What we optimise for
In an acting class, it is frequent for teachers to try and get
- intense or shocking performances, in order for something to “happen” for the audience
- strenuous or exhilarating exercises so that actors feel “connected,” vulnerable, open... from the inside
- scenes that “work,” and are validated as successful, without the actor being aware of the process that would allow them to reproduce these results in an autonomous way.
Each of these cases involves serious pitfalls.
Pitfall 1: Wanting a result at all costs
Because, in wanting, at all costs, for a result to happen quickly,
- we invalidate the actor’s experience as it emerges
- we condition them to be constantly under pressure on stage
- we undermine their self-esteem by pushing them to manipulate their experience at every moment
We therefore end up making them insecure, in addition to teaching them a counter-productive technique, even when it is labeled as “spontaneous”, because it cuts them off from their experience and ultimately ends up demobilizing them, before completely desensitizing them, particularly on stage.
We train actors to overact, and casting directors sometimes end up specifically looking for “people who have never done theatre”.
Pitfall 2: Seeking only states of vulnerability or openness
Because in seeking only states of vulnerability or openness, without checking with the audience what actually holds their attention or not,
- we condition ourselves to a new form of emotional complacency, to a particular “state of openness”
- we risk producing work that is monotonous, repetitive, and limited in terms of the range of possible behaviours for our characters
- we become demobilized, tense, and insecure.
In wanting to be vulnerable at all times, we become fatigued and lock ourselves into a rigid form that is not always healthy.
We evaluate our own work only through this arbitrary standard, and we limit ourselves in terms of possible acting directions.
Pitfall 3: Rewarding “good scenes” in class
Because in wanting, at all costs, to reward “good scenes” in class, or to judge the quality of the training and each person’s progress by the “level” of performances,
- we deprive the group of a free exploration, necessarily punctuated by “failures” that accompany experimentations without overcontrol
- we end up directing actors rather than teaching them clear protocols at each step, since all that matters to us is that the result be “good,” and we operate within the wrong frame
- we then completely deprive them of their autonomy outside the class, since we never actually train them to set things up by themselves, in a way that can be assessed later
By confusing training frameworks with those of performances or shoots, we prepare poorly for the latter, as we fail to develop true professional competence.
We also set ourselves unattainable goals by comparing our work in a class to the “acting” we think we see in a film, which is an illusion created by the editing of multiple takes and complex technical processes largely unknown to the actors.
As with any creative project, don’t compare your own behind-the-scenes to someone else’s highlight reel.
What learning a technique actually means
Learning a technique should be:
- understanding its objectives and the function of its exercises at each step,
- experimenting in class and receiving precise feedback on what worked or not (when possible by checking with the audience, starting from the intersubjectivity of the group rather than from the instructor alone),
- being aware of one’s personal focus areas for improvement and being able to self-assess at each step,
- establishing a link between our phenomenology, “what it feels like” to practice in one way or another, and the audience’s feedback on “what it felt like to them,” formulated in a way that is digestible for us at that given moment,
- and other principles that we document in more detail on our YouTube channel: youtube.com/@principonauts
