The Great Acting Blog

The Great Acting Blog: “Quit Complaining, Focus On Being Brilliant”

24.06.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 38 Comments

You need to look at the beam in your own eye before criticising others. Is your work brilliant? It better be if you're going to spend time moaning. In fact, it's probably best if you refrain from criticising others altogether and put all of that energy into your work....

The Great Acting Blog: “Why The Cynics Are Wrong”

23.06.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 7 Comments

A denial of acting technique is a denial that acting is an art and that actors are artists. Those who have no technique (many more actors than we might think) are on the make. They are obsessed with self-consciousness, that is, terrified of it, because...

The Great Acting Blog: “Excuses, Excuses”

22.06.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 38 Comments

When faced with a challenge (ie - a task which creates a fear of failure), it's easy to shy away, telling yourself that you don't possess the necessary qualities to do the thing - I'm not this, I'm not that. Alternatively, the challenge can be...

The Great Acting Blog: “Why Bad Work Succeeds”

21.06.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 6 Comments

People who only care about numbers, don't really care about what they do, it's just a mechanism for making money. This person is only concerned with box office stats, Youtube hits, creating empty mass media* to appeal to everyone (which is of course nobody), and...

The Great Acting Blog: “How To Direct Yourself”

20.06.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 6 Comments

One of the biggest objections I hear from actors about producing for themselves is that they need a director to tell them how their performance is going, that they have no antennae for monitoring their progression. You don't need a director. The job of the director...

The Great Acting Blog: “Make Yourself Indispensable”

19.06.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 4 Comments

How can an actor distinguish himself from the pack (and dying your hair blue, doesn't count)? How can we add value to a production? How can we make ourselves indispensable within a production? How can we make it so that a director would have to include us...

The Great Acting Blog: “Improve The Little One Percenters”

18.06.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 4 Comments

One time, I was on my way to an audition but I hadn't provided myself with a drink for the journey. It was a hot day, I was riding the tube. I started feeling dizzy and decidedly nauseous, and I began to sweat heavily, so...

The Great Acting Blog: “Relax Until The Lights Come Up”

16.06.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 8 Comments

You can go over and over a performance in your head, you can practice a scene at home trying to compensate for the fact that the other actor isn't there, a million times. But does that help you? Or does it get you over-wrought, too...

The Great Acting Blog: “Perfectionism Kills Creativity”

16.06.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 6 Comments

Striving for excellence is a good thing, striving for greatness is even better. We all have a notion of what the perfect work we want to do is, and measure our own efforts against it. But perfectionism, tames us, it blocks us from ever going for...

The Great Acting Blog: “Fear Of Truth”

15.06.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 2 Comments

There is a certain kind of actor who'll do absolutely anything apart from actually act the scene. They are full of chatter about it, they ask too many questions about it, you can't get through the scene in rehearsal without them breaking off to speak...

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