The Great Acting Blog: “How Focus Banishes Fear”
The concern for many actors about getting their own production off the ground or leading their own company is that their acting skills will suffer as a result, or their development will become stunted because their focus will be taken away from their acting. This is a surprisingly common fear among actors I talk to about going their own way. However, like most fears, it only has the power to affect our outlook because it is a generalised, ill defined feeling. But once we articulate a solution we see how very, very simple it all is. It’s just a question of finding time when you can be focussed on those skills, and scheduling that time to work on them (script analysis, voice exercises, writing blogposts etc) and then actually doing it. Once you’ve worked that into your routine, you can concentrate on the other aspects of the production you’re working on without the worry of neglecting your acting skills. A large, invisible barrier is removed. It sounds obvious when written down like that but so few actors actually do it, and they are held back as a consequence.
