TECHNIQUE
A CORRESPONDENCE ABOUT ACTING, Sept/Oct 2022
Dear Milton,
My name is Carson Marquette. I currently attend school with one of your students Kaleb Saleeby, at Stella. He’s an incredible talent, and I’m glad I could meet him, and bond with him over our infinite love for you. I discovered your podcast this time last year and it motivated me to audition right out of high school. I have the upmost confidence that I got in due to the wisdom you share on your podcast. I was able to get a copy of your book from Kaleb and now it’s a daily read for me. Although, I’ve run into an actor problem I believe is extremely common, especially for the more analytical kids, who want a career in this so bad, they believe they can get it if they THINK hard enough about acting. Such as myself.
I genuinely believe that the more I work and build, the more my work suffers. I love hearing the stories about your brilliant son Chris Petrovski, and his sickening work ethic. And I’ve always assumed in order to be the best at something, or at least be professional, it takes a disgusting amount of work, and countless, countless hours. I find myself trying to rack my brain, cover every flank, and visit every Avenue with my character for long periods of time, but to no avail. I even start to get somewhat sluggish, and the super fun part of acting that made me love it in the first place, begins to fade for that short period.
Kaleb suggested to me that I’m “being too analytical,” just like he was when he first started. Also, the ever fabulous, Patrick Qualiano, my technique teacher, who says I’m “being too cerebral.” I shoved these suggestions off at first, and swore that I was just figuring it out, and it would take time. But then, something incredible happened.
I was watching Adam Driver’s audition tape for the show “Girls” and I realized something about acting, and why I loved acting in the first place. It’s all about relationships, circumstances, and INSTINCTS. I get to be instinctual, impulsive, primal. There’s no need to rack my brain like it’s algebra class. I’ve always had great instincts in the craft, but since getting into Stella, I’ve for some reason felt the need to destroy my brain finding the answers. But I’ve finally realized what they are. The gold is in my instincts.
I now do script analysis at a slower and more “bite size” rate, if that makes sense. Sometimes I even like saying “I’d rather not build this fact. I’ll wait to put it on its feet and see what comes out of it.” It usually leads to acting that feels incredible to me. I also don’t feel so in my head about things. The only thing is, I feel like a lazy bones. I feel like building for 15-20 minutes at a time isn’t good actor ethic. I also feel like I could be subconsciously using the whole instincts thing as a way to avoid doing work. But, my work has never felt more alive, or truthful. And most importantly, I’ve never had more fun.
Am I lazy? I seriously can’t tell.
Sincerely,
Carson Marquette
Dear Carson,
You’ve hit on several issues and I will try to clarify my thoughts on each of them.
The first is the concept of working hard. This is such a shaky area. Many actors work hard, but what separates the children from the grownups is the ability to work hard correctly. At the Prague Stanislavsky Symposium one of the teachers suggested the catch phrase: Work Hard Right. Clearly, this is not an uncommon problem or there wouldn’t be an attempt to solve it.
I’m not sure if it’s helpful, but I have a couple of chapters in my book, which I think are a starting point. One of them is called something like The Biggest Sin and the other one has to do with starting as if you know nothing. I think I may have mentioned this before, but you really do have to work slowly and accept the reality that there is always another choice to make. And that getting further into depth is a forever process. It’s also fair to say, “Okay … for where I am in my work, this is where I can get today.”
Carson, I’m going to let you in on a big truth: there is no such thing as a right answer. And there is a real danger in thinking that there is. It cuts off your creative impulses. I think it also puts pressure on you so that you’re desperately trying to make it happen. I don’t know you so I can't suggest to you how you stop this insanity – but I can tell you that I abused Kaleb for a year because he was so busy over-thinking it made his work was cold and sterile. If Patrick is telling you that you’re too much in your head, then he’s basically saying, “It’s not working.” I was too much in my head early in my work with Stella, but it was because I was way too cautious. You may have the same problem Kaleb had. He never allowed himself to think “what else?” after making a choice. Sometimes in class I will say to an actor after an exercise, “Or?”. The purpose is to force you to consider other possibilities.
It’s really detrimental to work towards having a right answer. I would accept almost anything else. Work towards having the most creative answer. The most unexpected answer. The most ridiculous answer. The most kick-ass answer. When I coach actors for auditions, I’m always working with them to come up with something no one else would think of. It’s as obvious as, “Everyone is going to yell on that line. Do something else.” Having the right answer has absolutely nothing to do with the creative process. You’re focusing entirely on the wrong thing.
Being professional is a mixed bag. I have worked with extremely professional actors, directors and designers … and they’re a fucking bore. I’m not saying that a person shouldn’t be professional, but the use of the word professional is not one I use with actors. In fact if I asked someone about an actor I was thinking of hiring and the response was, “He’s very professional,” I’d run for the hills. If they said, “If you can put up with his bullshit, he’ll blow you out of the water,” I would know what I was getting into if I hired him. It was actually my experience working with Mark Ruffalo. In fact the second time I worked with him (on a production of Waiting for Godot) I screamed one day, “The last time I worked with you I said I’d never work with you again and I was right!” Both times he gave brilliant performances.
I’m glad you had the experience of “going there.” I’m guessing you didn’t plan it. It just happened. I’ve had it a few times. But I never looked back to analyze what I’d done. It’s that famous story about Olivier, when people told him how brilliant he was “tonight,” he got upset because he didn’t know what he’d done. Let’s face it, if Olivier didn’t know what he did, what hope to the rest of us have.
Milton
Dear Milton,
I cannot explain just how grateful I am you replied to my email. With the way you speak about emails, and your hope for the future of writing, it really means a lot that you’d take time out of your day to think and discuss an issue I have with my work. I am one of your biggest fans, and I immediately texted my mom when I saw you actually replied. I don’t want to gush too much, but I think your impact on the modern theatre will be as big as Stella’s was one day. Also, WRITE MORE BOOKS PLEASE.
Carson
Dear Carson,
Listen, it only took me twenty years to write the last book. I don’t think I have it in me to write another. We’ll see. I’ve been making notes.
Milton
Dear Milton,
Okay, fan-girling aside, I have a very important question. It could be the most important question I’ve ever asked. I feel like anyone can be a great student. After all, we’ve all gone through some sort of schooling, and can combine our passion for acting work, with our school ethic, and feel we’re really doing something. But, I know there has to be more. There HAS to be more to this whole process. I hear you speak a lot about our excessive need to have the right answer. I always end up trying to find the right answer, regardless if I fight it or not. It’s my hardwiring. To be completely honest, I associate being right, with being great, and thus being on the road to being a professional. I’ve had a taste of what it really feels like to go there. The forbidden fruit. And now I’m chasing it…chasing another fix.
Even if I do good in an exercise, or follow the instructions, and show up everyday early, and do everything I think I’m supposed to do…I feel empty. I feel dissatisfied to the maximum. There’s times when I completely mess up and get things wrong in this craft, and it’s remarkably painful. There’s ego involved that I cannot shove aside. However, I actually feel something. The failure prompts far more emotion than feeling like I did it right. I guess this leads me to my first question, which is, What’s the best way, to get the most out of every single day I’m here? 3 years feels so short, and I can’t shake the debilitating fear that after all this, I’ll feel like I’m back where I started. Or worse, like I should just go and get “a real job” *vomit*. Should I be striving to get things wrong? Should I be taking massive risks. Even writing that gives me anxiety, but I must admit, sounds incredible freeing. I know there’s a lot to unpack there but I hope you can look through the layers.
Carson
Dear Carson,
Many years ago I was in a fabulously terrible relationship. When we’d go shopping at Costco, I would constantly stand in line and then change lanes. Then the next lane was be shorter and I’d go to that lane … eventually ending up back at the lane where I started. At one point he looked at me firmly and said, “You’re doing that thing you do.” It was one of the best things I got out of that relationship. To this day, I don’t change lanes at Costco … and periodically I stop myself in the midst of a bad habit and say to myself, “You’re doing that thing you do again.”
"I associate being right, with being great” is a concept you must get over. Meryl is great and totally sucked in a production of Seagull that I saw. Marlon was great in everything, but it’s because he never settled. I think, like the famous opera singer Maria Callas, he treated every performance as just another rehearsal. I don’t know if he consciously thought to himself that it wasn’t right, but thinking that something is right means you stop working. I think only dentists think, “I got it right.” We may see a film and think they got it right, but they did twenty-one takes and the director or editor chose the best one. They only had to get it right once. God knows what the rest looks like.
Also, what makes a professional, a professional? And more importantly, how can I start behaving like a professional now, even If I’m not even close yet? What makes Streep, Streep? Brando, Brando? What is it about Ruffalo and De Niro that got them where only 0.001% of the population can go. Huge questions, I know, and they could be self indulgent and disobedient to your previous advice about wanting to be at step 8, but these are questions that are clawing their way out of my soul, and I must throw them at your feet. How do I feel like I’m on my way?
The work! The work! The work! That’s the only important thing. If you’re worried about anything else, then you’re in the wrong professions. Rembrandt didn’t get out of his Rembrandt bed, walk down his Rembrandt stairs, take a Rembrandt walk, have a Rembrandt breakfast and then paint a Rembrandt. He got up, walked down the stairs, took a walk, had breakfast and then painted. And one day it was a Rembrandt. That’s the secret!
I know I packed a disgusting amount of anxious actor subconscious into this email, but I pray you understand it. I’m sure you’ve heard it all before.
There’s always something new.
Keep at it. It takes a long time to be an actor. John Gielgud suggested it takes twenty years. I think it was a conservative estimate. Stanislavsky was in rehearsals when he died. He was still trying to figure it out.
MJ
Dear Milton,
I respect you beyond your own comprehension, and I so appreciate the time you take to read this, ponder it, and hopefully reply. Also, I’ve wiped any files containing any admiration of Mr. Driver completely from the hard drive that is my brain. So thanks for clearing the hardware with that suggestion.
With the dearest admiration,
Carson Marquette
Dear Carson,
Thank you for loving me!
First of all, we all think we’re lazy. Well, more specifically, we think we don’t put in enough work. And I’m guessing that’s right. But, the creative process is extremely delicate. You can’t force it. You are very fortunate to have Patrick as a teacher. I’m extremely opinionated about acting teachers. I think most of them suck … and, in addition, are charlatans. Patrick is the real deal. He’s both a brilliant teacher and a fabulous person.
Oh … and before I forget. I’m both amused an horrified that you got anything from Adam Driver. I find him tedious and arrogant in the extreme. And a really dull actor. I assume you weren’t around to see him on stage in Burn This. Indulgent and enraging. Thank you for mentioning him. I just got back from a week in Mississippi directing The Glass Menagerie and I’m a little exhausted jet lagged. Talking about Adam Driver woke me up.
There are stages we go through as actors. Some actors think too much, some don’t think enough. They think their blind instinct is enough. And then they realize that the joy of thinking is that you suddenly have an educated imagination and not just one based on yourself. It takes a while to get that balance. Keep in mind that Stanislavsky was still working on acting concepts when he died. He was living under house arrest (he was too controversial for the Soviets, but too well know to send him to prison), but members of the Moscow Art Theater came to his apartment to rehearse. He once (roughly translated) said, “The method is not a system, it’s a culture.” And by that he meant like a culture it is always developing.
My poor son. He was definitely subjected to actor abuse, – which is still not punishable. He came home one day and I asked him how class was. He informed me that everyone really liked what he was doing. I screamed, “Who!?! Who are these people! Are they people who know a fucking thing about acting! What great actors have they seen? What experience do they have? Never listen to these people. They don’t know enough to comment!” Okay … so that was one thing. The next thing had to do with class exercises. I asked him if he didn’t have an assignment. Bless his heart, he responded, “I already did that one.” I didn’t scream this time, but explained that technique exercises are not something you can just do … "and now I know it". If we approached acting more like sports dudes approach sports, we would have a fighting chance. A tennis player does not answer ever!, “I already worked on my backhand.” Acting is a constant daily endeavor. Stella told me that when Marlon was in class he did every exercise three different ways. He’d work early on and then after everyone had worked, he would do the exercise another way. Mr. Brando knew that there was never such a thing as “I did that exercise once and now I own the concept.” There is no occasion when you can say, “Yes. I understand that totally.” I think Patrick gives the exercise about describing a gift. Did you do it only one way? Did you rehearse it OUT LOUD and then try it again? Did you try it several different ways – what we call ’shopping for choices’? The bottom line is, that’s what goes into being great actor. Someone who continues to work. Someone who finally gets to a choice and has that moment when your whole body tingles because you’ve had one of those “got it” moments.
If you read the letter at the end of my book, which I think Tom put up some place at the school, one of the things Stella said to me was that I should let it happen (rather than make it happen). It’s shocking to think that we didn’t have computers back then and had to hand write a letter by hand, so I have no idea what problem I was having that forced me to write her, but I’m guessing I was unable to translate my “homework” into the rehearsal process. No doubt from over-thinking. I like to think I finally overcame that problem. After teaching for thirty-five years I hope so, but it wasn’t something that happened over night.
It’s important you’re aware of these problems. Stella once said to an actor, “Darling, you’re at Step One and you want to be at Step Eight. You absolutely must go Steps Two through Seven to get there. To quote my former therapist, “Slow and steady wins the race.” Allow yourself to grow. Never think you’ve figured it out. I have both attended and spoken at an International Stanislavsky Seminar (once in London, once in Prague), where Stanislavsky practitioners from all over the world get together to exchange ideas and try to figure this damned acting thing out. I can’t tell you how many of them have translated the original teachings from Russian. Well, what am I saying? Many of the teachers are from the theater schools in Moscow. I confess I was intimidated by them for awhile and then I realized that our work is extremely practical, not academic and theoretical.What amazes me though, is how much I continue to learn.
Give my love to Patrick.
Keep being unsatisfied. And please stop thinking that Adam Driver can act!
Best,
Milton
A CORRESPONDENCE WITH KALEB, SEPTEMBER 2022
September 25, 2022
Dear Milton,
This past Thursday in class with Patrick, I did my Gibran exercise from The Prophet. I did the piece on Work.
I rehearsed by talking out the ideas Gibran gives me, and then really exploring what they mean in life and what it looks like. The exercise is about ideas, but Patrick also wanted us to personalize it. So lots of going to your own life in a way from students.
I decided to talk about my father and how I watched him work and how I could see Gibran's ideas in action as my father worked. The problem was that when I started the exercise in class, I saw my father, but I sort of began with the action "to discuss". Even though I knew the soul of what I wanted to say had much more to do with "Waking the people up!".
Kaleb
Dearest Kaleb,
Patrick uses Gibran in several ways. One of them is to help you connect to what you’re talking about. I do it with something I love and something I hate. It’s always very scary territory because you will use your own experiences to get there. I stopped using the Gibrans mostly because I had so many foreign students that they were stressing about what the fuck he meant. I used the Commencement speeches instead. It’s also meant to help you see text as a sequence of thoughts. Not sentences or words, but thoughts. Because I hated the word “beats,” I temporarily use “chunks.” Anything to keep actors from thinking in terms of sentences.
Personalizing is a very broad idea. We talk about it in Script Analysis in the sense that you the actor have to respond to the theme and then you move onto how the character reflects that theme. Obviously the character doesn’t know that he’s a theme, but the actor has to know it. With the Gibran, you’re not playing a character, so it doesn’t complicate it. I think that I may have done Children, but it’s been 45 years since I did the exercise, so I’m not quite sure what it was. I do remember the difficulty of interpreting what he was saying.
At one point, Gibran says that to work with love is to charge everything you fashion with a breath of your own spirit, for the blessed dead are standing about you, watching.
And this was where a flame lit up and I found it. I looked up and I saw Stella, Stanislavsky, Brando, O'Toole, and they're watching us work! So every day we come to the studio to work to be worthy of the ground on which we stand! Patrick was teary eyed, and it was a really strong sense of size of the idea.
The first thing Stella said in Technique was, “I’m only interested in training an actor who is willing to take on his shoulders the 2000 years of actors that went before him.” That is an important concept to understand. When you walk on stage, you are walking on stage with all those actors behind you. It’s an important realization. When I teach I have always been very aware that I am carrying on a tradition that even predates Stella, although Stella being there has always been the most important influence on me.
Milton
But it started so small. I had to work myself up to it and maybe it could've been present in the beginning with my father, but it wasn't.
Patrick suggested I work on my visualization and really see my father and let it affect me before I start talking about it. And that makes sense, but even though I think using my father as a way of talking about one of the ideas Gibran writes about was effective in personalizing it, it did feel slightly forced. I always knew I would rev up when I started talking about acting and the theatre. But I spent so much more time finding the right way to present work using my own life.
Kaleb
Kaleb,
One of the biggest problems about using your own life is that you don’t view it as a big idea. Whereas I might talk about how you sold your house, left you well paying job and moved 1000 miles away (and gave up your wife) to follow your dream … as a big idea, you don’t see it that way. Visualizing your father working before you talk about it, as long as what you’re visualizing feeds the idea, makes total sense. “See it and then say it” is one of our many bumper stickers.
“To discuss” is right up there with “to report.” Not really strong actions. It’s why I rethought actions. I think that it’s easier to think “you have no idea how noble work is” as an impulse than even to wake people up. The reason I like zadacha is that if the problem is that they think working is a chore, they’re dead wrong and you are going to lift them up to the idea. It gives the impulse more balls.
Milton
Dear Milton,
If I were to do the exercise again and keep the bit about my father in there, do you have anything to add to Patrick's suggestion? Part of me thinks maybe I should have started with the image of Stella and Brando and the greats because it immediately puts me there.
Kaleb
Dear Kaleb,
The purpose of all exercises is to open you up to a craft that helps you access your talent. Eventually Stella and Marlon and Peter and Andrew Garfield will all be a part of your mindset and you won’t have to use that image. What you will have to use are some basic tools and that’s really what the exercises are for.
Love,
Milton
CAN I APPLY THIS TECHNIQUE TO WRITING & DIRECTING?
Dearest Milton!
I had the enormous pleasure and luck to study the Stella Adler technique with you some years ago.
I have since transitioned to writing and directing.
My question is:
How does a director communicate and direct non actors?
How does a director get non-actors to connect?
I really see good real and deep directing as being what Stella Adler did and what you do. Which is teaching!
The problem is, I have never taught acting before!
So then I go on set to direct and all I have to cling onto is the fact that I am very clear on the big idea, and also what we are doing and why we are here and what I am certainly looking for.
However, this is not enough because then I still have the enormous task ahead of getting everyone including cinematographer up to that level of understanding the ideas, or get everyone to start asking and be thinking about the same questions etc.
Oftentimes I work with actors who have received very poor training and education and have no clue.
So I have to do the work for them, I have to connect and make choices for them and then try to find a way to authentically pass this to them through intellectual, creative and imaginative work and conversations with them. In lesser words, do the technique with them.
Now you may wonder why I would work with such untrained actors in the first place and the reason for that in my case is specific:
My current feature film is entirely cast from non-actors as it is about a high level dance company and all the leads are being cast directly from this company. So while they are world class artists and performers in their own right, they still have zero technique or training in acting.
If for example I have done the work myself on the script, and I have come up with some certain choices I would like to direct, how do I go about communicating this to the actor without just spoon feeding it to them. In other words I don't want to ever say "just do this". Or, is it alright to suggest an action or choice to an actor so long as you explain why and justify it to them and then on top of that give them something to do to help them connect so it's not just becoming a topical or aesthetic direction?
Surely a lost actor feels very helped if a director can talk them to safety... And so, how then do I deepen the quality of my directions?
If I have "solved the riddle" but the actor is stuck, are you helping them by just telling them what to do? Don't you run the risk of them doing what you are saying without them understanding why or worse that it won't be truthful it will just be playing for an effect?
I so very much look forward to hearing your unique response to this.
We often talk about terrible directors who have no clue.
But what about people like me who are trained and now get to communicate to actors.
Where do you start?
Thank you for reading this long and tortured email.
Dear one,
I’m basically one foot out the door on my way to Paris and London, so this is a very brief answer to you problem. I think what I’ll do when I’m back in a couple of weeks is possibly have a zoom session with you, because Walker might find this useful as one of our podcasts.
Oddly enough, I gave a weekend seminar in New Zealand for the NZ Film Commission based on this very question. I hadn’t expected anyone to come and it was jammed. Clearly this is a constant question for directors.
So, look, the short answer is: give them actions to play. The simplest approach is use the concept of actions in the very traditional sense of the word. An active verb. It takes a lot of work on the part of the director. I’ve coached a few directors on films and I always suggest that they go through and label each scene. "This is the scene where she lets mom have it.” And for mom maybe,"This is the scene where she caves in.”
And if you use very vivid language, the actor is freed up. If you give an actor an actions like, “Nail the bitch…” they can play it. It also leaves room for creative work.
I refer to this a lot in my book. I expanded my view of actions when I was teaching in Korea. I asked the extremely talented, frustrated actor in Korea “so what’s going on with him?” (Joe in Waiting for Lefty) And the actor said, “I can’t make life work!” And that was it. I said, “That’s the perfect impulse. Play the scene.” Over time, by the way, I replaced the word “action” with “impulses.” I try whenever possible to avoid using “actor-speak.”
The main rule here is never give an “effect” direction. An effect direction will always lead to a cliché. If you tell an actor, “Play it really angry,” you’re doomed to a pushed performance. But if say (and, of course, it depends on the actor), “Kick him in the balls” or “Destroy him,” you have a prayer of getting a decent performance.
Okay … one more note and then I have to do some laundry or I’m going to end up in Paris with no Underwear. Again … in my book. Zadacha. This word was mistranslated from Stanislavsky’s original text. It was translated as ‘objective,’ which is incorrect. The real translation is problem. What Stanislavsky was saying is that every character has a problem. And if you have a problem you want to solve it. So it’s a very good habit to ask yourself “what is the character’s problem?” And the answer, by the way, is not a plot problem. Its’ a soul problem. And if you know the character’s problem, it helps lead you to what’s going on in the scene.
We’ll continue this.
Much love.
Milton
REVELATIONS
TAMARA: Milton. There have been so many times over the past few months that I have simply wanted to write to you to share my thoughts on what has happened in class. I’ve refrained because I’ve thought you might be overwhelmed with emails from your students, but I realize that’s my own fears getting in the way. So here’s an email!
MILTON: Never be shy!
TAMARA: I want to thank you so much for your classes - both script analysis and technique intensive. As you know, I’m preparing for Flo in Picnic. (I would love to know more about why Stella loved Inge. He kinda seems like a lesser, midwestern Tennessee to me - and I’d rather read Tennessee.) I find that the way I’m preparing for this role is completely different than how I’ve approached roles in the past, and I know it’s all thanks to you.
MILTON: I should probably teach Inge at some point to help me see more about him. I coached Grant, who played Bo, in a production in North Carolina back in the 80s, but I’ve never really worked with Mr. Inge that much. I scanned these for you from Stella’s book on American Playwrights. At least you’ll get a ballpark idea.
TAMARA: I wanted to share with you an insight I had after class yesterday. Now, you know I’ve got Meisner after you on Wednesday, and I’m very serious about my class time. However, I was absolutely absorbed in my own thoughts while everyone else was repeating up on stage. I was happy that I had made the mistake of “anxious vs. shy” and couldn’t figure out why I had jumped to a performance choice. Then it hit me - I told myself that I related to Laura’s relationship to Amanda! I made the cardinal mistake! I was so delighted that I had found where I went wrong and how subtly (and almost unconsciously) I had made that choice! And how, because of that choice, I had imposed a set of behaviour on Laura to make her fit my idea of her character rather than letting the story tell me about her! Now that I’ve made that mistake with Laura I’m so excited to see if I’ve made that mistake with Jim and Tom! And now I see why we talk it out, why we work slowly. I feel very empowered but also a little nervous to repeat this mistake right away. Do you have any advice on what to do next, now that I know I made the mistake?
MILTON: Slow and steady wins the race (as my therapist used to remind me). Oddly enough one of my closest friends, Kristina Loggia (whose father was in the first national tour of Picnic (Robert Loggia) … and whose mother I use as a reference for Georgie in Country Girl. Marge went on the road with her husband when he did the tour.) … Anyway, Kristina worked on Amanda in a class and one of the other actors reported to me that she was a complete angry bitch. And Kristina should know better. Among other things, Stella was her Godmother.
Damn! that was a long paragraph.
It’s very difficult to break old habits. If you look over Stella’s letter to me, she reiterated a point about me not setting the laughs. I’d studied with her for five years and she knew how I could land a line to get a laugh. There was one performance during the run of Boys in the Band that had a total sitcom audience. I don’t know how it happened, but every funny line hit the audience like a television sitcom. I completely played to the audience and it became funnier and funnier. During the curtain call one of the actors (knowing what I’d done) turned to me and said, “You know Stella Adler was in the audience tonight.” She wasn’t, but I almost had a heart attack. She would have murdered me for turning in such a cheap performance. I understand that the recent revival of the play on Broadway was played pretty much as a sitcom.
Anyway … the point is … we make mistakes until we stop making them. Greg still makes the same mistake, even after two years of technique, mostly because for years he got positive feedback as an actor for a very showy performance. In that definitive book on acting, I Don’t Need An Acting Class, the author mentions the biggest sin of the actor. Deciding in advance how to play something. Part of the reason for Script Analysis is so you develop the ability to read a script and break it down as an actor. There are so many elements. But mostly it’s difficult to come to the table with no prejudices and that’s what makes us jump to conclusions. Bobby Lewis in his book even says “if you were in this situation what would you do.” Well, that’s just nuts. I’m sure if you were Laura, you would be aggressive and angry, but because it’s not you, you have to look for clues as to who it is.
One of the best actresses I’ve ever known refused to play Amanda for me because she “hated women who are victims.” She eventually played Mary Tyrone in my production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night to career reviews, but she just didn’t get Amanda. The best actress in New Zealand wouldn’t do Linda in Death of a Salesman for the same reason. I met Lee Grant when I was assistant director on a production of The Little Foxes. Lee decided that Regina should be played as a sinned-against woman, a semi-victim … she was raked over the coals for the performance – and changed it. So you’re in good company.
The most important thing for you is to build slowly. Don’t push a performance that isn’t there yet. I noticed it in one of our little in class exercises. You have in mind where you want something to be and if you’re not careful you’ll push the result. Build on what you can believe today.
See you Wednesday.
Professor Justice
CORRESPONDENCE WITH NICHOLAS
NICHOLAS: Dear Milton. I hope you won’t hold it against me if I unload on you some of the difficulties I’m encountering when it comes to building character backstories.
My primary concern is one of fear of the unknown. I almost find myself unworthy of creating moments in a character’s past lest I should get them ‘wrong’. This is, perhaps, not an issue you can help me with directly, per se, however it does have some bearing on the second problem which is one of specificity.
MILTON: The purpose of this work is really to help you open up to the possibilities, but it takes time to see exactly what is in the text and what the possibilities are. It’s why I think it’s important to move slowly. I don’t know that I think of it as a fear that I will get it wrong, but I certainly am aware that I can’t jump to conclusions before I have more information. By moving slowly I avoid the trap of inadvertently making it about what "I would do or think" in that situation. One of the reasons I used to number the lines of the script was to force myself to use the text as the reason for certain decisions I would make. “What line of the script makes me think that is true?” was a question I always asked myself. It’s so damned easy to jump to a decision. So I go very, very slowly.
I think we also have to develop the ability to know when it’s me and when it’s the play that is leading me to choices. Sometimes the questions tell more about us and our own baggage than it does about the character. There is so much to take on board. Hell it’s no wonder you have fears.
I think one of our problems in making choices comes from too much access to therapy vocabulary. I had to stop Kaleb yesterday in class. He was working on the character of Joe in Angels in America. He was trying to sort out why Joe was working for Roy Cohn. He leapt to “he’s looking for a father figure.” First of all, you can’t ‘play’ that as an acting choice, but also … every man I’ve ever met is looking for a father figure. Mind you, I only know people in the theater, so we all suffered from fathers who had no clue who we were … but that’s the sort of leaping to a decision you have to really guard against. Even if you start there, you have to add to it a question like: And that makes him do what ... or that makes him think what? … or that makes him behave how. We are always looking for behavior. It’s a great key.
I would add to this, you have to give yourself permission to go down a road and realize it’s the wrong road and stop and go back. It’s another joy of doing plays instead of real life. In real life, you can’t go back. In a play you can always stop yourself and say, “Well that’s clearly not it” and start again. It’s one of the reasons I say that you must keep going back to certain parts of your choices. Every time you go back you’ll find something else to add … or subtract … or change … or deepen.
Your reservations not only make sense, they’re a good thing. Plays give you so little in the text. Seemingly anyway. I have been debating the first line of our scene (“Isn’t he a great guy.”) for years.
You look at the text and you can figure out certain things based on what’s there, but there is so much missing. It’s very brilliant work, but I promise you get better at it. Not because it gets easier, but because you expect it. Of course, it’s difficult. It’s not only difficult, it’s frustrating. I can’t tell you how many times when I first started script analysis, I’d look at a line of dialogue and decide that I knew there was something there … that the writer hadn’t just thrown it in … and I would challenge myself to figure out what it was before I moved on to the next line. It was not a good way to work. I’d finally move on and then I’d figure out two pages later what the line meant.
NICHOLAS: You have talked before of Stanislavsky’s and Stella’s emphasis on being specific, while also not getting caught up in the superfluous. If, however, we take your example of an army officer losing his platoon in combat, should one know exactly what each of those lost soldiers looks like, how they sounded, even what personal stories they may have shared with us, their comrades-in-arms?
MILTON: This is the joy of a play and knowing what the play is about. What the playwright is saying with the play. So, first of all I only choose what’s vital to the play. Mr. Miller gives us the example of the guy giving him his dry socks. Certainly I can build that. Experientially. Remind me to talk about a couple of ways that I find useful to building the past. What I have found is that when I know the play and what the writer is saying, I can build one specific event and feel as if I own the writer’s idea … the theme. I think I get this from the idea of the nature of what a play is anyway. It’s a specific event that represents a big idea. In Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, we watch Nora in the late 1800’s in Norway, but no one thinks only of Norway in the late 1800’s. I think this holds true for us as actors. I can build one specific and feed the entire idea.
I also understand why you’re cautious and fearful. You know how big this idea is. In cosmic terms. ‘My men were killed’ is huge. I was once asked to do a play reading and one of the lines was, “I had a very rough war” and I begged them to get someone else to read the part. Even in a reading I didn’t want to have to build a past for a rough war. I think later in my development I would not have been so resistant. I would have asked myself, “What makes you say it was rough?” – and then I would have proceeded with “There was one time when…” and I would have been able to justify a rough war with one event in the past.
NICHOLAS: How much time does one spend on this particular memory. Can some of the attributes be taken from own lives (I.e. superimposing the physical attributes and/or lives of individuals we know, for example)? I honestly don’t believe my imagination is lacking so why am I unable to let it go to work in this context?
MILTON: I think developing the imagination in this particular area of our work is slightly different than having an imagination that is active in wandering around in our real life. We’re actually forcing our imagination into the given circumstances of a play. And if you haven’t done this a lot, it’s very strange. Bobby Lewis was a member of the Group Theatre and a big teacher in New York and he made this ludicrous suggestion to think what you would do if you were in this circumstance. It’s ludicrous, because you would never be in this circumstance (World War II with a platoon of men that were killed). Certainly you might have a moment where you think briefly how horrible that must have been, but it’s still not necessarily going to land on you the way it would on Chris Keller.
Herein lies the biggest issue. There’s me – and there’s the character. If I use someone I know instead of inventing someone more appropriate to the play, it could easily be very shaky territory as if you’re trying to shove a square peg into a round hole. This isn’t going to solve your problem but it’s not necessarily the case. My friend, Margo Martindale, played Big Mama on Broadway in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and it was a brilliant performance. It was the first time I found the character even remotely interesting. I asked her where she found the character and she said, “Oh, Milty. I grew up with those women.” For Margo, whose ability to see into a person is quite brilliant,– she could base a Tony Award winning performance on one of these women.
Building another character is a combination of all sorts of elements. For me there’s a lot of cobbling together of elements from many sources. Someone I’ve known, someone I’ve seen, someone I once met, … hell, someone I once saw on an interview talk show. I once based an off-stage character on John Gielgud combined with a little bit of Dudley Moore. [I never met Gielgud, but had dinner with Dudley once.] I do a lot of shopping for choices.
I sort of went off on a tangent and looked back at what exactly your comment was. I would suggest that the reason you aren’t able to let go is because of (possibly) three things. You don’t realize you have permission to. Also you’re limiting yourself because of a fear that you need to get it right. And, mostly, I would suggest it’s because you haven’t exercised that part of your talent. I’ve become very annoying to my technique class when someone makes a choice and I say, “…or…” Stella used the words “shop for choices” all the time. I think it’s a skill we develop. After doing it for over forty years, I do it really quickly. It’s like I see all sorts of possibilities almost instantaneously. The kid who gave me the socks might be this sweet kid who was always fucking up … or he was a guy who was always there for everyone … or he was the very cut off kid who really never spoke to anyone except when he had to, but when things got rough he was a rock. But down the road I might change him.
Karim has been working on a monologue from the Arthur Miller play, The American Clock, and there’s a part where his character talks about being at a board of director’s meeting where sat his main competition, Georgie. When we first started Georgie was a character who had inherited his position at the competing firm. After working on the monologue for awhile we realized that it fed the monologue more if Georgie were a character with a high sense of ethics. We didn’t know the play well enough when we started. It’s fine. We survived.
I think it’s Declan Donellan who says fear is the single greatest enemy of the actor (or something to that effect). In my case, sadly, this seems to be very true and I don’t think I can advance before breaking this wall.
I have used this analogy often. Acting is like being on a high diving board. You know there’s water down there and you’re not going to die if you jump in, but it’s still scary as hell. When you finally jump, it’s not as bad as you thought it was going to be. Still bad, but not as bad. For some people they love the adventure and can’t wait to jump the next time. I confess that I always get flutters every time I start. However, once I break through and jump, I couldn’t be happier.
One more Stella story. There was an actor working on a monologue in class one day and he hesitated about halfway through. He stopped and turned to Stella and said, “I’m sorry Miss Adler. I just got a bit nervous.” Stella in a slightly surprising moment said, “Darling, you go out on stage and bare your soul for an audience. Of course you’re nervous. It’s the greatest nobility."