The Great Acting Blog: “How Understanding Prevents Under-Performance”

The Great Acting Blog: “How Understanding Prevents Under-Performance”

The better we understand our work, the more fun we can have with it. The number of expressive ideas available to us increases, and ultimately we become more excited about presenting our work to the world. That’s why basic script analysis is so important, it leads us to state our action for the scene in simple, playable terms so that we understand what it is we’re doing. Further, we enjoy a boost by the feeling of self-respect which comes from applying ourselves to problems which are within our control to solve – we’re not worried about summoning emotions or “becoming” a character, we’re just identifying what we’re going to do in the scene. The alternative is a nagging uncertainty, we have some vague sense of what we’re doing but we cannot articulate it. Consequently, our development and ambition are stunted, our options limited, and we under-perform. Effective script analysis which leads to a clean, precise articulation of what we’re going to do in the scene, banishes the doubts and we can proceed with the prospect of fulfilling our potential.

Our career does not have the certainty of a script, however we do get the opportunity to invent each chapter of it and then set about making it happen. It can be tricky for the actor to understand just exactly where he’s at with his career, and even harder to know when he is entering a new phase of it – the advantage over most other professions of being able to invent each stage of our career, is also a complication because our path is rarely concrete, and our career progression is rarely as linear as most other professions, creating a deep insecurity about what our next move should be and when. Just as with a script though, the work of understanding must be done – the point of clean articulation of intent, must be arrived at. If it is not, then a sense of distraction will prevail, and we’ll under-perform not only in a single performance, but in a career, in a lifetime.

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