Humanities and Everyday Life
Simple Acting Skills that Can Change Your Life: Part 2
Actors have many skillsets that can be of use to the layperson. One of these is resilience, the ability to endure difficult times and to inculcate hardship into one's life journey. Unlike most professionals, the majority of career actors spend a lifetime seeking employment. Actors mostly work on a project-by-project basis, and—except in relatively few cases when actors have recurring roles on long-running television shows or on film sequels—the contracts are usually short-term. Consequently, the actor’s path toward occupational stability is often rife with uncertainty and rejection. In order for an actor to endure and succeed career-wise, he or she must have patience, grit, and hope—all qualities that are necessary for success in other vocations.
The journey toward accomplishment can be long and torturous for the majority of actors. In the United States, most aspiring actors seeking lucrative careers in film, television, and theatre often gravitate toward major cities—such as Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago—to find work. Some eschew profitable employment in other fields, preferring to work as restaurant servers, bartenders, security guards, valets, etc.—low-paying part-time jobs with flexible schedules that allow them to pursue the perpetuity of auditions that seldom lead anywhere. The actor must learn to “hang in there” despite all odds, always hoping that the perfect role and a big break are just around the corner. Patience, tenacity, and optimism are fundamental assets in the professional actor’s toolbox.
A Lesson in Humility from Justin Timberlake
Although fame and humility might seem antithetical at first glance, the two can be ideal partners. This is exemplified by the way famous people interact with the general public. This activity often, by its very nature, requires a certain level of tact and humbleness. While working as a manager at the ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood some time ago, I was occasionally privy to interactions between A-list artists (actors, filmmakers, musicians, writers, etc.) and their admirers during events such as premieres, special screenings, and post-screening question-and-answer sessions. On one such occasion, I witnessed Justin Timberlake straddle the line between fame and humility impeccably, proving that, rather than being dichotomous, success and modesty can indeed be symbiotic.
It was the winter of 2013, and Timberlake’s movie “Inside Llewyn Davis”—directed by the Coen Brothers—was playing at the ArcLight Hollywood. Timberlake and his co-stars, Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan, were on hand for a question-and-answer event at the end of a sold-out screening. Although all three actors were munificent in their engagement with the guests, Timberlake in particular had a magnetic, boyish ebullience. He talked passionately about his collaboration with the Coens—praising their clarity of vision and ingenuity—cracked self-deprecating jokes about his insecurity as an actor, and burst into song intermittently to thunderous applause. He was generous, uninhibited, and eloquent.
Simple Acting Skills that Can Change Your Life: Part 1
The professional actor’s toolkit contains many resources that can be helpful to everyone. One of these is rehearsals—practicing before actually giving a performance. Just as the rehearsal process facilitates an actor’s incarnation of a character and enhances the actor’s acquaintance with all components of a creative work, rehearsals can do the same, and perhaps even more, for the layperson.
A famous Shakespeare quotation comes to mind: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.” How do the Bard’s words manifest themselves in everyday life? At one point or another almost everyone has taken part in an activity that is completely “put on.” Political gatherings, rallies, religious ceremonies, weddings, family get-togethers, group meetings, birthday parties, and even dates are often staged and rehearsed, complete with a breakdown of roles, speeches, exact duration of scenes, specific entrances and exits, etc. Shakespeare’s words gain even more significance when people take a closer look at their individual lives. On a daily basis, most people assume different roles as they move from one scene to the next. A restaurant manager switches uniforms, becomes a pharmacist, then returns home to be a mother; a lawyer serves simultaneously as a university professor, the chairman of the board of a non profit, and the neighborhood football coach, etc. Thus, people transition seamlessly from one role to the next.
Wise Words from the King
During a question and answer session headlined by writers Stephen King and Lee Child at Sanders Theatre recently, King made a few casual—albeit illuminating—comments about his writing process. Asked by an audience member how he knows whether the plot of a story should be linear or nonlinear, King responded that he lets his stories determine how they want to be told. “The story asks you to tell it in a certain way,” he said. “We are stenographers. The story is being told to us and we write it down.” What did Stephen King, one of the world’s most preeminent writers, mean by this? Was he insinuating that his stories write themselves, and that all he does is wield the pen? Not exactly. King was accentuating the pertinence of a writer’s subservience to the writing and stressing that the process of writing must be organic in order for the end product to be unique, engaging, and enduring.
In fact, King was reiterating a strategy long professed by other revered writers, including Christopher Scanlan and Peter Elbow. In his article “Do the Writing Only You Can Do,” Scanlan corroborates King’s point, arguing that “writers need to let the story speak if they are going to produce stories that break barriers for themselves and their readers.” According to Scanlan, writing speaks and the writer must listen. Likewise, in his book “Writing Without Teachers,” Elbow explains, “You are trying to let the words, thoughts, feelings, and perceptions try to find some of their own order, logic, coherence. You’re trying to get your material to do some of the steering instead of doing it all yourself.” Like King and Scanlan, Elbow emphasizes the importance of the morphability of good writing. Elbow goes on to describe the “chaos and disorientation” that is an integral part of producing exceptional written work. He elaborates upon what he calls “cooking,” the process of “getting words to interact,” and “growing,“ which he defines as “getting words to evolve through stages.” The writer’s ultimate goal, Elbow posits, is to let his work naturally find “a center of gravity.”