The Great Acting Blog: “Act On Your Perceptions”

The Great Acting Blog: “Act On Your Perceptions”

 

We learn about the way of the world from each other. We learn from each other hows things are done, or more specifically, we learn how things should be done. This is especially true in acting.

But what if it doesn’t work for us? What if we can see that the prevailing method is clearly not very effective (i.e. – the resulting output seems small when compared to the time and effort we put in). Do you ignore the insight and bury your head in the sand – “oh I’m just not important enough to question anything, so I’ll just keep doing the same things everyone else does because that’s how it’s supposed to be”. That’s the easy road because it means you remain in uniform with your peers – no struggle, no ridicule, no conflict, just a nice quiet and that cosy feeling of being part of the club.

Acting is stuffed full of sacred cows, and most of them are designed to keep us weak, powerless and obedient. The casting process is the most obvious one, wasting talent on an industrial scale. And yet so many subscribe to it wholeheartedly, trudging along, unquestioningly, to one casting after another until they get so bored of it that they make that temporary admin job permanent. Then they wonder what happened. How else can we explain the preposterous drop-out rate from the profession?

Let’s kick it around around a bit.

Why not pretend that castings don’t exist? Do it as an experiment, for a month, see what impact it has on you. You’ll be forced to change your thinking, and dream up new ways to advance your cause. What other prevailing methods out there are ineffective? Throw them away and try and come up with something that is effective.

Act on your perceptions. The cost of not doing so is probably higher.

 

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