Why do so many actors take the short cut to their dream? Because the industry provides ease of access to success and fame for producing the lowest common denominator of artistic expression. Plumbers and A/C repairmen study longer than most actors who take a hodgepodge of repetitive audition technique classes or call back, or, cold reading classes while NEVER seeming to complete any proven acting process. The weekend workshop has become the substitute for intensive study. Especially in the regional markets of America where future actors are so far on the outside of the 'biz looking into the crystal ball of Hollywood.
Tweaking a cold read, massaging a line reading, sculpting a look or a cough or a rolled eye is not acting nor is it teaching. It's like playing the keys on a piano with no strings. Something is happening but it has no voice, no power. You can't coach what isn't deeply understood, you can't tweak what isn't really there.
I think the operative word here is 'coach' rather than teacher. A 'coach' on the whole advises an actor on a role and thus prepares them to perform, while a teacher investigates behavior and thus prepares them to create. Big difference 'tween creating and performing. 'per': to, as in, relationship to, and 'form': shape. Coaching actors to perform develops the shape of something akin to at best, acting, and masquerading at worst, life. Teaching actors to create something unique reveals humanity. The great studios and grad programs start with years of technique/investigation of behavior FIRST often delaying performance until the final year of attendance, while so many commercial studios start with cold readings, audition technique, camera technique right out of the gate. This dichotomy in actor development is at the heart of the two worlds we have in our creative expression: Art vs Biz.
The industry reinforces this through its endless regurgitation of the same of old show updated for a new and unquestioning audience. Learn the tricks of playing cool, sultry, hot, conflicted, muss up your hair enough times in a scene and enough people will believe you have an inner life when in reality it's a series of assumed mannerisms posing as behavior.
So why do actors like Streep, Norton, Turturro and Giamatti take the time and make the effort to study intensively for years (all Yale School of Drama) and create such powerful characters in their careers? Because they seek something higher, deeper, wider, richer than the average person on the couch who says one day as they watch their favorite copy of a copy of a copy of a TV show, "I can to that…Act!" And there are endless and ever renewing options for them to do so every day, in every corner of our industry. But there are no shortcuts, there are no tricks without being artificial and superficial. Lucky for them, audiences don't care.
Having studied with legendary Broadway actress/Master Teacher Uta Hagen and then having the privilege to assoc. dir. her in an off-Broadway premiere, I know the depth of investigation and the height of expression that artists seek to not only satisfy their high standards of personal creative expression but to challenge their audience, to enlighten, to enflame, to engage, to entertain them. To transport them. I seek this in my work, in each class, in every film I direct. I seek this in our Florida acting community if we are to compete with the other burgeoning regional markets. I teach in LA and NY and my students there
speak of challenging competition with actors of great skill and profound creativity. They know each day they must grow, must move forward. You advance by looking back (at the artists of the past), you rise by going deeper (into human behavior). That is if your goal is Art.
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