Don't dissect the skylark to see the source of its song

The Words of Wisdom this week are a little strange, but bear with me. They are ‘Don’t dissect the skylark to see the source of its song.’ Where I am coming from, with this, is that we can never fully understand ourselves or each other. We can never predict anyone else’s actions with complete certainty, nor even our own. Many things in the world are amenable to analysis but nothing can be totally analysed. There is always a degree of uncertainty. That is, in fact, a scientific fact.

Remember that I am a scientist by training, and believe that knowledge comes from experience, but even so there are limits to how much we can cut things up and reduce them before we change their nature. A skylark is a living creature and it only sings while it is alive. Cut it up and it will die. It is, you see, more than the sum of the atoms of which it is composed.

This same principle applies to acting, particularly comedy. If you make people laugh, or cry, you may find it impossible to understand exactly why you are having such a strong effect on them. If you try too hard to work out why you are getting such results you may be in danger of destroying the thing that makes it work. Comedians and comics who get all serious and try to theorise about what they do suddenly cease to be funny. You may be able to think of a few names of them.

Sometimes it’s best to simply accept that you do things that give an audience pleasure and not to worry about how it is happening. Don’t dissect the skylark to see the source of its song.

Enhance your Watchability

The secrets of making people like looking at you are encapsulated in our Words of Wisdom this week: Enhance your Watchability. What are the factors that give some people that elusive star quality? Dazzling good looks are certainly a help, if you are lucky enough to have them, but plenty of big stars are far from being beautiful or handsome, and some are what is most kindly described as ‘interesting.’ So why are they good to look at? Inner confidence is a big factor and this you can work on by congratulating yourself and remembering every little thing you achieve, however small, and marking up every little thing you learn today that you didn’t know yesterday. That will help and you will find that self confidence is cumulative. But, technically, what can you do to make people want to watch you? How can you acquire a little of that star quality stardust pzazz?
Here are five things that help. 1. Be still. Avoid fidgety movements, particularly moving your hands to your face. These little displacement activities are signs that you are submitting to stress and displaying them reduces your dominance, so be still. 2. Use strong gaze. Our eyes give out our most powerful non verbal signals. Hold gaze a little longer than you normally do and you will feel a mix of emotions. You will feel daring and powerful but exposed. The person you’re looking at and the third parties in the audience will read these emotions. You will become a little bit dangerous. Drop your gaze and you will turn them off. You will feel safe, but dull. 3. Raise your voice and add presence to it. Project your voice to indicate the importance of what you are saying. Don’t swallow your words as if they were insignificant. Remember that your voice is a musical instrument, not only when you are singing but also when you are speaking. Get accustomed to using a range of tone, rhythm, pitch and emphasis. It will become automatic to add expression to what you are saying. It won’t seem stagy or artificial. 4. Display physical energy. If your body is physically energised this transmits to an audience, even when you are stationary. Physical energy adds excitement, so make all your movements decisive and purposeful. Make your head movements definite and strong. 5. This is a rather mysterious one, but it works. Think of a wonderful secret you might have. Imagine you have it. Hold this wonderful inner secret and you will look amazing. Strange but true. Practice these five things and you may be sure you will … Enhance your Watchability.

Learn your lines by living them

The Words of Wisdom this week are Learn your lines by living them. All actors have to learn lines, the bigger the part the more lines there are to learn, and few things cause more anxiety than the fear of 'drying' - forgetting what you have to say next.

How do we learn and how do we remember? One thing we know is that we learn from repetition. If we repeat a skill again and again we get better at it, particularly if we make the repetition progressive, that is, if we start with easy things and step by step move on to harder ones. But how do we apply this to learning and remembering lines of dialogue? Well, there are different aspects of memory involved.

First of all there is factual memory. This is the system we have that remembers phone numbers or names. Recall is usually precise and quick, or else not there at all. It can be helped by associations of the kind used by memory experts, for example, if someone is called Donald, imagining them as Donald Duck will help you to remember their name. This kind of memory is of slight use when learning a script, but not much.

Then there is emotional memory. This is slightly more useful. When acting, if we have to show emotions of fear, say, or anger, it is helpful to produce these feelings inside ourselves. It can be helpful to remember a time we really felt that emotion. This gives us a stream of feeling to work on and experience the ebb and flow of a script. This is important but emotional memory cannot always be conjured up reliably and it is not as quick to access as factual memory.

Most important of all is procedural memory. This is the system by which we learn to walk, or cycle, or hit a tennis ball, by developing an automatic and unconscious routine so that we can do them without conscious thought. In order to use this type of memory, work through the words, associating them with your body language, your moves and what you are doing, how you look at the other characters and what they do, so you are remembering the play and your part in it as a whole. You will find that the words will just fit in with everything else and you will remember them far better. You don't have to have the rest of the cast there with you for this, because you can use visualisation, and even if the script is cut or altered you will find you can edit your memory of it and produce the new version.

Try this method, accessing procedural memory, the next time you have a script to learn. Learn your lines by living them.

Every setback is an opportunity

If you are involved in the arts, and particularly if you are an actor, your life will be full of setbacks. You are in an overcrowded profession; there are a lot of people who are rather like you who want to do what you do; the statistics are against you.

Of course, you will study, train and prepare yourself just as thoroughly as you can, but, if you are called to read for a part, you will probably be one of several, or many, people competing for it and you may not be chosen.

This will not necessarily be your fault. A lot of casting depends on physical appearance, the way you speak, height, weight, hair colour, everything in your persona that contributes to your type. If you are inexpreienced you may find yourself at a disadvantage because casters tend to play safe with someone with more of a track record than you have. So the first thing to do is to recognise that your failing to get the part may not be your fault. Don't punish yourself unnecessarily.

Now comes the next stage. Every setback is an opportunity. Use your annoyance at not having got the part to energise yourself. Review the audition: was there anything you could have done differently, or better? Could you have prepared better? You have now made a new contact. They will remember you. How might you be able to revive that contact in the future? What can you study to develop your knowledge and capabilities? How can you get yourself noticed and make yourself heard?

You are running a one person business, so you must be businesslike. You must develop yourself and promote yourself. Life is full of setbacks, but every setback is an opportunity.

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.

Acting is a proper job

It is said that professionals are those who can do it when they don’t feel like it, while amateurs are those who can’t do it even when they do feel like it. Without necessarily agreeing with this, I do believe that everything in my classes should be aimed towards achieving the highest professional standard. I am aware that not everyone who comes is an actor or aiming to be one, but there is no substitute for doing something as well as you possibly can. So today’s Words of Wisdom are Acting is a proper job. Like sport, the arts are something which a lot of people love doing and many people aspire to. I’ve been involved in one or both for practically all my life and it has all been immensely rewarding. Because so many people want to do things in the arts, or sport, they are very hard to succeed at. But are such enjoyable pursuits somehow childish? Are they, maybe, not a proper job, like those done by the serious faced people one sees on the tube trains, going to work in an office or factory? The answer is yes. Entertaining people brings joy and meaning into many people’s lives. It is a valuable endeavour and no-one should feel guilty for being paid for doing something they love.

On the other hand, no-one has a right to be employed as an actor, however hard they may have trained. One sometimes hears actors say that they have a right to follow their chosen profession. No such right exists. There are plenty of people who have trained as doctors, accountants, architects or lawyers who cannot find a job in those callings. It’s a competitive and unfair world and luck and contacts count for a lot. So actors have very little power over their destiny: they are in an overcrowded and insecure field, with no career structure, and they take a gamble with their lives. All they can do is work, study and train hard, gain experience and keep their professional friendships in good repair. And acting is a proper job.

Practice sight reading

Today’s Words of Wisdom are Practice sight reading. Sight reading is a very difficult skill to master: it’s something many people are nervous about and failures at sight reading seem to be particularly humiliating. It’s a very important skill for actors, as at auditions you often have to read (even if rarely to sight read, because you normally have an opportunity for preparation.) It’s a normal human reaction to avoid things that are difficult, but you should always face danger (those are words of wisdom of their own) and because sight reading is important and difficult you should practice it continually.

It is remarkable that we can do it at all. Think what happens in your brain when you turn the image of some black squiggles on paper into spoken words with meaning and context, subtlety and humour, all in a fraction of a second. So practice.

Choose all different kinds of material: scripts, novels, newspapers, magazines, children’s stories if there are children you can read to. Find things that you are interested in and enjoy. Slow down: the most common mistake is to go too fast. Visualise anything that leads to or describes an image and place that image in your field of view: this will make your delivery more vivid. Engage your emotions, feel inside whatever the material leads you to feel: your emotional involvement will transmit to the audience, but it needs to come from the inside, if it’s just put on the outside like a cosmetic it will appear false. If you are reading a script or a novel or a story read all the parts with a different voice for each one and, probably, a more neutral delivery for the narrator or stage directions. Experiment and adjust stresses and inflexions.

Gradually your enjoyment will grow and your reading will improve. Practice sight reading.