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.
