Be nice to people on the way up - you may need them on the way down

The Words of Wisdom this week are an old theatre saying: Be nice to people on the way up – you may need them on the way down. That speaks for itself really. People in this business have some success – often a very small amount of success – and they can quickly become arrogant, conceited and all too full of themselves. Don’t let it happen to you, when you become successful. Be nice to people on the way up – you may need them on the way down.

Watch people

Let’s start with the Words of Wisdom. We do a lot of things on autopilot. It’s the way our busy brains free up capacity for thinking and facing fresh challenges. Tasks we perform a lot become standardised routines: we don’t bother our conscious mind with them and we do them a similar way every time. This is known as habit.
The only thing wrong with this is that the way we do things becomes more and more stereotyped and that is one thing that, as an actor, we want to avoid. In our everyday lives the way we eat, drink, show agreement or disagreement, walk, smile, nod, kiss, hug, frown or hit a forehand drive is a matter of habit that has developed over many years: that’s the way we do things.
But the characters we play may need to have a different way of doing some of these things. We want to depict different people who may do things in a different way. In order to do this we need to expand our behavioural vocabulary, so we watch people and learn from them. Watch people in the street, in a pub, on a beach, on the bus, at Starbucks, in a shop, at a wedding, visiting in hospital, going to church, laughing, crying, working, playing. Watch people.

Visualise - Part 1

Now for the Words of Wisdom:

Visualise. This is slightly mysterious and comes in two parts: this week the first part and next week the second. When you are acting or speaking in public and say anything which has an image, visualise that image in your own mind. In a subtle way this will enrich what you are saying and transmit itself to the listener. If you are filming and talking to space, or a stand-in, visualise the character you are talking to as strongly as you can. If you are on location or in a studio visualise your whole surroundings as you want the audience to imagine them, so, for example, without the crew or their equipment. Do the same if you are on stage: visualise your entire surroundings.

This is particularly valuable if you are presenting an audition piece. If there are supposed to be other characters present position them around you as they would be if they were really there and make sure you are visualising them as vividly as possible. Visualise people and places. Visualise.