Keep it believable

This week’s Words of Wisdom are very simple. At least, they sound very simple, though they may not always be so simple to carry out. Keep it Believable. Acting is an odd mixture of natural and unnatural. You want the audience to feel as if they are looking at reality and the audience want to feel that too. It’s called the ‘suspension of disbelief.’ Sometimes, to achieve the illusion, you have to cheat the angles, or speed up or slow down the action, or do a variety of things which originate in the craft of acting technique. Despite that, you need, with part of your mind, to believe that what you are doing is a form of reality. And if you believe in it there is a good chance that the audience will believe in it too. But if you don’t believe in what you are doing then the audience will see through you and they will no longer find you believable. You may win some easy battles and get some cheap laughs, but you will have lost the war and, ultimately, the audience will feel cheated. So Keep it Believable.