The Great Acting Blog: “Create, Don’t Re-Create”

The Great Acting Blog: “Create, Don’t Re-Create”

In our work it’s important to create afresh each time we do a scene, whether in rehearsal or in performance. The tendency is often to fall back onto a previous way of doing it, a way that has already worked, re–creating rather than creating. We do this in order to satiate our fear, and pander to our need for safety. To continually create something new is demanding, because it might not work, it might fall apart, the new way might garner criticism while the old way did not – the new way is a great leap into the unknown but that’s what creativity is all about.

If however, we choose not to create but to re-create, then our energy drops because the frisson caused by stepping into the great unknown isn’t present, and our work becomes generalised, no longer vivid but dull and plodding – second rate, in short.

Great actors have the courage and the strength to create afresh each time they do the scene, they refuse the comfort blanket of falling back into the old way of doing it.

Create, don’t re-create.

Subscribe To The Great Acting Blog