Lights up, your heart is pounding, the scene has started between your peers and you examine it horizontally from the darkly, far reaches of the curtain legs, and just like that… your cue line. Your brain chemistry shifts and you see the world through the lens of someone else eyes. Welcome to acting 101, please try to keep your mind and heart all in one place.
These days, everyone wants to be famous, to see the world through diamond and rose covered glasses and to that end many assume acting to be the quick way to eternal stardom and wealth. Let me be the first to tell you that acting isn’t a walk in the park. Acting, much like any profession requires years, if not a lifetime to hone and assemble all of your talents into one cohesive method. From Stanislavsky to Strasberg, acting is both a science and an art. It takes gumption and discipline in order to truly make it in the industry of acting, and those who do it should pursue it carefully lest it consume their personality and fall into the trap of egotism that many actors tend to fall into.
Many people think that it’s all about memorizing and then speaking the lines, but the truth is that acting is much more complicated than that. To us, it isn’t just about the lines, it’s allowing yourself to be another person for a couple hours; to step out of the shoes of our own hectic lives, and at times put ourselves and our bodies and minds into situations that are better or worse than our current conditions. We actors see our bodies as instruments and in that regard, they must be fine-tuned in order to deliver the best performance that we can. This, as mentioned before, requires discipline, not just to learn the rigorous lines and monologues that are placed before us, but because our workday goes from 8:00 am to around 11:00pm every night. For those of us that have been lucky enough to go to school for the theatre arts, we are at least introduced and conditioned for this type of lifestyle. Those who throw themselves into the tumult that is the true theatre life either learn quickly that it isn't for them or adapt rapidly in our volatile world.
Early on, you are told that you will be poor, you won’t be cast 90% of the time, and that you will very rarely have any real sort of job outside of teaching the craft (if you're lucky enough). However, if you're crazy enough and this at some point sounds good to you, then you’re a perfect fit for the theatre life. If you can manage to hang on long enough, you’ll find that the artistic freedom and catharsis of what I will call the artistic life holds to be a reward in and of itself.
The theatre is a medium, and our body is the paint to which we stain the canvas of our stage. As actor Tom Hanks once said, “When I was depressed and confused I looked around trying to find people who understood my suffering and pain. Like Chekhov once said, ‘all the best stories are about lonely people.’ And I found that I belonged in the theatre, because theatre is the language of lonely people.”
On one hand, it’s masochistic; you punish yourself with sleepless nights and bouts of over-exhaustion and on the other, it provides the richest reward that one can ever experience. The feeling when you get a standing ovation is second to none and the energy you receive from the crowd literally feels as if it’s feeding your soul and filling it to the brim.
Acting is an incredibly rewarding profession, but as Stanisvalsky once remarked, “An actor must work all of his life, cultivate his mind, train his talents systematically, develop his character; he may never despair and never relinquish this main purpose— to love his art with all his strength and love it unselfishly.” - Constantin Stanislavsky
Remember, from the eloquence of Shakespeare to the beatified dramas of the film industry, actors walk a road fraught with hardships and heartaches and travel through the most bumpy terrains of the heart and soul; so next time you see a flyer for a college production, be supportive of your local talent and go see the show, ask them questions if you're curious and if it’s not for you then pursue it no further. Trust me, we won’t judge you.
ATTENTION: Although this article centers mainly around actors, The designers and crew people of technical theatre also lead some incredibly difficult lives; the arts are not forgiving and you should also thank them after every performance for their hard work and dedication. Everyone has an even hand in making a production excellent and beautiful in its own right.
