Allen Barton's Blog

A little over a year ago, I was asked to write an essay about “Being Personal,” for a book that was to be a collection of essays on the topic from people in all walks of life. The book appears never to have come together, but this topic came up again for me last week, and I thought I’d revisit my essay. Some of it has made its way into other blog entries I’ve written since, including most recently “Feelings Don’t Matter.” But I think there’s still some value here.

I wrote it in form of an acting class critique, as a dedication and paying homage to Milton, who based much of his book Acting Class on actual transcribed conversations with actors. As his editor for over 13 years, I became really good at mimicking in writing his voice and manner in those critiques. Writing this was actually an interesting and sometimes frightening exercise in simply believing my own voice, while honoring Milton’s famed format.  Here goes:

On Being Personal

(dedicated to Milton)

A scene in an acting class concludes. The audience applauds, and the two actors sit for their critique:

ALLEN: So, what do you want say?

STUDENT: Well, I guess I wanted to be personal with it, you know…

ALLEN: Oh yeah?

STUDENT: Well, yeah.

ALLEN: Personal with it? What does that mean, exactly?

STUDENT: Well, I mean…. Just to have the specifics, you know? The situation. I really wanted to have her boyfriend.

ALLEN: Have her boyfriend? Interesting.

A touch of class laughter.

STUDENT: Well, not like physically. I mean that she says she has this boyfriend…

ALLEN:  And you wanted to have that specific. You wanted to feel here on the stage the way you might feel in life when the girl you like tells you she has a boyfriend?

STUDENT: Right.

ALLEN: Uh huh. And did you have that feeling?

STUDENT: No.

ALLEN: Nothing?

STUDENT: No.

ALLEN: That hit in the gut? I always felt it in my stomach when someone I liked had a boyfriend.

STUDENT: Me, too. No. I thought about it, but no, I didn’t have any feeling at that moment.

ALLEN: I see. And being personal? What does that mean?

STUDENT: Uh. Hmph. It means being personal, I guess. I don’t know how to put words to it.

ALLEN: I know. Everyone says they want to be personal. In every acting class on the planet, there are actors sitting down and telling the teacher they wanted to be personal. And by just saying it, I guess a lot of them get approving nods from teachers. I mean – how can you quarrel with an actor who says they want to be personal? It would be bad form.

STUDENT: I’m not sure where we’re going.

ALLEN: What does it mean to be personal?

STUDENT: Well, I think it’s about spotting those aspects of the character that you understand, that you can identify with.

ALLEN: Identify with how?

STUDENT: Well, if the character is like, “I grew up in Boston” and I myself grew up in Boston, then you know….

ALLEN: You can identify with that? Boston?

STUDENT: Right.

ALLEN: The smell of autumn – the frustration of the Red Sox, that kind of thing. You’re too young to remember that Red Sox fans were frustrated for decades.

STUDENT: I know. My father told me not to get spoiled – he thought he was going to die without ever seeing them win…

ALLEN: I’m with him. They won in 2004 and I said to myself, “I can get hit by a truck now. Anytime. No problem.”

STUDENT: You’re a Red Sox fan?

ALLEN: I’m from Boston. So – there’s a character biography thing you’re hitting. The character is from Boston, you’re from Boston, so that makes it personal for you?

STUDENT: Yeah. I didn’t know you were from Boston.

ALLEN: Surprises every day. Did you just identify with me a bit more? A little surge in the biochemistry of student-and-teacher, right?

STUDENT: Sure, of course.

ALLEN: Didn’t have to think about it. It was just there. Boston. And the connection sparks. But I could have lied to you, right? I might be from Duluth for all you know. Knowing you’re from Boston, I could have lied so as to create an affinity between us, to facilitate the communication.

STUDENT: You could have.

ALLEN: And acting is a lie, right? We’re making this shit up. Right?

STUDENT: Yeah, I guess.

ALLEN: Damned right. That’s why snuff films are a crime and horror films make billions a year. We’re in the land of make believe. So there’s that. When I said I’m from Boston and you felt your chemistry change just the slightest – that was both personal, and possibly based on a lie. So if the character is from Cleveland and you’re from Boston, what do you do?

STUDENT: Well…

ALLEN: Can’t be personal with it?

STUDENT: Well – I mean, that would be kind of dumb.

ALLEN: Why?

STUDENT: Because that would mean I can only be personal when I’m… When I’m….

ALLEN: When you share biographical information with the character?

STUDENT: Right.

ALLEN: And that’s dumb?

STUDENT: Sounds it.

ALLEN: It is. Biographical similarities have zero to do with being able to act a character “personally.” Or impersonally. They can help. Or not. Zero relationship.

STUDENT: Okay, good. I’m still worried you’re going to kill me.

ALLEN: Kill you?

STUDENT: Well, the scene. I’m worried the scene sucked.

ALLEN: You are?

STUDENT: Of course.

ALLEN: Interesting. Do you think the scene sucked, as you look back on it?

STUDENT: No. Not sucked. Maybe not great. But not sucked.

ALLEN: What could have been better?

STUDENT: Well – the part where she tells me about her boyfriend.

ALLEN: Where you missed that feeling in your gut – the unrequited love thing. The physical manifestation of unrequited love.

STUDENT: Yeah.

ALLEN: And if you got that, you think you’d be further along the way to personal?

STUDENT: Yeah.

ALLEN: But if you said you wanted that, and thought about it, why am I not giving you any points for being personal?

STUDENT: Because… well. The ball didn’t go in the hoop.

ALLEN: Okay. Moving to basketball – Celtics much more used to winning. So no matter what you think about a ball going in the hoop, what you feel about a ball going in the hoop, how much you visualize a ball going in the hoop, how personal or impersonal you think you are – the ball either goes in or not, right?

STUDENT: Yeah.

ALLEN: So in acting, what is it to say the ball went in the hoop?

STUDENT: That’s a really good question.

ALLEN: And a subjective one, much of the time. I would say the ball in the hoop is that the story is told well, and the audience believes in, cares about, and is moved by the story. They don’t care how this is achieved. But they want it achieved. Your job is to do your part in telling that story.

STUDENT: Sounds… I don’t know. Inorganic when you say it like that.

ALLEN: Perhaps. And you want it to be some organic thing, right? You want to commune with the gods of acting, and through some mental/spiritual/transcendent process, accompanied by some really cool scoring, you will not be an actor on the stage in a small theatre, but actually a real person in a park with a flower in your hand and love in your heart, and when this girl says she’s unavailable, that she has a boyfriend, that at that moment the acting gods will have noted your sincere wish to be personal, to be specific, to “have the situation,” and they will reward you with a punch to the gut?

STUDENT: Sounds about right.

ALLEN: It’s almost a religious experience, this acting for you. Let me guess: If you sin against the gods of acting, or if you have an impure thought, or think to yourself, this guy is from Cleveland and I’m from Boston, and this girl I’m playing the scene with has some flaw that has revealed itself in rehearsals and I don’t like her and I’m thinking of quitting this fucking business and why does that untalented loser in the third row get all those auditions so effortlessly and I work and I beat my head against it and can’t get a damned agent and I pray to be personal but in the prayer I also curse those same gods for not giving me, well, “god-given talent” and lots of auditions….

STUDENT: Well – I don’t think all of that…

ALLEN: I’m trying to include other people here in the room. This is an amalgamation.

STUDENT: Right.

ALLEN: If you have an impure thought, then automatically you’re not personal. If you manipulate yourself physically to trigger an emotion that you’re having trouble getting – to you that’s cheating. But that’s the same as saying Michael Jordan only successfully puts the ball in the hoop when he’s being “personal” about it. The two points only count if he’s “personal.”

So with basketball there’s an observable phenomenon that everyone can agree on. How do you take the same idea and apply it to acting, where the actor, the stage manager, and five different audience members can have … seven, right? Seven different opinions about the same performance, and that’s just one night, and you played only your role. Take eight performances a week times, say 100 people in the audience and a four-week run, multiple actors in all those roles. Fucked, right? I don’t even want to do the math there. It’s like playing basketball, full-on, 10 guys on the court, with an imaginary ball. How do you do it?

STUDENT: I don’t know.

ALLEN: Exactly. We don’t know. This personal thing. No one knows. No one has it. It’s not the formula to Coca Cola, locked in a safe somewhere. No one has the first fucking clue.

STUDENT: I’m not sure whether to be happy about that or not.

ALLEN: I’d go with happy. Because I’m trying to free you. The “I want to be personal in my work” thought has to be one of the most introverting things I’ve come up against. There’s no way you can be personal, whatever that ends up meaning, if you’re worried about it. So stop worrying.

STUDENT: I’m getting happier.

ALLEN: Good. Because if you stop worrying about it, there’s exactly the same likelihood that you will be personal. Or not. It simply is not a measurable phenomenon. There’s no ball. There’s no hoop. There’s just a lot of talk about “being personal.” So you might as well stop driving yourself nuts.

STUDENT: So is “being personal” just a bunch of crap?

ALLEN: It’s not crap, not at all. I think any serious person in the arts would advocate for being personal in your work. But because you can’t quantify it, or measure it by any known standard, it also becomes oppressive and the source of a lot of neurosis. It’s…. I don’t know. A search for the truth. Truth is subjective in art – but if you’re looking for a real experience in some way, telling that story honestly, that’s the closest we can get to our analogous basketball hoop…  The two points counts when the story communicates – and that may or may not be personal for you on any given night. So I guess I’m saying it’s not so much about whether there is personal work going on, but is there the apparency of personal work going on.  I mean, I’ve never met them, I don’t pretend to know the inner workings of their brains – but I’d bet if you ask Meryl Streep or Daniel Day Lewis or whomever you admire to dissect their thoughts at the moment of acting – they can’t tell you. I don’t think they’re analyzing their work in the slightest. Certainly not after someone calls “Action!” And I’d be willing to bet if a director went up to either of those actors after a take and said, “Meryl, Daniel – great – listen, I need it to be more personal…” – that director would have some pissed-off stars on his or her hands.

STUDENT: Because…

ALLEN: Because it’s too fucking general. Can you imagine? “You need to be more personal, Marlon.” Doesn’t help. A conversation about the scene specifically can help. About the story, about how this scene fits in the story. About the behavior of the moment. Yes, absolutely. But not the generality about being personal. And so I think we’re best off concentrating on those specifics we can act, in your case this punch to the gut of her having a boyfriend, on the notion of a search for truth, and let “being personal” be judged by someone not of this Earth.

STUDENT: They’re just letting go.

ALLEN: Streep and Daniel Day Lewis? Right. That’s my bet. They’re prepared, they’re researched, they’ve figured out physically or voice-wise what they want to do, but then they let go. And I would bet a smart director lets them go. The director might say – more here, less here, quieter here, louder, let’s try it such-and-such a way – I don’t know. A discussion, for sure – about the story, about what’s happening in the scene, about behavior. But I don’t think there are on-set conversations about the actors being personal. I think that’s a conversation reserved for acting classes. You know I’m a pianist, right?

STUDENT: Yeah.

ALLEN: So Milton, he used to like to have a private runthrough at his house each year before my annual concert. He would never come to the actual concert – he liked private runthroughs. And we’d get in the same fight each year, because he’d ask, “So what’s happening in this piece?” You know – some Rachmaninoff prelude or something. And I never knew. Not in the way he was asking – he wasn’t a musician, he didn’t want the musical analysis – but he wanted a literal translation. He wanted all these literal images and storylines to go with the music. He wanted to know who the piece was dedicated to, and what that person looked like and what the relationship was. I would just shrug, stare into space, not answer, and Milton would get so pissed off. He wanted me to translate a musical process, which is really one of raw technical work that then allows you to release yourself – the music just kind of comes out, right? I don’t think about it. I don’t analyze it. If anything, I try to place my thoughts elsewhere just slightly – just consider what errands I need to do the next day. Or ponder, did I feed the dog? Now keep in mind I have a zillion hours of practice going into each recital, but that practice is primarily physical, not mental – I don’t think I’ve had a thought about ‘being personal’ in 35+ years of playing the piano. But in performance, what’s cool is when I’m in that mode of insanely prepared technical work plus slight mental distraction – that’s when I’m at my best. And people in the audience invariably tell me about how personal it seemed. But if I’m thinking about “Okay, this next section Rachmaninoff moves to the relative minor key and does this section in double-thirds and echoes the melody from the beginning and this symbolizes his longing for Svetlana… ” I’m screwed. I’m just fucked. And I think actors to do that in scenes – This is the part where the breakup happens, I’ll get emotional on this line and it needs to be personal – get personal, man, you’re so fucking impersonal right now, you suck so fucking bad…

Class laughs.

ALLEN: It’s like that Garfield cartoon I remember once: Jon asks Garfield if when he walks he alternates legs or moves the left legs together and then the right legs together. There’s a box where Garfield just looks down at his legs and then in the last box he thinks, “I’ll never walk again.”

Class laughs.

ALLEN: Okay – so what does this digression mean for being personal?

STUDENT: Honestly, I don’t know.

ALLEN: You can’t think your way into personal, my friend. You can’t analyze your way into it. You want that hit in the gut? Have her literally punch you in the stomach when she tells you about the boyfriend in rehearsal – then you’ll have it. Physically actualize the damned moment, and note your response. Now subtract the punch, keep the response – bingo. There’s your personal. At least for one night. But it’s not thought related. It’s not belief related. It’s not Acting Angels sprinkling “personal dust” on you during the performance. Your success at being personal may be recognized by an audience and not be experienced by you – you can think you suck as an actor, even at the moment of performing, and still tell the story well. Conversely, your ‘being personal’ may be experienced by you, but not by the audience. Or you’ll have those occasions where you’re certain that you and the audience have gone on some transcendent ride together, and the director visits that night… He or she is unhappy, and gives you two pages of notes about how you fucked it up. So in the end you have to do it for the Fat Lady.

Silence.

ALLEN: Total silence. No one in here knows the reference, right?

STUDENT IN AUDIENCE: It’s not over until the fat lady sings.

ALLEN: No, that’s different. You have to do it for the Fat Lady. Nothing. Crickets. Jesus. SALINGER! Franny & Zooey! Anyone ever read it?

A couple hands go up.

ALLEN: Dear god. Okay. Zooey is a young actor, and he’s telling a story about being much younger, and they were a showbiz family of sorts, and I forget – one of them doesn’t want to go on, maybe it was Zooey – he doesn’t want to be looked at as a freak or doesn’t want to tie his shoes for the show they’re doing or whatever, and the older brother at that time tells him to do it for the Fat Lady. And Zooey then tells his sister, years later, who’s having a religious experience of sorts, that the Fat Lady is Jesus Christ. And trust me I’m not advocating for religion, I’ve been there, no thank you. What I’m trying to say is that if you’re acting for a review, or for money, or for me to say “nice scene,” or for some authority to come in and say, “Now THAT was personal,” you’re doomed. Act for the Fat Lady. You define the Fat Lady, you make her whomever you want. But I believe that the Fat Lady represents some sense of truth, some sense of a piece of you left on the stage, some sense of bringing an experience that you believe in, some sense of really nailing the physicality of the character or the environment of the scene, some sense of wanting to tell a good story honestly – any of that, because if you’re at least going for that, then I believe you’re going for personal, going for truth, the story will simply be well told, and whatever there is in acting that can be looked at as a basketball – it will go in the hoop. And it if doesn’t make the grade by the measure of you… Well, shoot again. Clear? Or at least clearer?

STUDENT: Yeah. So…

ALLEN: Yes?

STUDENT: So are you from Boston or not?

ALLEN: Between Buckner’s error and 2004, I was a broken man.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They just don’t. There is the job you do, and then there are your feelings about your job – and only the former is of any consequence or import. Now as an actor your job has to do with manipulating your own feelings in service of a story, so this no doubt gets tricky…

Image #1: You’ve got a leaky faucet. You call the plumber. The plumber comes over and he either fixes the faucet or he doesn’t. You generally don’t give a crap how the plumber may feel about his own work, you may or may not be aware of the full range of his “talent” as a plumber, or whether he thinks this plumbing career will really pan out for him. All you want is for him to fix the faucet. He may have been engaged in suicidal thoughts the entire time, but if he mentions them he becomes really annoying. If he shows up when he said he would, stops the leak, and charges a reasonable fee – you’re all set.

Image #2: A pianist is someone who uses hard-earned technique to play varying combinations of 88 different keys in an infinity of patterns and dynamics, so scripted by a composer, and interpreted by the pianist, to bring a specific piece of music to life for the audience.

So with these two images in mind, let’s look at the three pillars of the BHP training: Acting, Attitude & Administration.

ACTING: Your feelings don’t matter. I know. I know... How is this possible? Because you’re a plumber. Or, if you prefer (and I do) – a pianist. As Milton said early in his book, acting is weird because you are both the pianist and the piano. (I wish we had transcribed the conversation between us on this analogy – I was of course the guinea pig….) Your “piano” is the emotional instrument within you, expressed through the physical instrument that is you. You manipulate your feelings as a pianist does a keyboard. You can play that emotional instrument at an extremely high level without needing to feel “connected,” or “in,” or “inspired,” or whatever actors like to say about their own work. (Some would say it may well be better that you do it this way. It is possible that the more dispassionate you can be about playing that instrument brilliantly – the better off you may be in acting. )

When we listen to Horowitz at the piano, we have no clue about his feelings at that moment. We don’t know if he feels “connected.” Maybe he vomited with insecurity before walking on the stage. We don’t know. All we know is he’s executing the hell out the piece, but he may well feel like shit about it, and who cares?  We don’t know how Meryl Streep or Daniel Day Lewis feel at the moment they’re acting – nor does what they say about that process mean what they say is true. It’s simply unknowable. There are very happy actors who play their instrument well, don’t torture themselves, and can make us cry in any given moment, and there are very sad, depressed actors who constantly torture themselves for ‘art’ and yet can’t make us feel a thing. And vice versa. There simply is no connection between your feelings and the quality of work – other than that romanticized by actors regarding other actors’ ‘process.’

There is no correct thought process or feeling you need to have about acting. You can cry without feeling sad, you can yell without being angry. You can manufacture tears and anger, compellingly authentic, suitable for the scene, believable by the audience – all the while thinking you suck as an actor. Conversely, you can aim directly for putting yourself through what the character goes through, to experience literally what the character is experiencing – and feel you nailed that and everyone responds accordingly – great. (Cue the possibly apocryphal but no doubt entertaining story about Hoffman v. Olivier in Marathon Man.)

My point is only that one process is not better than the other. You’re like the pianist – you play the instrument you’ve got, and you study to improve your ability to play that instrument. All that passion and feeling about the process of acting may well fuck you up. Or, switching metaphors – as an actor you are using your emotional instrument to channel water (the dialogue or emotions of the script) in the direction it needs to go for the story. Your feelings about that process are as important as a plumber’s in arranging pipes beneath your sink.

Technique is that which you use to play the instrument. Actor A, contemplating a moment of grief in the script – she thinks of a sad moment in her life and then her instrument responds, her breathing gets weird, her eyes tear up and the the audience experiences sadness from her. Actor B, confronting the same moment of grief in the script, needs to use a physical trick (onion, etc) to make her eyes tear up. Some may say Actor A is ‘personal’ while Actor B is ‘fake’ – I disagree. They just have different means of playing the emotional keyboard. (And, by the way, both actors may use elements of either technique depending on the day, the moment, the specific situation at hand.) If both actors (and more importantly, the director) are going after the result of fooling the audience utterly, so they sit out there in complete belief about this moment in the script – we’ll be fine. Milton said the play happens in the audience, it’s the audience’s belief that matters, it’s the audience’s perception of whether the work seems personal that matters. Whether you use a fertile imagination to spark emotion, or physical provocation, all of that is technique, and one approach is not better than the other – they are either effective in making the audience believe you are sad or not. That’s the only measure. It’s about whether the audience believes you are sad. It’s emphatically not about whether you make yourself sad. We’re all liars here, it’s just about how good a liar you are. Liars know damned well they are untruthful, but it’s not about that – it’s about others’ belief in the lie. That is the sole concern of a good liar. This idea that you have to believe in what you’re doing  - meh. What we’re trying to do in class is enhance your ability to lie effectively under various forms of professional duress.

The fun of experiencing the dramatic arts is in temporarily believing what we know is not true. (Why do you think snuff films are a horrific crime and horror films make huge money?) Acting is a skill. It has technique – the vast majority of people walking the earth behave awkwardly and self-consciously on stage or in front of a camera, and sound wooden when asked to say lines written by other people. You don’t. Now, improve your technique so you can play the damned piano brilliantly and stop kvetching about your feelings.

ATTITUDE: Your feelings don’t matter. I know. I know…. But for those who’ve read Milton’s book, you’ll notice that the introduction to the “Attitude” section does not mention the word feel or feeling. Not once. The main point of his teachings on Attitude was that Attitude is a choice. When you experience an actor with a “bad attitude” – you make that judgment not by being inside his head and listening to thoughts and feelings. You make that judgment based on behavior! The actor behaves moody or hostile or depressed. The actor behaves in an uncooperative manner. The actor behaves in an irresponsible or neurotic fashion. The actor demonstrates a bad attitude by being argumentative. And we’ve all known cheerful actors who “feel great!” who are also chronically late, or fucking high, or seriously incompetent. Or the actor who is smiling and cheerful (“feels great!”) and then takes apart the director and the other actors through vicious gossip in the commissary. Similarly, you can “feel like shit,” “have no confidence,” “feel uninspired” –  and still show up on time and behave in a cooperative fashion, smile a bit, do your job, play your instrument in a compelling fashion that tells the damned story, and be known as an actor with a good attitude. Like the plumber mentioned above. I don’t give a shit how he feels – I want him to show up on time and fix the problem. If he does those things, I’m his fan. So do your job. Attitude has behaviors attached – choose the right ones. Feelings are utterly unknowable by others except by their undisciplined mirroring in behavior.

ADMINISTRATION: Your feelings don’t matter. In my position as teacher at the Advanced level at the BHP, I see many very talented people, swell personalities, mostly good attitudes, and generally a problematic deficit of solid, consistent Administration – I’ve written about this extensively on this blog. But as consistent with our theme, Administration is by definition a collection of behaviors, not a collection of feelings. Milton wrote a book focusing on career administration and called it Dreams Into Action – not, as he often joked, Dreams Into Feelings, Dreams Into Inspiration, Dreams Into Confidence, etc… Administration consists of those actions you take to move your career in the direction you would like. Done. You don’t need to feel good about taking those actions any more than you need to feel good about going to the gym a few times a week.  Often we’re dragging our asses there only to feel good after the workout, right? Enough said.

So please stop the madness. In my opinion the world is becoming weaker and weaker the more one’s personal feelings are emphasized – or at least to the extent this emphasis invades the workplace. The theatre is your workplace. Your class is your workplace. Now, no one has a perfect record here. Milton was a master teacher, one of the best to come down the pike. His temper was also legendary, and those who worked closely with him will tell you that his mood could really dictate the tone of an entire day for better or worse. Sometimes you feel a certain way and, dammit, the world is going to know about it. Sometimes in a professional circumstance those insecurities or minor depressions or hostilities become all-too-visible to others. So be it – this is not about perfection. But let’s stop targeting feeling good as a goal, or basing our acting, attitude or administration on some prerequisite of feeling good about any of those three elements. Feelings are an internal house of mirrors that have nothing to do with anything.

PS: Closely linked with misplaced “feelings” emphasis is the “liking” emphasis. We are told we need to like ourselves, like others, be liked by others, etc. ad nauseum. Another highly overrated concept. Liking is a bonus. Being effective is the name of the game. You needn’t like your boss, director, teacher, scene partner, agent, or yourself – you need those people to be effective in their jobs. And you shouldn’t worry about being liked, either. Milton, from Acting Class: “So you have to have the passion within that propels you to burn a barn, you have to be on fire. And politeness is not the answer. And likability is not the answer. That doesn’t meant you’ve got to be a shit, it doesn’t mean that. But it also doesn’t mean you qualify by being likable and being nice. You have a job to do, you have a fervent passion, and you go and do it.”

 

 

Part of the Big Frustration with pursuing an acting career I think comes from the seeming zero relationship between competence and employment. My opinion is that certainly in the short run (under 5 years chasing acting professionally), it can appear that merit has little role to play in your career. It just seems too much a lottery, and that some lucky new person who’s been in town three weeks gets a great audition or books a swell job or signs with that perceived awesome agent/manager, while you, who have trained and are responsible and caring and artistic and have dutifully completed the latest workout regimen – you are unfairly left behind, unrewarded for hard work and talent.

Hence one can see a hell of a lot of randomity in the actions of those in the 1-to-5 year early chapters of this strange novel – constantly changing teachers, approaches, philosophies, desperate grabs at weird projects, too many bad plays, too many bad comedy reels, a sudden veering toward improv workshops, no, sitcom workshops, no, on-camera workshops, no, such-and-such a motivational speaker, no, a new Significant Other, no, back to the old Significant Other, no, New York, no, Los Angeles, no, writing, no, new agent, no, new manager…. On and on it goes. Actors can veer from one major decision to another along the steep, jagged upward and downward slopes of morale and inspiration that mark the early part of the journey. There’s always a good little high you get from making a decision, implementing some sort of change, but around the bend awaits the same old discouragement when this change didn’t yield results: regular acting work, a feeling you’re breaking through at last.

But as you move past 5 years in the profession, I’ve observed that the business does become more and more a meritocracy. Yes – there’s always politics, celebrity, vapidity, nepotism and money at work (as they are in all industries), but overall there is a weird meritocratic response. If you look at actors you admire who have been at it for 20 years or more – they really do know how to act, and how to comport themselves in professional situations. Even the character types who aren’t celebrities but work all the time – they know what they’re doing. You rarely see a total no-talent boob who ends up ‘making it’ over the long haul. In the end, I believe talent, or frankly more importantly, professional competence, wins.

And no, of course this does not guarantee success for even the most stellar actor who stays at it for more than five years, and the definitions of “success” vary widely. But this is a business, like any other, where it can easily take 5-10 years not only to develop your talent to its fullest, but for you to settle down, build a network of professional contacts, get a couple hundred auditions under your belt, a better awareness of your casting, a better awareness of certain styles of writing and how to serve those writers, better personal relationships, and just that much more maturity in general. You simply become better at the many skills associated with an acting career (and there are many that go beyond acting itself), from having stayed in it and having practiced.

Certainly for Type-A super-achievers, who are used to being recognized as such in more conventional environments like job-jobs and fixed-size organizations where their competence shines quickly and is rewarded, the morass of The Biz and its seeming nonresponsiveness to their intelligence, responsibility, and work ethic is particularly maddening.

But it’s a slow-turning wheel. I spoke with an actress this week (Type A Super-achiever) who, while politely but clearly infuriated by the lack of career progress, was able to reflect on a particular scene from Burn This, and noted that two years ago when she began the class she was really clueless about it, and now, revisiting the script, she feels more knowledgable. Well that’s a bit of the slow turn in action. Apply that same sense of incremental maturity and competence to the Big Picture, and you can see how a few years in the business will bring that much more certainty about the various skills, what to do, how to do it, who can help, how you can get them to help – perspective. Some actors have an innate maturity that lends itself better to older parts, and their 20s may just be a long training period as they wait for their look and their casting to match up with the music inside. Others need to break out of bad 20-something romances, or get off the parental dole, or develop a stronger work ethic, or knock off the dope smoking, or [insert non-optimum life situation here] – all of this in addition to developing their skills as actors.

So stop the manic panic. Set aside the deadlines and the “I’m giving it until I’m ____” and all those annoying “You know they say that _____” pieces of career advice that are ceaselessly discouraging, and all seem designed to make you feel a schmuck for not being on a series by the age of 24. You’ve set upon a course as a performing artist, and while it can feel as if career certainty has gone out the window, the wheel slowly turns and you get better, wiser, more connected to the business – and the business will respond. Life can be unfair, the world unjust for sure. But try not to make too many major veering decisions on those early jagged slopes, thinking that those micro-level moves will have a major effect on the Slow Turning Wheel. The house-of-mirrors freak show that no doubt seems to describe your thoughts, feelings, confidence and psychology on any given day frankly matters very little to the Big Turning Wheel. Persistence, diligent work on your skills, steady administration – that’s what will fuel the Wheel’s rotation, and lead you ultimately to professional competence, and measurable results over time.

About four years ago, I had an idea. I made some sketches of it at the time, had some basic conversations with web development people – but my daughter was born right in there, I was in the middle of directing a few projects, and thought to myself that someone else would no doubt create what I had in mind any second.

Fast-forward to early 2010, and no one had fulfilled my idea. So I got to work. The idea was a website that solved a problem I had personally: How the hell do I keep track of everyone’s gigs? I know for me, or anyone who has any number of friends in the arts, we have the experience of losing track of whom is performing when, whose TV show guest appearance is when, whose music gig is when, whose play is closing what weekend, etc. I’d often thought to myself, “I wish I could just know automatically when So-and-So is performing.”  The Facebook Events module is not much help here, and not everyone enjoys using Facebook, which is a noisy web environment. All the various means of gig promotion, multiplied by having dozens of actor/musician/hyphenate friends – this equals a lot of static across social media / email / text / phone / snailmail channels and only the loudest or most insistent finally wins my attention. It was as if I could find out every stupid detail of my performer friends’ existences except that which was most important: When were they doing the thing to which they dedicated their lives, when were they performing – the very activity that drew us together in the first place? 

So I’ve created something called www.mygiginfo.com, and its purpose is to collect gig information for performing artists into a single online calendar, filtered for each user depending on who they want to know about.

The concept was to develop a site where gig information could be shared and compiled in a quiet environment without the social media noise. Hence the tag line for MyGigInfo: “All the Gig Info, None of the Noise.” The other conceptual pillar was that the performers would update the information themselves, and my calendar would automatically reflect the constant and ongoing updates to gig information across all my performer friends. The incentive is on the individual performers to ensure the information is up-to-date and accurate.

MGI will also, upon your opt-IN, send you a weekly email every Sunday night with the next week’s list of gigs. You choose who you support, whose gigs will appear in your calendar, whose gigs will be listed on the weekly email. That’s it. No one can contact you. There’s no person-to-person communication from within the site. No poking. No status updates. No politics. No sick pets. No video chat. No nothing. Just the Gig Info.

And it’s free. Check it out!

From Death of a Lady’s Man:

Take the word “butterfly.” To use this word it is not necessary to make the voice weigh less than an ounce or equip it with small dusty wings. It is not necessary to invent a sunny day or a field of daffodils. It is not necessary to be in love, or to be in love with butterflies. The word butterfly is not a real butterfly. There is the word and there is the butterfly. If you confuse these two items people have the right to laugh at you. Do not make so much of the word. Are you trying to suggest that you love butterflies more perfectly than anyone else, or really understand their nature? The word butterfly is merely data. It is not an opportunity for you to hover, soar, befriend flowers, symbolize beauty and frailty, or in any way impersonate a butterfly. Do not act out words. Never act out words. Never try to leave the floor when you talk about flying. Never close your eyes and jerk your head to one side when you talk about death. Do not fix your burning eyes on me when you speak about love. If you want to impress me when you speak about love put your hand in your pocket or under your dress and play with yourself. If ambition and the hunger for applause have driven you to speak about love you should learn how to do it without disgracing yourself or the material.

What is the expression which the age demands? The age demands no expression whatever. We have seen photographs of bereaved Asian mothers. We are not interested in the agony of your fumbled organs. There is nothing you can show on your face that can match the horror of this time. Do not even try. You will only hold yourself up to the scorn of those who have felt things deeply. We have seen newsreels of humans in the extremities of pain and dislocation. Everyone knows you are eating well and are even being paid to stand up there. You are playing to people who have experienced a catastrophe. This should make you very quiet.  Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Everyone knows you are in pain. You cannot tell the audience everything you know about love in every line of love you speak. Step aside and they will know what you know because you know it already. You have nothing to teach them. You are not more beautiful than they are. You are not wiser. Do not shout at them. Do not force a dry entry. That is bad sex. If you show the lines of your genitals, then deliver what you promise. And remember that people do not really want an acrobat in bed. What is our need? To be close to the natural man, to be close to the natural woman. Do not pretend that you are a beloved singer with a vast loyal audience which has followed the ups and downs of your life to this very moment. The bombs, flame-throwers, and all the shit have destroyed more than just the trees and villages. They have also destroyed the stage. Did you think that your profession would escape the general destruction? There is no more stage. There are no more footlights. You are among the people. Then be modest. Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Be by yourself. Be in your own room. Do not put yourself on.

This is an interior landscape. It is inside. It is private. Respect the privacy of the material. These pieces were written in silence. The courage of the play is to speak them. The discipline of the play is not to violate them. Let the audience feel your love of privacy even though there is no privacy. Be good whores. The poem is not a slogan. It cannot advertise you. It cannot promote your reputation for sensitivity. You are not a stud. You are not a killer lady. All this junk about the gangsters of love. You are students of discipline. Do not act out the words. The words die when you act them out, they wither, and we are left with nothing but your ambition.

Speak the words with the exact precision with which you would check out a laundry list. Do not become emotional about the lace blouse. Do not get a hard-on when you say panties. Do not get all shivery just because of the towel. The sheets should not provoke a dreamy expression about the eyes. There is no need to weep into the handkerchief. The socks are not there to remind you of strange and distant voyages. It is just your laundry. It is just your clothes. Don’t peep through them. Just wear them.

The poem is nothing but information. It is the Constitution of the inner country. If you declaim it and blow it up with noble intentions then you are no better than the politicians whom you despise. You are just someone waving a flag and making the cheapest kind of appeal to a kind of emotional patriotism. Think of the words as science, not as art. They are a report. You are speaking before a meeting of the Explorers’ Club of the National Geographic Society. These people know all the risks of mountain climbing. They honour you by taking this for granted. If you rub their faces in it that is an insult to their hospitality. Tell them about the height of the mountain, the equipment you used, be specific about the surfaces and the time it took to scale it. Do not work the audience for gasps ans sighs. If you are worthy of gasps and sighs it will not be from your appreciation of the event but from theirs. It will be in the statistics and not the trembling of the voice or the cutting of the air with your hands. It will be in the data and the quiet organization of your presence.

Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you’re tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty.