The Great Acting Blog: “Don’t Jabber, Man”.
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The clip is from the film version of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker, it’s a play I’ve always longed to do.
The work you do is a reflection of who you are, and they say we tend to employ people who are the same as us. Your personal culture selects the road you go down and will ultimately determine where you end up. One person may admire your point of view, someone else may ridicule it, and someone else may be repulsed by it. All actors have the experience of auditions where one panel on one day respond as though you are a genius, and another panel on another day seem irritated by the apparent poverty of your talent. Our work will appeal to some but not others.
This is why I say the actor must define the ideal work he wants to do, and strive to become an artist capable of attaining that ideal. The level of excellence reached is proportionate to your ability at the time (and anyone who refutes that notion or longs for a lucky break is not only deluded but grindingly unhappy, for their life is not their own). The alternative to pursuing an ideal, is to be a “general actor”, who just wants “an acting job”, playing a numbers game by sending out your CV dozens if not hundreds of times for anything and everything in the hope of getting an audition, and then going on audition after audition after audition and eventually landing work by virtue of simple mathematics. It’s not a lot of fun, and it’s pretty meaningless. The more precisely we define our terms, the more empowered we are to act and shape our future. If, however, there is no precision but only a general statement, then we shouldn’t be surprised if we feel directionless and lack conviction.
By becoming the person we want to be, we might just find that the work we want to do comes our way too. |
James Devereaux/ 30.03.2011
You have to master craft and technique if you want to be an artist, exuberance and talent will only take you so far, you’ve got to know why you were good when you were good and why you were bad when you were bad. IT’s the only way to progress. Thanks for the comment Deryn, and for the tip.
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