Actor Trap – The Method Actor Trap6

 In my workshops I often refer to the following as the Method Actor Trap. You see it all the time. Just turn on the TV and it will invade your living-room on almost every channel. It’s actors working very hard to give the impression they are experiencing something. What they are really doing is working hard at repressing, suppressing, squelching, invalidating and redirecting every impulse they are actually experiencing, and as a result they are showing you a representative shell of the experience. It manifests in many ways. It’s usually a lot of deadpan looks into nowhere, as if something deep and mysterious is going on inside the pit of their souls.

This happens for many reasons, the following are just a few: 1. Bad training. 2. The actor has been mocked and made fun of after showing the world who they truly are, so now they package it in a way that protects themselves. 3. Some colleague or, worse off, industry professional said “less is more” and the adjustment the actor made was to ACT less. 4. The actor simply is afraid to make their statement.

Sure, the camera picks up 10 times everything you’re experiencing, and on stage you’ll have to project beyond the 100^th row. These are technical adjustments the actor needs to make to respect the medium they are in, but not at the price of excluding reality. The difference between acting natural vs. being natural is big … when you act natural what you’re doing is disconnecting from the audience. When you “act” you are keeping the audience and fellow colleagues at bay … and at a distance. When you’re BEING natural, you’re pulling the audience into your experience and creating a higher level of ensemble dependency … you’re actually listening with ease … you share a presence on stage … the lenses seems to find you more easily … directors have much more to work with.

BE … it’s where the gold is. BE.