On the art of acting

I began studying the Meisner technique in a 6 day course with Scott Williams yesterday. Its the first time since drama school ended eight years (eight years already!) that I've really asked questions about the art of acting. I graduated from the school of The Show Must Go On!, and majored in gritted teeth and sequins. But never have I actually spent any time philosophizing about what it is that I've been compelled to do since I could hold my head up for a camera or jig about in nappies for admiring applause. Anything below the surface of the business I've dismissed as hokum, in an attempt to avoid staring into the whirling depths that lure you into an infamous quagmire filled with tortured, questing people. It is one too many awful auditions, from which I have stumbled thinking all sorts of things beginning with Why? When? How? that has at last made me realise that I must face up to my fear and doubt, and ask the hard questions of myself. What is acting? And how do you do it? Something that has bubbled up from the discussions Scott has led so far is the question Are actors really creative artists? When we 'create' a role, are we not simply putting a shiny surface up in front of our audience and allowing light to bounce off ourselves, leaving them to see what they will in the reflection? When someone says of my performance 'I don't believe you!', are they not just saying 'I don't believe you!'? Or is Uta Hagen, the great theatre actress whose work ethic I am also busy studying through books and dvds, more on the money when she claims emphatically that an actor is the most creative of artists; we bring our whole being to a space and whittle away the entire human experience, distilling essences and concocting dreams and visions until we have a finite creation to offer up to the light?

The only certainty I have arrived at thus far is that talking about acting is harder than getting up and doing it. But I'm no longer afraid of either.