The Great Acting Blog: “How To Keep Your Head”

The Great Acting Blog: “How To Keep Your Head”

Acting, as we know, can be a degrading business. Actors are vulnerable because effectively they’re selling themselves, their face, their personality, their body, and so if they are slighted or treated shabbily it can be more painful than it would be in most professions. Directors can think they’re doing the actor a favour just by letting them be seen, which can manifest itself as a lack of respect. Often, actors must keep their professionalism in place while apparent superiors allow their’s to slip. Despite all of this, actors need to remain positive and open.

How can actors keep their heads then? By thinking about the audience. See beyond the director and the audition and the myriad other things actors need to confront, see only the audience and how they will respond to the performance. Imagining them is strengthening because they are the very object of the actor’s work, the rest is just process. They do not judge the actor, they come to him simply to be delighted.