In my last blog, Get Out of Your Head and Into the Present Moment, I spoke about being private in public, as this is key to getting out of your head and responding to what’s actually happening in any given moment in acting. One of the biggest pitfalls that blocks a talented actor’s ability to do this is falling into performance mode. In doing so, the truth of the moment is sacrificed for the sake of outer approval, which ultimately leaves the actor frustrated and defeated.
To get to the root of this drive for outer approval, it’s important to understand that every infant and child has a natural desire for their parents’ approval because it’s critical for their sense of survival. Driven by this need, many of us sacrificed our deepest animal instincts and intense feelings when our parents gave us strong messages that these parts of us were upsetting or overwhelming to them. As a result, our rejected feelings and instincts were suppressed and resisted, eventually settling into our unconscious.
If you were fortunate enough to be raised by parents or caregivers who supported all your feelings, natural instincts, and drives while also providing strong, healthy boundaries, this blog will serve as a deep recognition and appreciation of the gifts you were given. That said, it’s highly likely that most readers of this blog weren’t as lucky.
It’s important not to fall into blame or victimhood if you weren’t in that fortunate category. Understand that it’s just the way it happened. You didn’t deserve or not deserve it. It simply happened. In the spirit of Zen, each moment of your life, just like each moment of not acting, is what it is and can’t be different from the way it is. That’s why I have this quote on my Classes page:
Actors hit false notes when they don’t trust what IS… is enough.
Trusting and going with what is sounds simple in theory but often presents challenges for most actors. Along with seeking outer approval, you may also find yourself trying to control certain animal impulses and instincts, as mentioned earlier. This isn’t your fault. It’s not your parents’ fault either because we often repeat what was done to us. The root of this cycle lies in society’s CONditioning process. One of society’s main functions is to domesticate us so we’re controllable and well-behaved, which is the opposite of what’s needed for alive and dynamic acting.
This domestication process is reinforced in most schooling, where we’re rewarded for knowing the correct answer and rarely encouraged or approved of for not knowing the answer. While this approval-and-reward system may work for some professions, it is counterproductive for truthful acting.
Why?
Because all the “good stuff” in acting arises from not knowing what’s going to happen from one unknown moment to the next. It cannot be emphasized enough:
Your spontaneous, unpredictable, and instinctive responses to the given circumstances of a script come from your courage to NOT KNOW what will happen next.
Developing the inner muscle where truth matters more than approval is the foundation of authentic, powerful acting.
Thank you, Robert for synthesizing your incredible teaching in this powerful blog post. This is what makes you a special, unique and gifted teacher for Actors.