The Great Acting Blog: “How Guilt Guides Us”

The Great Acting Blog: “How Guilt Guides Us”

Acting is a never ending process, it isn’t a job, it’s a way of life, every moment of our lives is about growing as an artist, it’s not about working to a clock. That’s why sometimes when we engage in a project that takes us away from it, takes our focus away from it, we become unsettled. We feel that our commitment to this other thing represents a betrayal of our art and craft. We feel guilty. Largely we get this feeling because we know developing an acting career is tough and, in some sense we fear it, we fear that unless we are doing all the right things all of the time then it will bite us on the backside.That feeling is also a warning sign that we may be heading in a direction we do not want to go.

This feeling is useful as an alarm but as an alarm only. The next step is to use your brains and focus on solutions by doing a little bit of analysis. Look at the task which is causing you grief and work-out how it might serve your overall acting goals. If we look closely enough at the task, it may be convoluted but we often can see how it does serve our goals. It’s just a question of bringing it into focus for ourselves.  It’s a bit like doing a script analysis to understand it’s mechanics. If however, you’ve looked into it and cannot see how the task can possibly have anything to do with your acting, then it’s probably best to leave it alone – you are indeed going in the wrong direction.

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