Serving Your Talent

Most acting classes in Los Angeles encourage you to do the same thing, i.e., they encourage you to drop into a child-like state where you are vulnerable, spontaneous, and infinitely teachable. What these acting schools don’t always do is treat you with unconditional acceptance, offering you gentle guidance once you’re there.

The choice any acting school ultimately makes is to either superimpose upon you a reality that is consistent with the school’s worldview and understanding of the acting process, or to allow you to find your own way while defining creative parameters.

Don’t get me wrong. You can’t just run around like a chicken with its head cut off because now you’re in acting class, but you can’t become a slave to acting technique either. Any actor who trades her sense of play for a correct way of acting has been bamboozled into a pattern of making art that only serves the institution that she serves. And schools, like all institutions, have as their primary directive to keep their doors open, which means to keep you there as long as possible.

So my advice is: go to acting school to serve your talent. If you find yourself obsessed with acting correctly for whatever famous acting teacher, remember that “doing it right” isn’t attractive to anyone. We don’t go to the movies to see correct acting technique. We go to be entertained, moved, and told a story by the characters in the story – characters who only shine because you suffuse them with your spirit, which is flawed, joyous, and unique.