local taxi driver” or “the town policeman” and do something interesting with it.

However, for something a little more clever and sophisticated, the characters will be more like real people rather than types. Types are not real. They are a general representation of what the median accepted image might be. Brian Cranston’s character in Breaking Bad was not a typical drug pusher cooking meth. He was a family man and school teacher with lung cancer who found a solution to his financial problems. He is not typical; that is, he is not general. He is specific. Look closely and so is every other character in the series. Characters in more sophisticated TV shows and film are usually “multi-layered”, meaning they have more than one facet to their personality. They’re the best cop, but with strange methods… and an alcohol problem… and a Desert Storm Vet… and gay (True Detective). They’re never one thing. It’s this kind of acting that requires highly skilled approaches to complex characterization. Why? Because type is absolutely useless in these scenarios. How can you play a “gay type” with all that other stuff going on? This of course is where highly advanced training is required too. It’s these kinds of roles that are usually filled by actors like Brian Cranston or Daniel Day-Lewis or Phillip Seymour-Hoffman or Eddie Redmayne, because their own type, that is the type that is them in life, is irrelevant to the character and the performance. They become a vehicle for the telling of someone else’s story and lend their body, voice and psychology to them.

And this is the trap or paradox of being an actor. Of course the actor who is an artist wants to play the complex roles because they are challenging and they put their skills to the test, but it is very difficult to convince anyone that you can transform into character unless you can somehow prove it to them, which is a Catch 22. In this era of showreels, 98 percent of the showreels that are sent to me to look at are basically that actor playing towards their type, trying to sound convincing and “showing emotion”, which is often general too. This might get you the odd casting for ads and TV soap, but it’s not going to help you get near those big, complex projects and series. You have to work and work and work and eventually someone in a position of power will get the sniff that you are the kind of actor that you are, but it’s very difficult to get there.

As such, when an actor of this calibre doesn’t get a gig that is cast to type, it’s because their very essence as an actor is constantly looking deeper than type. It’s their natural instinct to look for the other facets of character that make them real people rather than cliches. But sometimes we have to look at the project and the genre we are auditioning for and be realistic. If it’s an ad and they’re looking for the typical Dad of a young kid, you have to try to find that. It’s the job.

So when you’re going for an audition, make sure you look at the project and be honest about what it is. Get to know the casting director too. Going for an audition for an ad or a soap  is a totally different ball game to going for an audition for a complex role in a new major TV drama or movie. Read it carefully. And read between the lines. If it’s the former, be aware of what the type is an how you can serve that type and be recognizable as that to a mass audience. If it’s the latter you need to apply your technique. Tick the boxes. Explore all the layers and facets that are apparent in the character. Have the accent perfect. Be prepared to audition rather than “screen-test”. That is, be prepared to be the artist in the room who is contributing on an equal level with all the other artists in the room, including the casting director, who yes is an artist in their own right too.

If you don’t get the gig, consider that you might have just as easily fit the type they were looking for as well as 10 others, and it was a bit of bad luck you weren’t picked. As long as you do your homework and serve the story of the project, whether its an ad, a soap, a drama or a movie, you’ve done your audition well.

Remember also that there’s no such thing as a crap project. Just because you might prefer complex drama to soap doesn’t mean a thing. Millions of people are entertained by soap opera on TV sets all over the world every day and those shows employ thousands of actors (including me on two different occasions in two different countries). You’re an actor, so be prepared for the fact that there are many genres of entertainment out there. If you’d prefer not to work, fine. But if you want to work and hate action films for example, you’d better be pretty well off to turn down a couple of million bucks if you get cast in the next Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtle movie whatever madness is coming along next. It might not be rocket science acting wise, but it’s a business and if that business wants to employ you, be prepared to swallow your pride and do the job and do it well. Once you’ve banked your millions you can start being picky and choosy. I’m encouraging you here to drop your ego. The guy who sits at home and watches Home and Away is just as “right” as you going to the theatre and watching Othello, which to him might be equally as painful as Home and Away might be to you.

Read your audition carefully; the brief, the script and look at the angles of what it is and what it’s going to look like once it hits the screen.

Cheers. D.

 

 

A little something about the “feeling” of Acting. And no, it’s not about you “feeling it”. Mamet says in one of his books, “no one cares what you’re feeling”. Well, not quite true, but he does have a point in that an actor absorbed in what they are trying to feel is usually devoid of many other important things such as communication with other actors/characters and the audience.

What I’m talking about here is what it “feels like” when you’re acting. Should you “feel like” you’re getting it right? Should you “feel like” you’re floating? Should you “feel like” you’re another human being? Is any of this possible or necessary.

Technical training should get you to one place in particular though, and that is that it should feel easy. That’s often a very difficult thing for an untrained actor to understand. It used to feel like hard work. It should feel either physically or emotionally exhausting, but now it doesn’t. I’m not trying to remember lines, I’m not acting in fear of my audience or of a mistake. I’m fluid. The work has been done and I’m able to trust it, and the technique so fully that I no longer need to concern myself with anything other than the moment of performance, whether it be a piece of realism or something more abstract or physical in terms of genre. It’s sometimes difficult for an actor to let go of that need to feel like they’re working hard, because working hard WAS the definition of PERFORMING. Training should change your definition of performing and how performing feels to you.

“It doesn’t feel like I’m doing anything” is usually the best response I can get back once all the training has been done. The only one that’s better is, “it doesn’t matter how I’m feeling.” What’s important is that the training has changed the way you feel when acting and moved that feeling away from crisis and panic and hard work and into something much more fluid and open. We are seeking a state of being where creativity can potentially happen constantly, not just in oases or isolated “good” moments in the performance. And in that feeling, yes we often feel oddly like we are someone else, dealing with someone else’s problems and trying to get what someone else wants and that makes us think thoughts and feel sensations that don’t belong to us. That’s a normal result of character work. There’s nothing in it to be afraid of and it’s not magical. It’s an imaginative leap within you as an artist. 

If you’re working hard, you’re probably not working right. If you’re exhausted at the end of it, you probably don’t need to be and it certainly doesn’t mean you did a good job just because you’re pooped.

You’ve done a good job when the audience leaves that theatre wondering.

D.

#ArtsDeptNow

I thought it time to write something on this current debate about the devaluing of the Arts in Irish society by politicians and their political agendas. I’ve been most impressed by John O’Brien’s leading of this battle recently and perhaps should have contributed earlier and in more effective ways than social media sharing of his campaign #ArtsDeptNow. But I did feel the need to sit back on this and wait my turn.

Artists are made to feel devalued from a very early age. In school, both in Australia and here, your value is, for the most part, pitted on your sporting or academic ability. If you have a flare for something artistic, well that’s a great hobby you can pursue while you work behind the desk in the office as your “real” job. If you have a talent for sport, you can work towards a professional career! If you’re academic, hey you can do the same!

What people fail to realize and remember is that art and artistry is at the core of literally every other profession. The biggest money-spinners out there are IT and Gaming. At the core of both is art in the forms of graphic design, story-telling and design of cyber space. Every successful person in both of those fields started their development as small children, doing what? Drawing a picture, looking through art books, going to stage school, learning story telling and narrative structuring, and so on and so forth. As such, people tend to forget that at some point in the development of Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg was a moment when they looked in a book of art, sat in a theatre and saw a play as a kid or saw the way a piece of clay could be moulded into a shape. Their intuitive, innovative and imaginative thinking all stemmed from their engagement with art very early on in their development.

And now I’m in a space I don’t like to be in, because I’m defending the value of the Arts in relation to it’s potential to earn super millions and billions and employ thousands of people. Which is true. Look at how much revenue is being generated by TV and Film production in Ireland. Ireland is world leader in these fields now. However, there’s another value to the Arts that to me is much more important.

I’ve walked down many streets in many cities in many countries on this planet and I have never felt afraid on any street that was milling with people pouring in and out of theatres, Jazz clubs, Art Galleries, Art cafes and Cinemas. There’s no room on streets filled with people buzzing with the buzz of art, for baddies. Any street I’ve felt not so safe on in Paris, Berlin, New York, Sydney, Dublin, they’re the streets with no art, scourged by drug dealers and pimps. Those streets are quiet, afraid.

Secondly, every country I have run from have been those that devalued and even banned and outlawed art. These are the tyrannies whose democracies collapse and fall into the hands of dictators and despots. These are places of misery and doom.

Point is, Art has a direct influence on the vibrancy of a nation and her people.

Art is a rebel force. Art is hope. Art is healthy and alive. Art breathes with life and real living. Art is in the studios and the theatres, and art is on the street. Art is not just for artists. Art is for the audience. It’s for those who do find themselves behind the desk 9am to 5pm. Because when you’re done, art is waiting for you. Whole other avenues of thinking and feeling await you. We develop them. We provide them. We commit our imaginations and our abilities to them, not for ourselves, for you.

Now some of us were born to create that art and in various ways feed it. It’s us who are made to feel alien to society. We don’t work 9am to 5pm. A lot of us only come out at night. But we are real people and we make things. We imagine things that didn’t exist before and we don’t balk at the possibility of making those things real and tangible. We are Joyce and Beckett. Yes we are weird. We are Yeats and Caravaggio and Bacon and Kafka. In our time we are bizarre. After we die we are legends and referenced and quoted by politicians. Our works and even our scribblings are auctioned off to the rich and famous., yet in our time we are paupers. We are in your capital cities, in theatres and galleries, in dance and concert halls. And no matter how much you get caught up in the snags and stress of your existence, we are here for you to sit back and drink in. We are there when you’re ready to look into the substance of the life you have been thrown into without your consent. We feed your creativity. We inspire you to break the moulds of your current processes both at work and at home.

And we defy government. We’ve been doing that since Ancient Greece. We tell stories of societies and provide the pond of reflection of our communal direction. We are the heaving waves beneath everything that’s happening in your life.

Only we tend to be invisible; because we are the people who were told to “get a real job” by our career advisors and parents and friends. We are told by Government that we are hobbyists and idiots. We are made to feel like leaches when we ask for funding for our next step forward in the evolution of the consciousness of our work… which is your work… which is your inspiration and your children’s trampoline to creativity. We are the industry with one of the highest rates of suicide and depression and anxiety. It’s our profession that has the highest level of unemployment of any profession out there.

And yet we don’t have a choice. This thing finds us. We don’t find it. Who would choose a profession like that willingly?

What we ask for is acknowledgement and recognition for the intrinsic value we have, and have always had, to society. Yes, if the Arts are funded with an immense enthusiasm and good people in it are put in good positions, there’s going to be a significant financial reward to the State, reward that can be fed into homelessness, healthcare, you name it. But the social and community-based reward will be unquantifiable, as it has always been.

Give us a dedicated Arts Department. Let us do our work.

D.

 

So I’m supposed to be sitting here finishing of writing a screenplay and I get into a chat with a student. And she says this to me. “The best thing you did for me was to stop me wondering if I was good enough. I haven’t thought about that since. It was like I was in one place, and after the course I was up in the sky.”

Now that’s a lovely compliment to me and I’m not sharing it here to stroke my own ego. It just got me thinking, as these things always do, about the nature of the work and prompted a bit of a spiel.

As you know, I’ve studied the theory behind pretty much all actor training on this planet over the years and learned what the true objectives of each approach is. And there’s a little trap that I have to be very careful not to fall into, and that’s the trap of trying change the personality of a student. Great actor training is transformational, yes, but I often wonder if that’s the snare that Method sort of fell into. If the technique changes the person, fine. But the technique cannot be designed to change a person. The technique can only be designed to make the actor supremely proficient as an actor. Any other bi-product of personal change surely is incidental. Happily incidental, but incidental nevertheless.

Is attempting to change a person an exercise in playing God?

And yet again my mind brings me the other way. Should the work also keep a close eye on the personal development, or at least the development of the “personality” of the actor? After all, learning to be very good at what you do so that you don’t have to ask yourself if you are very good at what you do anymore, is liberating. It’s a gain in true confidence and a gain in artistic temperament. It liberates the actor from self-doubt and fears. And so SHOULD the technique be a guided personality change for the actor also, a bit like “life-coaching?”

Those of you who have shared a full time studio with me know that I teach through the same Asian based philosophies of Zen that are used in traditional martial arts teaching. These things are not all that prevalent in the work. They are briefly discussed when required, but in the process of the time there, the ability of the actor to let go of their self doubt can help the work move forward much more quickly. And so the technique removes self doubt, but if the actor too can remove self-doubt through a calm control of those emotional and mental cravings for validation, praise, promotion etc, the work can move forward even more quickly. So there are several exercises within the training that are designed purely to effect a control of the mind and emotions of the actor as a person. And I’m ok with that. I think.

At the end of the day, an acting teacher can’t change the personality of each actor in his/her group to somehow turn them all into the same person. That’s not what I’m suggesting. I mean there are still actors I’ve trained who are amazing who still contact me with self-doubts and worries that really are beneath their ability in my opinion. But that’s their personality. That meekness is a part of them and I don’t think it’s my business to beat that out of them in some way. But I do encourage them to try to rise above, and I give them tools to do that.

What is definitely true of all the successful actors I know is this: 1. They have ceased at a certain point questioning their ability as actors. This happens in the training phase. 2. They have stopped seeking praise, validation and promotion. 3. They have stopped competing with the world of the industry around them and begun to become truly creative. And sometimes that creativity takes the form of writing or directing rather than acting for a period of time too. In this way, they have shuffled off the labels that the industry places on them. They haven’t stopped promoting themselves. They have just changed the way they were doing it.

You see when the actor stops wondering if they’re good enough, stops seeking validation and stops competing with forces beyond his/her control, it leaves an awful lot more room. There’s just so much more thinking space and feeling space. There’s so much more creative space. And the irony of course is that once the actors I know created that space for themselves, along came boat-loads of validation, praise and promotion, which they really didn’t need or want anymore.

True success to me, that is, the success I want my students to enjoy, is the success of being contented. And that doesn’t mean apathetic either. Quite the opposite. I want them to have fun with their incredible ability. That’s the sky.

D.

Some advice for auditioning and screen-testing.
In my long listenings with actors over the years, many of them have said to me that there are two things that terrify them most about auditions and screen-tests. I’ve dug very hard into these two topics to developed ways forward that can help. So here’s a couple of things that might be of interest to ye actors.

Number 1 problem above all else is a feeling of inadequacy. Different actors cause themselves to feel inadequate in different ways before an audition. Some of those self-destructive, self-taught methods are conscious and some are subconscious. One method of screwing yourself up royally is to believe that you are in competition with the other actors going for the part.

* I’m competeing – leads too – how can I be better than the other actors going for the role – leads too – what if their choices are better than mine – or – what if they are better actors than me – leads too – how can I find out their choices and make sure mine are better (you can’t) – or – how can I find out how good they are so I can be better than them in this audition (you can’t) – leads to – I CAN’T KNOW THESE THINGS SO I”M SCREWED! This of course all leads too, I’m behind the 8-ball from the start. Everyone’s better than me and will have better choices so I might as well give up. I go in with a defeatist attitude and no matter how hard I try to hide it with my stupid smile and up-beat manner, these casting people can see right through me. They know I’m shit. And they know I know I’m shit. This downward spiral then leads to all sorts of nasty, self annihilating thoughts like, I’m not good-looking enough, I’m not special and so on and so forth. All of these awful thoughts leave no room for proper homework and technique application to happen. And as such it’s a self fulfilling prophecy because you have spent so much time on these thoughts and so little on actually applying your technique to the script that your audition probably will be shit.

* Solution. Understand you are not competing. The Casting Director hasn’t invited you and these other actors to audition so that they can race chickens and see who wins. They’re not sure yet what they’re looking for so they are hoping someone will make their ears prick up. They’re looking for someone who can bring the part to life, to make it come off the page and be something they can see and envisage as a palpable reality. So as long as you have done that in your homework, you have as much of a chance as anyone else. To think of yourself as competing with the next guy is akin to buying a lotto ticket and thinking you’re competing with everyone else who bought a lotto ticket. They’ve all done the same thing you have. Got the invitation, interpreted the script the way they think is best, learned the lines so they don’t have to think about them whatsoever, turned up on time and presented their work to the panel. After that, the decisions are out of your hands. If you get it, good work. If you don’t it wasn’t because you were worse than anyone else. Sometimes you see the end result of that project and you think, yeah, he or she did a good job. I can see why they got it. Other times you look at the final product and can’t understand what drew the panel to that actor, those ideas and that performance. But that’s life too.

(I should mention as a side, this is all assuming you have trained in a technique that opens up your imagination to interpreting the piece in an artistic and creative way.)

Another method of wrecking your audition is to imagine yourself as inferior to everyone in the room.

* Inferiority Complex. These casting people do this all day everyday – leads to – I’m not experienced enough – leads too – what if they hate me – leads to a shocking case of nerves – leads to a brain that can’t concentrate on the job at hand properly – leads to a mistake.

* Solution. Imagine yourself as going to visit your brother or sister in their house. This is a brother or sister who lives abroad and you only get to see them a few times a year perhaps. You walk in and although it’s not a familiar place, before you know it, you’re comfortable in THEIR place, even though you haven’t made it YOUR place. Casting Directors respect that. The casting director or director may have done this more than you have at this stage in your career, but every audition is different and new to them too because it is a NEW PROJECT. They’re trying to solve a puzzle of sorts and hoping that you might be a piece that fits. If you are, great, if you’re not, you’re not. But you were still welcome in their house and they are your peers, like a sibling. They want to work with peers, not scared little mice who feel they are looking up at giants. Nor do they want to spend their time with someone who’s arrogant and disrespectful, someone who puts their feet up on the table. But to be able to communicate like adult siblings who don’t see each other all that often and value the time when they do, is probably about where you want the relationship to be.

Side note: I have heard so many times that “nerves are a good thing”. I have caught myself agreeing with this, because it does make people feel better when they know that those shakes and shit are “good”. What I think is true is that being nervous means you care. But that’s about all. And you can care in other ways than being nervous. There really is absolutely no reason to be nervous in an audition or screen test. And the more of them you do, the more you realize that. Nerves are a wall of distraction. They stop you from truly listening and communicating with your “sibling”. Tell your nerves to piss off, in whatever way works for you. I tell myself to cop onto myself. That doesn’t work for everyone, but if it helps I actually do get a bit cross with myself and say to myself, “hey dickhead, you’re in Moiselle’s. You might not be back here again for half a year. Go in there and have a polite chat with your friends Frank and Nuala and show them what you’ve come up with. Then listen and change it if they want you to. It’s as simple as that. Then go outside and ask yourself, if you had the chance to do it again right now, would you want to? The answer should be no. You did exactly what you came here to do.”

Finally for today, and I’ve already mentioned it. Lines.

* Lines. I’ll get straight to the solution. You need to know the lines so well that you don’t have to ask yourself if you know your lines or not. If you’re trying to remember the lines and that is the mark of your achievement in that audition, you will not get that role. And if you do, it will be a bizarre accident or piece of good fortune. Trying to remember the lines from the beginning to the end means that there will be nothing natural about your performance because we do not try to remember our lines in life. Obviously. The thing remains stuck firmly to the page and stays there. It doesn’t come to life. So you need to find a method of learning lines that works for you. What I have certainly discovered at this stage is that the more you sit and just look at them, the less chance they have of going in effectively. So I’ve been developing new and exciting techniques to make those lines go in and be coated with a confidence that you don’t have to go looking for them. They serve you as opposed to you serving them. They’re ready for you without you wondering if they will be there when you need them.

If you’d like a day of trying out these new ideas, details are below for a Line Learning and Audition Technique Weekend on May 21 and 22. The thoughts here on auditioning and screen-testing will also be discussed and put into practice. And hopefully more.

There you go chaps. D.

I don’t know what I’m looking for when looking for actor training! What should I be doing?
Six different people have asked me this in the past 3 days. So here’s another longish blurb from the master of longish blurbs.
The first and most important answer is this: It depends on what you want.
You see there are many different kinds of acting and you need to ask yourself what you want to do. Then you need to ask the teacher or the school what they teach.
Are you one of those people who watch TV and think, that looks easy. I want to do that so I can make lots of money like that Brian Cranston guy or that Colin Farrell guy or that Kevin Spacey guy or that Rachel McAdams girl. If so, there are a load of places that teach what’s loosely called screen acting that can help you to achieve believability in the style of TV or Film Realism.
However, there’s an awful lot more to what Brian and Colin and Kevin and Rachel are doing other than being believable, and that’s what separates them from the masses of other actors in the world who can “be believable”. I’ll get to that in a minute.
There are other kinds of actors out there too. There are actors like Tom Hardy, Daniel Day-Lewis, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toni Collette, Cate Blanchet. These are actors who often work much more through a physicalisation of character and performance.
There’s many other kinds of acting. Many.
Either way, most, if not all of the actors you are watching on the screen or on the stage are doing much more than “being believable”. In fact a lot of the time the question of believability doesn’t even come into the equation or the preparation. It just seems like that’s all they’re doing, because they know that the complex homework and technical work that has been done to achieve that performance has to be invisible to the audience. Otherwise it can break the effectiveness of the story-telling if we can see the actor’s process. And even that is not always the case, depending on the genre or style of the performance.
So the big paradox of all this is that a lot of actors come to be thinking that the ultimate achievement of actor training is believability, when in fact it’s the most basic element of all of it and doesn’t make you an exceptional actor at all, but just lumps you into that huge ocean of other believable actors. Yes, it has to be done. In The Applied Art of Acting we knock it over in the first week. You have to learn how to be believable, but that’s not what’s happening in the acting you’re watching when you watch great actors. That’s just a kind of bi-product of a whole lot of other work that’s being put in.
Ok, so winding back a bit. If you think of all the actors I’ve just listed here and you think of anything you have seen them do, they have CHANGED themselves in order to do what they are doing. There’s a committed set of very specific changes going on. These changes happen in several different ways depending on the project and the character. Again for the sake of ease lets lump these into three categories: psychological, physical, vocal.
The fact is you are never your character. Your character has had a whole other life building up to their current life. They have a different history, probably come from a different culture and have different attitudes and opinions and appetites and all manner of things that make them psychologically different to you. They have another personality altogether as a result of all these psychological peculiarities and details. All of these kinds of details about your own life make you you. All these details about the character’s life makes them them. So even if you don’t change your physical of vocal pattern at all, you will always have some shift to make to actually approach the world from the character’s point of view other than your own. Otherwise it’s just you, saying the lines believably, without any sense of character. Your friends can give you the little golf clap of believability, but that’s all. Most actors find that as soon as they let a set of given circumstances and a basic objective work on them, they begin to feel sensations of doing things and saying things from someone else’s perspective. It’s almost unavoidable. So even if Colin looks like he’s just being Colin or Kevin looks like he’s just being Kevin, there’s a whole lot of other stuff that’s going on within them during that performance that is not to do with them, but to do with another life called the character. Even if they are projecting some part of their own personality onto the work, they are still taking that part and enhancing it to create this new life.
Now some situations require a physical change also, or at least a physical commitment to the character. Again, they are not you. They have a body of their own. It may move differently to yours. Take any physical transformation performance. Tom Hardy in Stuart: A Life Backwards. Daniel Day-Lewis in… just about anything he’s ever done. Eddie Redmayne in most of his most recent stuff. Cate Blanchet in… pretty much everything too.
Vocally, your character has a quality to its voice. It makes a unique sound that probably has its own accent. Obvious examples, Heath’s Joker, Cate in Veronica Guerin, Slingblade. I could go on and on, but you see what I mean. In Ireland, so much stuff is international you’d better be ready to depart from that Irish accent because the next thing you are auditioning for could require Scandinavian or any variety of English or American dialect. And no, often you won’t have a dialect coach on set. You certainly won’t have one before the audition unless you pay someone to help you out.
So let’s not ramble too much. Again you need to ask what you want and then you need to go to the school or teacher you’re thinking of committing your time and money too and ask them what they teach and what you will come away with at the end. If you are aiming to just be believable, that’s fine and yes, necessary. If you are looking to be able to do what those actors you are watching on Netflix or whatever are doing, then you need to think about a place that teaches you a technique that includes physical, vocal and psychological nuanced approaches to acting.
When you are watching those great actors up there on the screen or the stage, you may walk away thinking how incredibly believable they were and that’s what excited you about the performance. But in fact it wasn’t. What excited you was the fact that you were told a story about a living character so effectively that you weren’t thinking about the acting at all.
Obviously I teach my own courses, but I’ve also taught for many other places and I’m not mentioning any by name because obviously I don’t want to be seen to be playing favourites. But even good Screen Acting places bring me in to teach all manner of technical approaches, even some that seem to be, from a layman’s perspective, unrelated to screen training, like classical text for example. Of course this makes perfect sense. With so much epic stuff like Vikings and Game of Thrones out there now, that sense of power and presence that classical text lends you is really important to have. Good screen training isn’t just about filming yourself, looking at the result and wondering if it’s good or not. Screen training is about working out the best way of conveying an immense story of a character and its immense life through the eye of a needle.
Enjoy the sun kids.
D.
PS. If you haven’t seen Stuart… It’s really very good.