True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor Read Online Free PDF Page B

extent is comfortable and predictable. The lessons of the stage, on the other hand, are often devastating and almost beyond bearing.
    The school, like the audition process, has a clear and simple structure of commands and rewards. If, and as long as, the student propitiates the teacher, she may be disappointed but she will rarely be humiliated. To the extent that she internalizes her subscription to the system (“It is harsh, but I know in my heart it is just, or, at the very least, unavoidable”) she can enjoy freedom from anomie. If she never ventures out of the confines of the system, she can live, whether employed or unemployed, free from terror.
    Teachers of “audition technique” counsel actors to consider the audition itself the performance, and to gear all one’s hopes and aspirations not toward the actual practice of one’s craft (which takes place in front of an audience or a camera), but toward the possibility of appealing to some functionary. What could be more awful?
    For much of the beauty of the theatre, and much of the happiness, is in a communion with the audience. The audience comes to the show prepared to respond as a communal unit. They come prepared (and expecting)to be surprised and delighted. They are not only willing, but disposed to endorse the unusual, the honest, the piquant. Everything the audition process discards.
    Sitting in the auditorium, the audience learns not only—and perhaps not even primarily—from the stage but from one another. We all have had the experience of rehearsing a comedy, of seeing a joke fail there, only to see it later bring down a full house. The members of the audience are informed by and gain enthusiasms from one another—they come to be delighted, and to share that delight with one another.
    The talent agent, the casting agent, the producer, sits in a room not to be entertained but to be judgmental. He or she sees the supplicant actor not as a friend bringing potential delight, but as a robber whose lack of skill, looks, or credits is going to deplete the precious coffers of the listener’s time. It is a terrible process, and we learn to subscribe to it in school.
    The worst result of this oppression, of this false vision of our role as actors, is that we internalize it. How often have we heard, and how often have we said, on leaving a performance, rehearsal, or audition, “I was
terrible
.… Oh, Lord, I was awful.…”
    What is wrong with this? One might think it is a legitimate expression of the wish to improve. But it is not. It is an expression of the wish to have pleased authority. And in these cases where the authority is absent (or, in fact, congratulatory), we elect ourselves the stern taskmaster, and beat ourselves.
    Why? Because we are taught, in fraudulent schools, by exploitative “agents” and directors, that we can please only by being abject and subservient to their authority. “There are ten thousand more where you came from, and if you are not correct in your attitude, not only will you not get the part [the place in the class] but you will not even be granted an
audition
to get the part.”
    Does this attitude seem familiar?
    If we believe these schools, agents, and directors, we, over time, internalize and
become
that “bad parent,” and curse ourselves.
    As a member of the audience, I will tell you, it is an insult to come backstage and say to the performer, “You were great tonight,” only to be told, “No, I was terrible. You should have seen me
last
week.…” Any of us who have been so corrected know that it feels like a slap in the face. Reflection would inform the actor that the correct response is “Thank you very much.” The audience didn’t come to watch a
lesson
but to see a play. If they enjoyed it, you, the actor, have done your job.
    But suppose you learned something onstage, and that something will instruct or impel you to do something differently at your next performance. Well, one would hope that you learned