September 22, 2006
It seems there are as many acting techniques as there are actors.
Hamlet tells his players, "Suit the action to the word,
the word to the action." In An Actor Prepares, Stanislavsky wrote, "All action
in the theatre must have an inner justification, be logical, coherent, and
real." David Mamet, in his controversial book True and False, questioned
the very idea of formalized instruction when he wrote, "Invent nothing, deny
nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school."
Four teachers sat down with Back Stage recently to discuss all of this, as well as their own philosophies of the craft.
Deloss Brown has taught Shakespearean acting at Juilliard and teaches the course Shakespeare
for Writers at New York University. Karen Kohlhaas is a founding member (with
Mamet, William H. Macy, and others) of the Atlantic Theater Company and a
senior teacher at its school.
Terry Schreiber founded T. Schreiber Studio in 1969 and
has been teaching ever since. Larry Moss has taught for more than 30 years
and founded the Larry Moss Studio in Los Angeles in 1990. Besides teaching,
each works as a writer, actor, director, or some combination of the three.
The interview was conducted by Andrew Salomon, news editor of Back Stage East.
BACK STAGE: Defining and committing to an objective is the
fundamental task of the actor. What is the acting teacher's objective?
DELOSS BROWN:
I feel like it's like the doctor's: not to screw up. They come to you, they
pay you money, right? Very frequently they're not half bad. I tell them,
"I want you to remember what you just did, because what I say may be of less
use to you than what you came in with. Just be able to do what you came in
with when you come out of here."
BACK STAGE: First do no harm, in other words.
BROWN: First do no harm. Yes.
TERRY SCHREIBER: What we really advertise is: There's nothing
richer you can act than yourself. We help the actor to open themselves up,
to take risks, to take chances, to trust themselves. It's not about being
somebody else.
BACK STAGE: To strip away the artifice?
SCHREIBER: Stop acting. Be available to yourself. That's
where the best acting and moments come from, that move you, when you're sitting
there in the theatre.
KAREN KOHLHAAS: We try to empower the actor to really trust
themselves. You need a period where they're giving over, where they're really
open to what you have to say. It is difficult to teach someone if they're
constantly questioning the technique that they're learning. I would encourage
them to research what they're going to learn and then come in, once they've
decided to study, with an open mind and take in what's being given out. But
the end result of that is they feel empowered to make their own choices and
that they have a technique that they trust.
LARRY MOSS: I started with Sandy Meisner. What Sandy taught
me is what all of us have been saying: Start from yourself, drop your masks
and say, "Who I am is my richest reservoir to draw from." I think that a
lot of actors come in with shame — it's in their bodies, in their voices
— and that you have to work diligently with the actor to get them to reveal
the core of their emotional self without inner judgment. That which is antisocial
is the very thing you're looking for in the actor, and you have to allow
them to be what they consider to be antisocial — to be able to express with
no filter. If you start with that clay, then you can start to talk to them
about Strindberg and Ibsen and Shaw and Williams and Miller. But until that
happens, it's like trying to play the piano with the lid down.
BROWN:
Teach them to be selfish, too. They look at a big speech and they say, "Oh,
I better rush through this, I'm taking up too much time." No, no, no, no,
no. You're the play at this point. You're the play. Take your time, do it
right.
KOHLHAAS: I would say that the balance is really putting
the emphasis on storytelling, that they're there to tell a story; that the
end result is not that you see an actor, but that you see the story unfolding
in front of you. They need to bring all of their self-awareness so they can
more fully tell the story to people. I think sometimes acting training tends
to get stuck on the individual, and that needs to be in service of what they're
trying to do for the audience. Because, in the end, it's for the audience.
MOSS: A performance I saw of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, an actress
came in and said, "Brick, Brick, one of those no-neck monsters hit me with
a hot-buttered biscuit, I have to change." And she balled up her dress and
threw it in the corner. I said, "Play's over." [Claps his hands shut] Play's
over. Because one of the things Maggie says to Brick is, "I had two dresses
when I married you, Brick, and they were hand-me-downs." So when she walks
in and says, "My lovely lace dress," she ain't about to throw it in the corner,
and I almost stood up — as I'm becoming more antisocial as I age — and said,
"Can we stop right here and talk about this, this first minute of this performance?"
BACK STAGE: What do you look at in an actor when you first start working with them?
SCHREIBER: I ask them to do an audition piece in a monologue.
I want to see the choices that they're making, the actions that they're playing,
and I also want to get an idea of the vocal work and the body work. Many
times I have to say to an actor, "I can't work with you any further until
you do some body work, until you do some vocal work." I had a student once
who is now a successful playwright and director for television. I was doing
Slow Dance on the Killing Ground in Pittsburgh. This role was ideal for her.
And I had been on her and on her and on her to work on her voice. I brought
her in and the producer said to me, "I'm not going to fight you if you want
her. But if I had to listen to that voice for two minutes, I would put a
gun to my head." She lost the job, and I said, "Are you satisfied?" In an
audition, you better be able to present that body and that voice.
BROWN: I could not agree more.
MOSS: Yeah, me too.
KOHLHAAS: I completely agree that a solid physical and vocal
foundation is absolutely essential. As a director, you don't know if you're
going to have time to work on something in rehearsal. Auditions are good
for that reason. You're saying, "Hi, here I am. This is what I'm like under
pressure." And if [an actor] can put you at ease when they walk in, then
you feel like the audience is not going to have to worry about them.
BACK STAGE: What are some of the common problems you're seeing among students?
KOHLHAAS: I have seen a major decline in the amount of reading that people do, that actors do.
[Brown, Moss, and Schreiber nod vigorously in assent.]
KOHLHAAS: I'm actually working on a list for my website
for overdone monologues. I wrote down every monologue that I couldn't stand
to see again, or that I've been seeing a lot of. I used to not care at all.
I'd say, "If you love it, do it." But then over the years they started to
pile up.
BACK STAGE: What are the top ones?
KOHLHAAS: The top female is the female tuna fish monologue
from Laughing Wild by Christopher Durang, and the top male is the male tuna
fish monologue from Laughing Wild. The ones that are overdone the most have
been overdone for at least 10 years. A lot of them are from my generation,
from what we were doing 20 years ago. There've been tons of plays written
since then, tons of great plays written since then. The ones that are overdone
stay pretty much the same. So they need to read more. A lot of the young
people will say, "Hey, I found this wonderful monologue from Blue Window,"
and they think they're the first ones to discover that.
SCHREIBER: It's a gorgeous monologue.
KOHLHAAS: But we could all perform it, couldn't we?
SCHREIBER: I heard it twice last week.
KOHLHAAS: They're coming to the table without that much
knowledge. They say they're overwhelmed, they don't know where to start.
I say, "Go to the bookstore, go to the library." Are the people who are getting
their MBAs right now, do they not know what the top companies are? Of course
they do. So much of who an actor is has to be based on the plays they want
to do, the writing that means the most to them. It tells you a lot about
somebody's taste, what plays they bring into the [audition] room.
BACK STAGE: How necessary a tool is the monologue in terms of auditions? Aren't most people reading sides these days?
MOSS: I'm a believer in monologues simply because they're
good when you're by yourself, as a workout, daily. I say you must have four
monologues ready to go at all times: two contemporary, two classical. And
that you work on them every day physically, vocally, emotionally. Try different
actions with them. Start to see those four monologues as rehearsal process
for your instrument on a daily basis. They're almost like your DNA. And I
also say you should change those four monologues every three months. Because
what it does, it forces people to read plays. I don't subscribe to the idea
of "actor as victim." I think it's always the actor's fault. Always. [Laughter]
It's laziness, it's entitlement, it's "I didn't get the breaks," blah blah
blah, "the business is so hard." It's all bullshit.
BACK STAGE: I'd like to shift away from the practical for
a moment and toward the philosophical. Almost 10 years ago, David Mamet wrote
a provocative book on acting, True and False. In it he declared, "The audience
will teach you how to act.... The classroom will teach you how to obey."
MOSS: Asshole.
BACK STAGE: We'll get to that in a minute. Right now I'd like to get your opinions on that particular statement.
SCHREIBER: I don't know with him sometimes. I think he says
stuff to be controversial. I can't believe he really agrees with half of
what he's saying. If he walked into the room and 98 people were saying no,
he'd say yes. That's just my feeling. But I bought that book and, I mean,
"Just do my words and you can act it"? I mean, just, please.
MOSS: It's the most absurd book about acting.
SCHREIBER: I think it's a hoot.
MOSS: That isn't to say there aren't some good things in
it, about intention. But it is gobbledygook, and, you know, David Mamet was
a terrible actor. I mean, he couldn't act.
BACK STAGE: That doesn't mean he doesn't have anything valid to say about acting.
MOSS: He has a very valid thing, but he has a very simple
thing to say about it, which is stand still, have an intention, and say words.
Well, you should stand there, you should have an active verb, and you should
allow things to happen to you. But saying that you should never study, and
that the teachers that teach Stanislavsky are charlatans and want your money,
and that you can't get acting in a class, that classes will never help you,
and that you should just go out and do The Seagull and do The Master Builder
and go out and do Golden Boy, and it'll just happen to you because you're
on the stage — to say all of that...I find it disgusting, negative, and literally
dangerous. And when the young actors go after that book and say, "Well, David
Mamet says this and David Mamet says that," and I say, "Fuck you, man." And
I'd say it right to his face. [Laughter] He pisses me off, and I went after
him in my book because I said to myself, "You know what? No. You want to
go after us? I'm going after you, man, because you're not on the side of
the actor, you're on the side of your own ego."
SCHREIBER: I believe in words, but you've got to hang those words. You can't just do the words.
MOSS: And I don't think that Mr. Chekhov or Mr. Miller or
Mr. Williams...I would just love to see somebody play Blanche standing still,
having an intention. That would really be an interesting Blanche. [Pause]
How dare he.
BROWN:
I have a different perspective. I directed Ving Rhames at Juilliard. He was
offered at the end of his third year an audition for Streamers, the movie.
He said, "No, I'm going to stick it out for my fourth year." And you can
see the training didn't do him any harm. I've directed Kevin Spacey. He played
Serebryakov for me in a production of Uncle Vanya. He left Juilliard at the
end of his second year. He thought it was, you know, a waste of his time.
He hasn't done badly. So, having dropped those two names, I have to say it
depends to a certain extent on the individual. When I would see people lining
up to go to Juilliard and spend four of the most productive years of their
lives in a monastery, I sometimes question whether it was worthwhile or not.
So my answer is: no opinion.
BACK STAGE: Karen?
KOHLHAAS: First of all, my favorite quote about the book
is the quote on the back of the book from Alec Baldwin, when he said, "I
agree with almost nothing in this book and I think every actor should read
it." I definitely agree he's making kind of extreme statements to get attention
and wake people up. He taught us [at the Atlantic], so obviously he felt
that people should be in school and he decided to teach acting. And, please,
I never want it said that I'm speaking for him. Just from things that he's
said, and from what I've observed, he's reacting against people's tendencies
to go to class for years. And it was therapy for people to go to class, go
to class, go to class, go to class. You've got to build your foundation and
get out there, because no class is going to teach you what auditioning and
performing will teach you. I don't think anybody would disagree with that.
I get people who occasionally want to take my class for process, and it's
not about that. It's "Here are some skills, get the fuck out there."
BACK STAGE: Karen, when you teach, do you use emotional work, sense memory work?
KOHLHAAS: We don't use sense memory work. I'd just like
to give you the nutshell of the thought about emotion, about dealing with
it. It's inherent. It's there. If you invest it and you've analyzed the scene
and really thought about it, the emotion is inherently there. You want to
have a technique that you can do whether you feel [the emotion] or not. You
can still tell the story. I would say what stood out for me in all that training
and thinking [at the Atlantic] was that actors are problem solvers. I think
you can look at any actor acting and you can say they're either playing the
problem or they're playing the solution. It's literally the difference between
listening to somebody complain or listening to them talk about what they're
going to do, even though they're terrified or enraged or whatever. The statement
that stood out to me the most is that playwrights create the chaos, the actors
create the order. They tell how they're trying to solve the characters' problems.
We're trying to fight for a solution, rather than get mucked down in the
problem. The audience is going to the theatre to get some ideas, or a sense
of communion about "What are we going to do?"
MOSS: I think that there is no question that emotion is
the cheapest commodity in show business. Having water come out of your eyes
doesn't mean anything, and some nights you're not going to have it, so what
happens to the play? So the intention and the actions become everything on
any given performance. But imagery and emotional recall and sensory work
are helpful to it.
BACK STAGE: Mamet also writes, "There is no character. There
are only lines upon a page." Does character exist — or are there only a series
of given circumstances and objectives that an actor must relay to help tell
the story?
SCHREIBER: Oh, God. I just came from working on Tennessee
Williams. Of course character exists. What do you call Blanche? What do you
call Stanley? Yes, character exists.
MOSS: To my mind, when Maggie in Cat says, "You can be young
without money, Brick, but you can't be old without it, because to be old
without it is just too awful," you don't know what that "too awful" is. That's
character. You cannot tell me that isn't true, that character doesn't exist,
because she's a person with a background, and that isn't whoever plays the
part — that's Maggie.
SCHREIBER: And you get Mamet himself: You look at the character
of Teach, going all the way back to American Buffalo. I mean, that's a character
unique to himself. I've seen a lot of Mamet and I like Mamet. Look at Glengarry,
look at the people in that.
KOHLHAAS: Actors have to find that character within themselves.
We all have an emotional reaction. We think of Blanche, we think of Teach,
we feel them in ourselves. When actors do monologues and they say they're
visualizing the other character, I say, "Well, who's playing that? Who are
you imagining?" Because you never see Brick standing across from you. You
see the other actor. You know it's the other actor, that the two of you are
telling a story. You believe in them with your whole heart. But you don't
ever actually believe that that's not [the actor playing Brick]. It does
come from you. It comes from the text plus you. It can't come from anywhere
else but those two places.
BROWN:
Character is very difficult to define, but my act being Hamlet and plays
like that, obviously Polonius is different from Claudius is different from
Hamlet is different from Sebastian is different from Viola. I would be very
hard put to say exactly what it is [Shakespeare] did to make them all different,
but he did.
SCHREIBER: He did.
BACK STAGE: Once your students leave your class, and they've
been given all of these wonderful techniques and tools for finding the verb,
finding the action, what are they supposed to do in the face of such inspired
direction as "It needs more color"?
SCHREIBER: You're trying to get the actor to translate what
the director's saying. I think a lot of directors direct just in results.
It's the actor's job to process the result and not depend on the director
to do it.
KOHLHAAS: Tommy Tune said, "Don't make your work my problem."
Everybody has a different way of working, and everyone's thrown together
and expected to make something happen in three or four weeks.
SCHREIBER: I saw a wonderful example a number of years ago.
I was doing a walk-on role in a play Michael Langham was directing. He was
just in from Canada. He had Method actors, he had people in between, he had
Canadian actors, he had Lou Antonio from the Actors Studio. It was the second
week of rehearsal, and Lou was playing this Jew-hating sergeant. Michael
said, "Lou, this guy is filled with anger. He hates Jews. I mean, he hates
'em." Lou said, "Okay," and he chewed up the scenery. I happened to be standing
backstage later on, and Lou came over to him and said, "Michael, I'll give you that
anytime you want it. But I don't feel that way about Jews, and I'm going
to have to find what I have that kind of anger about." Then he used rehearsal
to find that. I thought, "Geez, what a wonderful way of handling that," without
putting Michael down, without antagonizing him. I use that example in class
so many times. Just call the director aside; don't take them on in front
of the cast.
KOHLHAAS: Can I tell you my favorite Method story? I was
directing a production of Street Scene at NYU mainstage, and I had a cast
of 35 or something. It so happened [the actors playing] the Morans all happened
to be from Adler, Sam and his family were from Atlantic, and the Swedish
janitor and his wife were from Strasberg. I wasn't directing any Atlantic
technique or anything. It was like traffic direction, because there are so
many people in it. So I was like, "Do your own thing." At the end of the
play, the janitor is tacking up a funeral shroud over a doorway. [During
a performance] I see that the nail, which is supposed to be rigged, isn't
coming out. I'm thinking the scene's going to be ruined because the shroud
is just going to hang from one nail. And without missing a beat, the actor
took a nail out of his pocket, nailed it in, and hung the shroud, and it
went off without a hitch. Afterwards I said, "Oh, my God, that's amazing
that you did that, that you had a nail." And the actor said, "I'm a janitor."
Thank you, Lee Strasberg.
SCHREIBER: What I get upset at is paraphrasing.
BACK STAGE: Actors who paraphrase the text...
SCHREIBER: John Shanley was just up at the studio last week.
We had a conversation with him about it, and I said to him, "What do you
do with that?" He said, "I let them do it their way, and then I say, 'Fine,
I don't want that. This is what I wrote.' " God, actors who paraphrase, they
change the rhythm. They're not into the music. That's the biggest thing I
drill in class. I want it [pounds table] word for word for word for word.
MOSS: And the better the writer, the more exact they are.
John Patrick Shanley, in The Dreamer Examines His Pillow, when she walks
into her lover's apartment, she says, "I'm hearing shit, I'm seeing shit,
I'm smelling the smoke, don't tell me there's no fire, you are sleeping with
my sister." That music, if you miss one word or you take a pause before that
last line, what you wrote is gone.
SCHREIBER: I tell my students, I would not blame a writer
for attacking you. I mean, getting up out of that chair and attacking you.
[Jabs finger into the table] Say the goddamned line.
KOHLHAAS: That's a Mamet quote. Directly.
BACK STAGE: We've talked about not getting too safe in school.
Do you ever stick your boot in the back of your students and send them on
their way?
MOSS: Hopefully, as a teacher, if you see someone who's
hiding, you call them out. "You're very talented. You've got your technique.
Go." I do something with my students: I pick 20 scenes and I give the actors
two weeks to prepare, and they come in after those two weeks with full costumes,
full everything, and they do a 15-minute scene, 10 scenes a day. What it
does, it forces them to shit or get off the pot. And it's a thrill because,
"Can you script analyze? Do you know how to block a scene, how to wear a
costume, learn rhythm and tempo?" They say, "God, I didn't know I could do
this." And I say, "Well, nobody ever asked you to." So, yeah, you've got
to get them off their safety. If I've learned anything, being comfortable
isn't what living's about. Nor is it what theatre's about.
BROWN: No, you may not sit down for the audition.
BACK STAGE: I think that's the perfect button for the interview. Thank you all for your time.
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