THE STUDENT/SOLDIER

Remember when you would play “pretend” as a small child.

Maybe you tied a towel around your neck and pretended you were a superhero. Or, maybe you would turn the curtains into a veil, and pretend you were a bride on her wedding day. (I, personally, will admit to doing both.)

You did it because it was fun. It’s fun to get to experience something new. It’s fun to live someone else’s life.

There was magic in pretending. If you said, “I’m only an inch tall”, then that was the truth of the moment. No one said, “I’m not buying it.” No one was telling you that “you’re doing it wrong”, or “someone else is better at it than you”.

As a child, you didn’t second-guess your choices or actions. You had no self-doubt. You didn’t need permission or approval. You weren’t watching yourself. You were only interested in your own experience. That was the reason you did it.

As a student of acting we are the exact opposite.

In theater schools, performances are judged, work is assigned, and, very often, all the magic is sucked out. You learn there is a right and a wrong way to do things. You learn to ask for permission.

It is in school that our inner “student/soldier” is born.

Your inner “student/soldier” is the part of you that wants to get it “right” for the teacher. It wants to please what it perceives as the authority figure. This part of you feels comfortable with heavy weight on its shoulders. It will sweat and push to get the job done, because it knows that there is no one there to help it. It alone bears responsibility to keep control over the given situation.

Many adult actors are unable to let go of their “student/soldier” upon graduating school. They have a habit of needing approval. They approach a performance like a student who is about to take a test, or like a soldier carrying out orders from his sergeant. There’s no enjoyment involved, only “getting it right”. That’s no fun!

You must understand that once you are out of school, there is no one to please but yourself. An audience can only enjoy your performance as much as you’ve enjoyed it. They can only experience your joy or your pain as much as you’ve experienced it.

As an adult actor, your desire to please others only works against you.

In school, we learn to ask for “permission”. Actors who hold onto their “student/soldier” will not allow themselves to have a full, selfish experience without some outside source’s permission. They are forever waiting for someone to give them the green light that it’s okay to fully invest themselves in the journey of a scene.

As an adult, there’s no need to seek permission. The audience wants you to “go for it”. You don’t do anyone any favors by holding back.

Why, as adults, do we need permission to allow ourselves to have an honest, full experience in an audition? Why do we so often, play it safe, by just showing people what we think they want to see?

-Some people feel that they are not enough. These people should trust that they are interesting enough onstage without embellishment. Simply because they are human, they share the most wonderful characteristics with all mankind.

-Some people are afraid that they will fail, so they play it safe and don’t bring themselves to the scene fully. They figure, “If you don’t try, then you can’t fail”. These people have an inner fear that they are inadequate.

-Then others don’t fully try for the opposite reason. It’s not that they are afraid to fail. These actors are afraid to succeed.

Why would someone be afraid of success? In her book “Return To Love”, Marianne Williamson writes:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God (or “love”) that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

The voice in your head saying play it safe and small, is your own. Have no shame in shining your light. Your output is worthy simply because it is genuinely you. And you are a fascinating creature, simply because you are human.

In school we learn that acting is “hard work”. We are taught that there are so many different ways to work hard at preparing for a role. We can read countless books, doing countless hours of research on the period, the accent, the physical and internal life of the character.

For some actors all this hard work can do the opposite of what it was intended for. It can distance the actor from the character he is going to portray, and take away all the fun and magic of playing the role.

A wonderful acting teacher once told me:

“You know more than you think you know.”

This blew my mind. Until then, the sole message I had gotten from my instructors was that only intense work allows an actor to play a role. It was my understanding that I knew nothing about and shared nothing in common with the characters I would be playing, but that with enough study, research and rehearsal, I could earn the right to portray them.

But here was this teacher telling me otherwise. Saying that, just because I was human, I had an understanding of every human who came before me; that we are all fundamentally the same.

This teacher was directing us in a Tennessee William’s play. A period piece. She had us find a picture, from the period, of our character, or what we thought our character looked like, and told us that just by looking at it, we could inhabit the role. And it was true.

It takes as long as you want it to take to allow yourself to connect to a character. You have the ability to give yourself permission.

Investing time to research and daydream is always a good idea, as long as it’s fun, but there’s no set amount of time you must take.

If you tell yourself, “I need to do ‘this much’ preparation in order to play this character”, then that will become your reality. Your brain wants to be correct. You will not allow yourself to connect with the character until you have done what you perceive as the right amount of work.

Please don’t get me wrong. I definitely believe in actors getting training.

I like to think of actors as “artists.” We are like painters. A painter should learn technique. He should learn from those who came before him. He should study from the masters.

But then, he must throw all of that away. When he is in the act of creating his art, the technique would weigh him down like chains. Creating art is something magical. While doing it, we commune with a higher power. You can’t do that if you are “controlling” your performance with a technique.

I believe that studying acting is a crucial step in an actor’s journey. But, as an artist, it’s your responsibility to find a healthy way to incorporate what you’ve learned, without letting it work against you.

As an adult actor, any inner thought that triggers your inner “student/soldier” into action should be ignored.

Acting should be fun.

And, if you have faith, it is magical.

“It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.”

- La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)