Your Travalanche Daily Digest for October 11, 2026
21 hours ago
Thursday, November 12, 2009
the single biggest mistake that actors make in approaching a scene
Let me explain.
Anyone who hangs around acting classes for any length of time will learn that drama is conflict. That's what makes it engaging: people are fighting, values are clashing, wrongs are being confronted, words are being had. However, the recognition that a scene that an actor is working on entails conflict is a very, very preliminary recognition, and a dangerous one to try to take to the bank. If you do try to take it to the bank, you come up with an account of the scene that sounds like this: "everything would be great if the other person would STOP DOING that really annoying thing that they are doing. that annoying thing that they are doing is causing all the problems, and if they would just STOP THAT, just GIVE IT A REST, we would all be just fine." What's the problem with looking at a scene in this way? Well, in this version, the other person is producing some kind of negative condition or circumstance, and your job is to STOP THEM. If your relationship with the other person is defined by shutting down their negative noise, then you are engaged in shutting them down, not in obtaining something positive from them, some kind of value. So you are not seeing them as someone who has something to offer you. If you do not see them as someone who has something to offer you, you cannot need something from them. And if you cannot need something from them, you cannot be vulnerable to them. And vulnerability is what it's all about. It's the whole game. As audience members, we are arrested and compelled by raw vulnerability. It's relatively rare that we see this, in the theater, on films, or on television. When we do, it is truly inspiring and memorable. We do not soon forget it.
Let's give an example. Suppose we are playing Blanche in Streetcar. In the first part of the play, we will see Stanley as uncouth, coarse, abrupt, and inconsiderate. If we describe what we are pursuing as "to stop Stanley from behaving like a barbarian or a jerk", then we are engaged in shutting down what we take to be Stanley's defining behavior. No one watching this is likely to find it compelling or urgent on its face. However, if we define what we are doing as "get Stanley to prove his respect for me as a true woman, a woman among women", then we see him as having something yummy to offer us (respect!), something we can thrive on, something we value. The important point it how we SEE Stanley and how we describe the way in which we are trying to influence him. If we do so in a way that opens our eyes to the potential value to be had from him, from the yummy stuff he can send our way, then we have a scene going. A scene that people will be glad they paid money for, will remember, will be inspired by, will talk about to their friends, will generate buzz about. Nothing the matter with that.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
november falls flat
Full disclosure: the set designer, Erik Flatmo, is a friend of mine, and I went to grad school with Rene Augesen, who plays the speechwriter in the play. I thought Erik's work was gorgeous, even if I missed the spectacular finale because I didn't stay past intermission. Rene acquitted herself well enough, I thought. The two supremely disappointing things about this afternoon at the theater were the leading actor and the play.
Mamet is no favorite of mine, but what happened, Dave? There was a poisonous pleasure to the swagger and betrayal of Glengarry Glen Ross, but that is a thing of the past. Mamet wants to be taken seriously as a writer of comedy, and the result is much ado about nothing at all. A protracted gag about the pardoning of turkeys? (And what kind of electoral timetable, pray tell, has turkeys being pardoned BEFORE the presidential election?) Whaaat? And the rendering of the figure who seems to be some kind of George Bush figure is so clownish and simplistic that I started to feel irritated that I was starting to feel indignation for Bush, and for myself. Am I supposed to believe that the former President was anything like that? Why extreme caricature, when accurate portraiture would have been much more devastating? Not funny, not politically incisive or illuminating, just a chance to allow audiences to pat themselves on the back for their infinite superiority to such a buffoon. In a word, pandering.
The leading actor adds insult to injury. He has timing and plays the role expansively, commandingly, but there is no insight into why someone would need to comport himself in this way. There is nothing that invites us to care about this man in any way at all. His unapologetic boorishness wears thin very quickly, so we assume there must be something more in the offing. Alas, there isn't.
What was even more disturbing was that at the preview matinee I attended, the theater was packed with patrons who were yucking it up at this tedious display. I won't specifically identify the demographic, as I don't want to offend anyone, but here's a hint: it was a matinee. So, it seems, ACT is mounting productions which are artistically bankrupt, and finding an audience for that! The circle is complete! Alack and alas, this is my experience of regional theater in this country generally. Institutions need adults to run them, to see that the mortgage is paid, to make the schedules and budgets and spreadsheets and raise money, but somehow, the juice and the life and the integrity and the passion and the madness and the bloodiness of real theater gets lost in the shuffle. I'm not saying it has to be this way. I think there are regional theaters that avoid this fate. But they are the exception, not the rule. Our artistic life, as a civil society, I fear, is in as ruinous a condition as our economy. Where will it end?
Sunday, November 08, 2009
I completely agree with this
The film is often quite funny, especially when it casts a knowing eye on the rituals of middle-class Jewish suburbanhood at the very moment when they were about to have the generational rug pulled out from under them. (It is no coincidence that the movie is set at the time when Joel and Ethan were themselves coming of age.) And there are moments of genuine tenderness as well. But humor and empathy alike have trouble flourishing in the grim narrative soil the Coens provide, in which every cosmic joke is a black one. As Ethan explained in an interview, “For us, the fun was inventing new ways to torment Larry.” Over time, though, the fun becomes theirs alone. The game is too apparent and, for all the Coens’ craftsmanship, the accumulation of insults becomes deadening.
Everything I said in my previous post, comedy is very serious business, on Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, applies to this film as well. The son in A Serious Man was the only one who I consistently felt viscerally connected to. Michael Stuhlbarg is talented, but he ultimately didn't embrace Gopnick's desire to be a serious man, didn't TRULY take it to heart, so there was an element of distance and comment in his performance ("See Gopnick be verklemmt" hahaha). As a result the highs were not as high as they could be (the son's Bar Mitzvah), and the lows were not nearly low enough: the occasions when he is supposed to "break down", like in the lawyer's office, did not kick me in the stomach in the way I wanted and needed to be kicked. And in the end, the film just doesn't add anything to the question of why bad things happen to good people. And the fact that God only knows why is not enough for the brothers Coen to take to the bank.
Better luck next time, fellas.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
degree of difficulty
In promoting my class, I do have to put messages out there about the power of the approach that I teach, and there is power in it, without a doubt. But that power doesn't remove the difficulty of acting. That is a disappointing discovery for many. But as frustrating as the difficulty may be, it is the challenge of facing that difficulty that prompts us to stretch ourselves beyond our previous capabilities, to achieve what would have previously been out of our reach. And that means that the difficulty is nothing that anyone should want to avoid or be rescued from. "We must do what is difficult because it is difficult", the poet Rilke wrote. I am happy to show people what acting involves, to point them in the right direction, give them tools and procedures to follow, and to help them along the way. But I would never want anyone to think that I am here to make things easy. I'm not that kind of acting teacher.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
the balloon boy's parents met where?
ABC News' Denver affiliate KMGH-TV reported Friday that the Heene parents met as aspiring actors at the Lee Strasberg Institute of Theatre & Film in West Hollywood, and lived for many years in the greater Los Angeles area.
See what happens when you study Strasberg?
:)
Although they did manage to fool everyone until the kid blurted out that it was all for show...
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