5 Things Actors Should Know About Preparation That Survives Pressure
Drawn from what is actually said on camera, so you can decide whether to
spend the 2:58 watching it.
Preparation aimed at the lines fails exactly when it matters
He threw up on the way to a graduate school audition, stood in front of an Academy Award winning actor, and lost the words entirely. His diagnosis is that all of his preparation had gone into the one thing pressure takes away first.
Worth saying plainly, because that is the actual cost of a bad process. He went into directing, had real success, and only came back to performing years later. A single collapse is enough to end it for people.
The memorization was a side effect, not the lesson
A student handed two pages of heavy dialogue for a cold reading was completely off book ten minutes later. Nobody had asked her to memorize anything and nobody had taught memorization. She had answered the questions about the scene.
What he reports his students gaining is confidence, and specifically the ability to stop tracking what the room thinks of them. That is the mechanism: attention on the scene leaves none spare for self-assessment.
Booking a national commercial, he worked the relationship, what he needed from the other person, and what he was listening for, making his scene partner the most important thing there. The producers stood up and applauded at the end of the day.
When I was in graduate school, I auditioned for Academy Award-winning actor Richard Jenkins. And on my way up to that audition, I threw up. And I think the reason that I threw up was because I was so focused on the lines and I spent all my time memorizing the lines. So that then when I was under pressure and I'm standing there in front of Richard Jenkins, all I'm worrying about is the lines and they just go out of my head. Right? So what happened is I decided I'm really not an actor and I stopped acting. Then I went on to focus on directing. Had some great success there. Came to LA, started teaching acting. So and I created the nine questions of intentional acting. And then my students, I wasn't focused on teaching memorization. I was focused on teaching them acting technique.
And so I had this one student particularly Isabelle and she came from Tijana and and she showed up at class and I gave her a script. She had two pages of heavy dialogue to memorize. I didn't ask her to memorize. I just said prepare for a cold reading. She got up 10 minutes later and she was off page, off book, completely off book. I was like, "Isabelle, how did you do that?" And she said, "I just did the nine questions of intentional acting." And she's not the only student to do to have done this. I've had many other students do this. And so what I found for myself is that later on those nine questions not only gave my students more confidence in their performance that got them into flow and also helped them to detach from the result of what other people are thinking about them and just be in the flow and in the scene and connect [clears throat] that. That's what happened to me when I got an audition for crepe race a national commercial. And then when I was on set, I used those same techniques, those nine questions of intentional acting. I focused on what was the relationship. I focused on what do I need the other person to do or say.
I focused on what I was listening for and making the other person the most important person scene. I remember being on that set and really focusing on the person that I was talking to and making them the most important person scene. And you know what happened is I got into the flow. I had a blast. And when I walked off set, those producers stood up in Video Village and they gave me a hand. They were clapping for me and said that I was they were my biggest fans. So that's what the nine questions can do for you. Stop memorizing your lines by wrote. Get my book, Stop memorizing your lines, be undeniable and ready for action at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Rutled.
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