45 things I learned pursuing a BFA Acting degree.
Comparison is the thief of joy. By wishing you are more like your colleagues, by watching their successes and dwelling on your own failures, you are doing nothing to better yourself.
Vulnerability is necessary. It’s scary. You’re going to have to take a leap. But it’ll be worth it.
Failing an endeavor does not make you a failure. “Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” -Samuel Beckett
You are only as good as you dare to be bad.
Bloom where you are planted.
Read more plays, listen to more musicals. You can’t be a competent and intelligent performer without knowing your history. People will want to talk to you about these composers and these playwrights, and if you are able to have intelligent conversations about them, you’re ahead of the game.
Don’t dwell. On the part you didn’t get, on the note you missed, on failure, on success. Don’t dwell.
Your body is your instrument. Take care of it.
Work while they sleep. Or party. Keep working while the rest think they are done. The work is never done. Never let it be done. “The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Talent is not talent. ”Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity, easy vulnerability, high sensory equipment, a vivid imagination , a grip on reality, the desire to communicate one’s own experience and sensations, and a desire to make oneself heard and seen.” -Uta Hagen
Don’t be the second best Meryl Streep, be the best you.
Acting is not learned from books alone.
Know yourself, but don’t overdefine yourself. People change, so can you. So know who you are, but be ready for your world to completely change at any time.
If you try to please everybody, you’ll lose yourself. Making yourself proud is more important than making your professor proud, or making your colleagues proud.
Everything is okay until you ask permission. Follow those impulses. You’ll figure out if it works or not.
Keep your energy always moving forward.
Serve the text. We all want to make wonderfully inventive decisions about characters, but be sure it’s always in service to the text, not service to yourself.
Build the role on truth, not stereotype.
Comb away all the extra. We’re not striving to complicate things, but rather to simplify things.
Stay in a state of gentle curiosity.
As long as it’s honest and true, it’s perfect.
Play actions. You cannot play attitudes or feelings, only actions.
Before you learn, unlearn. Bad habits die hard.
Particularize. What kind of room are you in? Where’s the window? What does the door look like? The audience won’t know all the details you create, but the details will flesh out each word.
Let all of the play inform your monologue, not just the scene before it.
Live truthfully under imaginary circumstances.
The magic “if.” "If" acts as a lever to lift us out of the world of actuality into the realm of imagination.
Research. Research to the point that you know the time period, the lifestyle, the history better than you know your own. Let it inform your character.
Live the part every moment you are playing it, every time.
Nothing is allowed to be general.
Fill the pause. And earn the pause. What did you do to earn that pause in your lines, why are you pausing, and what are you filling it with? What is the purpose?
In order to hold something back, you must have something to hold.
Context is critical. What do you need in this particular moment?
Use your memories. ”Time is a splendid filter for our remembered feelings—besides, it is a great artist. It not only purifies, it also transmutes even painfully realistic memories into poetry.” -Stanislavski
But torturing yourself for an emotional reaction in a scene is not worth it. Be gentle with yourself, because you can drive yourself mad if you aren’t careful.
Leave the work at home. Work hard at home, experience honestly in the room.
Do not run for the sake of running, or suffer for the sake of suffering.
Keep your obstacles in mind. What’s the best/worst that could happen?
Playwrights write plays about the most important days of people’s lives.
It’s not life, it’s theatre.
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