Acting Lesson #1

Smart Acting I: What's acting? What's talent? Why don't I have it?

Do you know a very bad liar? Someone so bad at lying you might almost believe that they had never told a lie in their entire life? Is there anyone you know about whom you would find it possible to  believe that he or she never in his or her life told one single, even very tiny lie?

I don’t know anyone like that. In some way, whether it’s to gain a supposed advantage, save ourselves a little trouble or to soothe someone else’s way into a hard stretch of road, every human on the planet finds occasions and figures how to obscure the truth to different degrees for different purposes.

Perched prettily astride this pile of prevarications is. . .Us! Theatre. We are not only at the top of the hill of liars, we are the art form of lying. We train to be able to stand in front of total strangers and say things which are obviously untrue with all the heart and force of truth we can muster from within. It is as manipulative and even more brazen than any other lying. It’s simply agreeable. At least most of the time.

If you can lie, you can act. Since everyone can lie, everyone can act. Why does it seem to come more easily to some than others? That’s simple. It’s talent.

Talent? Is that something like The Force? Prevaricational midichlorians, strong in some but not with others? A microscopic blood particle found plentifully in the Jedi actors?  What in the name of Aunt Ida’s goiters is talent and of what use is it to anyone to stick the term onto good actors like a packing label?

I’m glad you asked.

Talent is the focused interest in doing a thing which makes it hard to stop doing. I have a talent for writing. How do I know? I can’t stop doing it and people who read what I write often tell me I’m good at it. By this time, I believe it.

My daughter has musical talent. How did I find out?

When she was 15 months old, she woke up in a great fright and cried out. “Aaaaiee! Aaaaiee. . !” I woke with a start, leapt from my bed and raced somewhere which turned out to be her room.

But by the time I got to her door, I was conscious. But, more significantly, she had stretched out the tones and was singing, “Ahhhhhh-eeeeeeeeeee, ahhhhhhhhhhhh-eeeeeeeeeeeee” in the  pitches she’d been crying.

Then she varied the pitches. I was dumbfounded. Singing the syllables, she walked up and down a tri-tone scale. She’d taken terror and, in the little time it took an adrenaline-rushed dad to tear from his bed to her door, had turned it into song. She had made art from an excess of emotion. I felt gratefully humbled to have witnessed it and more so to have recognized it.

As she grew, I heard her sing hour after hour when she was alone or just sitting around. She listened to singers and copied them. It was one of the things she did like riding a bike and homework. She sang. She hummed. She sang with the radio. She sang when she washed her hands. She sang with TV theme songs.

When she was in her teen years, I often heard people remark about her talent as if her voice had sprung up full blown out of nowhere. I tell you now, anyone who’d spent the amount of time she did focused on this one thing would show an ‘inexplicable’ talent for it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m prouder of my daughter than you can imagine. She is an astonishing performer. If I were strong enough to direct, I’d cast her in anything and dare anyone to point her out without a program. She is very, very talented.

The point is, so are you.

Talent has never been a matter of ability. We all have  ability in about equal measure. Talent is simply a matter of interest in and the decision to focus on a specific activity, usually a creative one. The young one with every blank surface of every notebook and school bag covered in doodles and designs has spent many hours in art training at no one’s behest but her own. That’s talent.

If you have the kind of interest which keeps your mind coming back to a creative task on its own, you have talent. If you do not think you have this kind of interest but would like to, I’m happy to report it is already yours. It is your free gift simply for taking this test drive in human form. It may be a bit gummed up and tarred over. But it can be cleaned and shined and work like new.

Your talent is the Golden Buddha.

A village was famous for it’s glorious, golden Buddha. But the land came upon hard times, and the people were terrified that thugs would steal it. So they covered it in thick plaster painted to look like an ordinary Buddha. And so the prized statue remained safe.

Years passed, and no one remained who remembered the gold under the plaster. The statue became valued as a sacred heirloom in its own right. When the plaster began to crack, expert restoration teams were called in. Only then was the treasure underneath discovered.

You had the kind of interest which focuses in that way. You had it about a lot of things. You brought it out naturally and easily. And you were heavily discouraged from following it in the most well-intentioned of ways by the most loving people. Also in some crappy ways by some jerks.

But the point is, the discouragement crossed relationship lines and infused them all from a very early age. Whatever anyone was telling you about anything else, they were probably also telling you that you were insignificant and without talent. The discouragement is carved into our culture as a set of social norms and appropriate behaviors, creating a dead current whose purpose is to trap and dampen creative energy. As a result of the dead weight of the negative message, you hid your talent, perhaps even from yourself.

I’m not supposed to burst into song in the mall parking lot. Why?  People will think I’m crazy. Why? Because I’m happy? Our culture routinely tells us it is inappropriate to be extremely happy in many places. If we’re too happy, we’re obviously high on an illegal. Or illegally high on a legal. Or off our rockers. Otherwise, nobody gets that happy in a mall parking lot.

But all the reasons expertise provides to explain why unmitigated joy is not appropriate in public eventually distill into some version of the thought because it’s going to make someone grumpy.

At no time is it ever seriously proposed that if we all sang in public there would be global catastrophe. All it would do is make some folks complain about the joys. At that point, a sane society would tell the grumps to lighten up. Instead, we tell the happy people, usually young ones, to get a little sadder.

It wasn’t easy to convince you there was no talent in your genes. Even the most severely locked down amongst us occasionally looks at something hanging in a museum and grumbles, I don’t know what all the damn fuss is about. I could do better than that. . .Talent can be smothered but it can never be killed. As long as you draw breath, you have talent, and it wants to surface.

If you have an interest in acting, you probably have a role you’d like to play very much. Admit it. You can see it in your head. You can feel it. You can hear it. You just can’t make it come alive through your body the way it’s supposed to.

That’s talent. You have the vision. You can see what wants to be done. Don’t worry about the roles you can’t see yet. That is simply a matter of practice. In fact, all the rest is practice, practice, practice. And practice, like love, ladies and gentlemen, is a matter of constantly making and remaking the decision to have it in your life.  

There’s the path to your talent. Put in the hours. Make faces in a mirror. Record yourself moving and change what you see. Your talent will project clearly even to the most cynical of others once you have put in the time.  You may use this information with great confidence. And if it feels like you can’t, don’t worry.

There’s a lot more. . .