The Great Acting Blog: “The Exhilaration Of First Principles”
It helps to have some first principles to refer to when under pressure, and this is especially true for actors who spend much of their time buffeted by various winds. They help us to say no when we’ve been mis-sold, they help us to say no when we are asked to lie, and they help us to walk away from work we don’t believe in. They guide our instincts by ringing the alarm bell at the crucial moment.
We live in an age where phrases such as “artistic integrity” or even just the word “integrity” are laughed at, and seen as a waste of time, after all why bother to make your life harder with these tricky concepts? Why bother with developing your own point-of-view, it’s just so much more problematic than accepting the one given to you.
Why? Because the employment of our principles, putting them into action, makes us stronger. They are not just fancy ideas but tools to help us navigate our way through the storm. At first glance, it would appear that they make our lives more difficult, but eventually, after they have been employed habitually, they work for us, they help our flow. They simplify complex situations to the point that taking a principled stance becomes more straightforward than capitulation. This simplicity is the sign of our growing strength.
If we are asked to do something which violates our first principles, then we have to refuse. To do it in order to release pressure in the short term, will weaken us for the long term: our capitulation will mean that we will be complicit in our own humiliation, a state of affairs which will not only weaken us, but become debilitating.
We’ve been lead to believe that employing first principles, taking a stance, is difficult, that it’s so much easier just to go with the flow. It isn’t. Continual application of principles is not only productive, but exhilarating.
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