3. Extra Classes

So, from being initially horrified at the preposterous idea of The Science of Acting I was now enthralled. 

It was lucky for me then and about 10 other like-minded students, that Sam, who taught us all only once a week on the school timetable, started extra evening classes above The Duke of Edinburgh pub around the corner from Mountview’s main building.

Here we were provided privileged insights that thankfully, firmly planted the seed of the Science of Acting in my hopelessly rudderless and immature consciousness which was certainly no place for it to thrive. Not then… it would be different later.

But even then I knew the Science of Acting was a seed that required a fertile soil and conscientious tending. With daily watering and extra nutrients, it would grow into a strong and beautiful tree – a tree of knowledge. Compare that to the conventional acting classes I was getting at my drama school. No seeds were being planted there, no nurturing was required, instead with relatively little time and effort being invested on my part it seemed I already had my fully grown, very impressive trees… Ok, they were fake trees, but who cares when you can climb them all the way to the top!

So there I was a new student at a drama school. Over two years I’d auditioned about a dozen times for a handful of accredited schools and I’d finally got in. I’d officially left home to be here leaving a personal life that was in turmoil, behind. Now miles away in London I could kid myself that I didn’t have a care in the world; I drank, I smoked, I partied,  stuff you can easily get away with at any drama school and still sail through with flying colours. It was a world away from the strict self-discipline that I would require in the future, at Sam’s own school, and hence why I remember little of the specifics from that time.

But back to what I do remember of those extra-ordinary classes above the Duke of Edinburgh, a dog-eared boozer in the back streets of Wood Green. I say extraordinary because they were so unlike any other acting classes I was doing or had done.

Here’s an example… 

Sam wanted us to start studying a short play with him. It was The Jewish Wife from Fear and Misery in the Third Reich by Bertolt Brecht. Traditionally the first thing a group of actors do with their director is a read through of the play and it was no different in this case. 

Except it was very, very different. 

There weren’t enough parts to go round so we did a few lines each. BUT… we all had to read the lines slowly, without any inflection at all. Our attention had to be solely on understanding the fundamental meaning (what Sam would later refer to as the ‘semantic core’) of each word we were reading. There was to be no ‘performance’ at all which meant no personal interpretation of the characters and the things they were saying. For those of you with little knowledge of acting I cannot tell you how completely unusual this was. 

The first read through of any play with a bunch of actors (and it’s probably worse with student actors), is usually a quite ridiculous affair where insecurities must be shored up and teachers, directors and producers reassured by impressive performances that garner laughs and praise. But what really condemns the whole exploit is that often, the way the lines are delivered by an actor in that first second or third read through and the thinking that comes with them is the same in the first and last performances after 3 or 4 weeks rehearsal and a month run! 

In other words it is often the case that an actor makes the decision on how to say the lines before, or on, the first day of rehearsal, when he or she has a scant understanding of the story and the character. That decision sticks even when there’s been no discussion with the director or the rest of the cast and no development of understanding as to why and how the character thinks the way they do at any given time in the play. Those things aren’t in the actors head. 

So what is?

Well, impressing those that need to be impressed. Then everyone can be safe in the knowledge that if day one of rehearsals is anything to go by, everything is going to go very well. But this impressing is now part of the actor’s complex when he/she says the lines, whether in the read through or a performance. There’s no room to start building character’s complexes or even a need for them because rather conveniently – impressive actors are generally considered good actors. (They certainly shouldn’t be).

But back to the pub on our Day 1 of rehearsal and in comparison what we were doing was almost revolutionary.

We were just finding out.

No impressing allowed. No preconceptions about the characters and no imposition of our own thinking on to them. When you think about it – it kind of is a ‘oh yeah – of course’ kind of moment. It’s so simply, logically correct that every rehearsal should start like this. Then the story, the characters and their relationships can be properly understood by degrees, throughout the length of the rehearsal process. It does make the conventional read-through seem pretty ill-conceived. 

I have to add in here that I’m not having a go at actors. I’m not some embittered acting failure. I’ve been that impressive actor, I’ve been the ‘desperate to get it right at the read through’ actor but crucially I’ve learnt from it. Not because I’m special but just because I was given the knowledge to do so. 

No actor wants to be bad, we all want to do the best job we can but overwhelmingly, at drama schools and classes that profess to teach us… 

We aren’t given the knowledge to do so. 

Instead we become trapped in an incredibly dumbed down, self-congratulatory, smoke and mirrors industry where really finding out about how to act, how the characters think, and how to think a character’s thoughts rather than our own, hasn’t been furthered since the teachings of Stanislavski well over a hundred years ago!

Well, not until The Science of Acting came along.

Leave a Comment