THERE IS ONE KIND OF ACTING

I’m about to save you a lot of money in classes.

I always see ads on bulletins boards offering classes in “Film Acting”, “Sitcom Acting” and “Commercial Acting”.

I’m sure there are benefits to going to these types of workshops, but remember, these teachers make a lot of money by convincing people that they have something to teach. They need you to believe that there is some secret way that film actors act, that you don’t know anything about; that film stars know something you don’t, unless you pay hundreds of dollars for a workshop.

Well, here’s some good news:

There is only one kind of acting, and that is “good acting”. And what is “good acting”? It is fully felt and truthful connection to a set of circumstances other than your own.

What is the difference between theater acting and film acting?

A casting director gave me the secret to film acting one day at an audition. I did the scene once, and she kindly allowed me to do it again, with this one simple direction:

“Do it just for this room.”

What she was saying was, don’t perform for 10 rows beyond this wall. Don’t perform for ONE row beyond this wall.

Be in THIS room, just talking to ME.

And THAT is how you do it. Simple.

(And if the scene takes place in a car, then you do it “just for this car”.)

Theater acting and film acting require the same truthful connection to the circumstances, but with film acting you don’t “project” your performance outwards to an audience. Instead you are selfishly only involved in your own experience. On film, the audience sees EVERYTHING, even a fleeting thought that passes behind your eyes, so there’s no need to project out what you’re experiencing to an unseen audience.

Many actors, when attempting to adjust their performance to film, make the mistake of giving themselves the direction to be “smaller”. That is a controlling direction, which stifles spontaneity. Suddenly you are watching yourself, controlling your performance. And besides, not all appropriate emotions for the screen are small.

The great thing about “just for this room” is that sometimes in a room someone shouts “GET OUT!”, while other times someone whispers, “I can’t go on.”

So you no longer need to monitor how big or small you are behaving. In real life, people have moments where they experience big choices AND tiny, almost imperceptible, choices. Film acting is simply a direct mirror to life.

I was speaking with a stage actress who was having a difficult time adjusting her performance to “just for this room”.

Because her only acting experience was in theater productions, she felt that learning how NOT to project out her performance would be difficult because she had grown accustomed to this style of performing.

She said to me, “It’s easy for you, because you’ve been doing film for awhile, but I’ve only ever done theater.”

So I asked her, “What percentage of your life have you been on stage? At the most, it’s 10%. Well then, the rest of your life you’ve been behaving appropriately for film. There’s nothing NEW to learn!”

Her whole life she’s been talking to people in rooms, and selfishly thinking her thoughts and feeling her feelings without projecting them outwards.

Film acting is an exact reflection of how you really behave, so don’t make it harder for yourself. You’ve been doing it all along!

What is the difference between dramatic and comedic acting?

Essentially there is no difference. You should approach a comedic scene the same way you approach any scene. The acting in a comedy should be played with as much honesty and personal investment as the acting in a drama. It is the writing that will make the scene funny.

The humor comes from the writing.

The most important thing to remember when you are doing a comedy is that you cannot set out to make an audience laugh. If you approach it that way, you will most likely fail.

However, when acting in a comedy you must be involved in tickling yourself.

I cannot stress this enough. You can’t make people laugh by trying to make them laugh. It comes from a place of need and brings about desperation and fear. The audience’s experience is YOUR experience. Therefore, if you are tickled by something, then we will be too!

In order to do this, you simply ask yourself, “What tickles me about this scene.”

You don’t get involved in figuring out HOW you will perform the scene. That will cause you to plan and control your performance, which will turn it into a dead gift you are offering the audience. Instead you find the elements or “circumstances” of the scene that you find funny and then approach your performance as if it were an improv so that you are playing in a spontaneous way in front of the audience.

Let’s use a made-up scene about choosing a puppy to buy at the pet store as an example:

Imagine that inside your stomach is a small version of you. In your tiny hands you are holding the circumstances that you find funny about the scene (as if each circumstance was a brightly colored ball). For instance, in one hand you hold the fact that you love puppies, while in the other you hold the fact that you are allergic to puppies.

Now, you have no idea how these two “balls” will bounce against eachother in the scene, but you have faith that they will in very amusing ways. You have no idea what the result of them bumping into eachother will be, but you look forward to finding out in the performance of it.

In imagining the circumstances as a child’s ball in your hand, they become something you PLAY with. In a comedy scene, it’s important that you are playing and having fun.

And the scene needn’t be a silly scene about sneezing at a pet store to have fun in the playing of it. You can also have fun being angry. You can even enjoy crying your eyes out. As long as you are tickling yourself in the performance of it, the scene will be a “comedic” scene.

I’d like to add that there is something that happens when an actor approaches a comedy scene in a spontaneous and “tickle yourself" way-

You get a hint of mischief gleaming in your eyes, like a naughty little glint of excitement, as though you’re up to no good. This means your inner child has really come out to play!

Actors are often quick to tell themselves they don’t know how to do something. The actor with only comedy experience feels he can’t do drama. The dramatic actor feels he can’t do comedy. These limitations are self-imposed. These walls were built by you. If you hold a belief that you can’t do something, it will be your reality until you change your mind about it.

I think the best dramatic actors are the ones who understand the humor of people’s behavior, and strive to bring that out.

Likewise, I think the best comedic actors are the ones who play the honesty and true emotion in the comic beats.

Think about Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Christopher Walken, Holly Hunter, Meryl Streep, Shirley Maclaine. These actors always find the humor and the drama in every role they play. For that is the truth about life.

Is there a “style” to acting in a sitcom?

The answer is “no”. At least that is the healthiest way to look at it.

However, there is a way to achieve the result you see when you watch a sitcom.

All you have to understand is that in a sitcom the stakes are always very high. The characters in sitcoms feel very strongly about things. After all, a sitcom has only 22 minutes to tell an entire story. Therefore, there is no time for extraneous scenes. There is no time to show a moment in a character’s life that bears no weight. The scenes that the audience sees move the story along quickly because they are important moments in the character’s lives.

How do we act a scene where the stakes are high?

Be careful not to get result oriented. Some actors make the mistake of laying a general quality of excitement or frenzy onto the scene; speaking faster and getting louder. While these are outer traits of people who are feeling intense emotions, it will never feel real to you if you approach it that way.

Instead, approach the scene specifically and honestly.

A lot of actors will try to mimic the result of their favorite sitcom actor’s performances. For instance, on an episode of “Friends”:

When Monica heads to the closet to get her jacket, Chandler does a double-take, his eyes bug out, he throws out his arms and shouts “STOP!”

Some actors watch that moment and think, “I have to learn how to do that.” But, the important thing to understand is that Mathew Perry didn’t plan that moment to look just like that.

The reason that moment came out like that was because Chandler didn’t “kind of” want Monica not to discover the ostrich he had hiding in the closet -- he “REALLY” wanted her not to discover the ostrich he had hiding in the closet!

Mathew had “high stakes”.

When an actor has STRONG circumstances or “stakes” in their stomach it causes spontaneous behavior to “pop out” beyond their control.

And THIS is exactly what comprises sitcom behavior. Not because it is stylized, but because it is spontaneous and uncontrolled, and therefore highly amusing.