Acting Concept: Acting is Doing

This is the basic numero uno prime and ultimate concept to master. Acting is doing.

What does that mean? In the most obvious sense it means when your character is onstage searching for his blue sock, you the actor will be onstage searching for your blue sock. You aren’t pretending to search. You are searching. You aren’t demonstrating to the audience that your character is searching and you aren’t emoting about how much you love the blue sock. You are truthfully searching for the blue sock.

Now, of course, you as the actor will know that the blue sock has been put under the center sofa cushion by the props master. (You know this because you always check your props before you go onstage, right?) So the question becomes how do I truthfully and purposefully search for the blue sock when I know that my character finds the blue sock under the sofa cushion in Act III because the last line of the play is, “How the hell did that get there?”

So if I know where the sock is how do I truthfully and purposefully search for the sock? That’s acting. You put yourself in the imaginary world of the character and live in that moment when your character has lost his sock and ONLY that moment – not the moment in Act III and not the moment earlier in the day when you spilled coffee on your white shirt. You invest yourself fully in the moment when your character realizes his blue sock is gone and begins to search. That moment is the only moment that exists and you search and you really truthfully LOOK for the sock and that’s all you do.

Simple, right? When an actor isn’t truthfully and purposefully doing the thing she is supposed to be doing onstage, everyone in the audience knows she is “just acting”. When she is truthfully and purposely looking for her sock, everyone in the audience wants to get out of their seat and help her find the sock. Because she has invested 100% of her energy in the DOING because she needs to find that sock! It’s important! It’s the only thing that matters in that moment.

This concept is so simple that it seems silly for me to be going on and on about it, but the ability to do something truthfully and purposefully under imaginary circumstances IS acting.

Okay? Now you know how to act. Go out there and knock ‘em dead.

Now, let’s take it a step further. When your character is speaking to another character she has a purpose. She wants something. And she isn’t just saying her lines out loud – she is truthfully and for a purpose (because she wants something from the person she is speaking to) begging, cajoling, teasing, flirting, seducing, diminishing, escaping, berating, belittling, proving…

What did you notice? They are all verbs. So – as an actor you have to know

a) what your character wants and

b) what she is DOING to ensure that she gets what she wants then

you truthfully and purposefully DO that thing for that purpose.

You aren’t pretending to belittle the other character by raising your voice and putting your hands on your hips and getting all up in his face. You ARE belittling him. Really DO it. Make that person feel small – tiny – worthless. Make them want to crawl out of the room. When you are truthfully DOING that, the rest – how you stand, move your hands, etc. will take care of itself.

(Note: A lot of the how you move, how you talk and how you carry yourself onstage falls under characterization. You discover that as you build the layers of the character’s psyche and physicality. We’ll get into that later.)

Back to acting is doing. The actor invests herself fully in what her character wants and DOES whatever her character needs to DO to get what she wants. What the actor is never, never, never doing is trying to remember her lines and say them “right”. Never, never, never. Lines are a given. By the time you are onstage, you should know your lines so well that they simply fall out of your mouth because you are fully invested truthfully and purposefully in DOING the DOING (insert verb here).

Here are some wonderful books that will tell you the same thing:

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Now, you can’t learn acting by reading or listening to a lecture or watching a video (which I hope to have here for you in the near future). You have to do it. Here is a wonderful exercise that gets you to DO truthfully and for a purpose. This was taught to me by Manuel Duque, a brilliant teacher and director that I was lucky enough to study with at Penn State. The exercise is called Sleep and Steal.

Person A: Is in his/her room sleeping. This person must get comfortable, shut their eyes and try to fall asleep. As if – you are in your bedroom, you need a nap and you have 2 hours before you have to be somewhere. You are invested in the need to sleep and you lie down and make yourself go to sleep.

Person B: Has to sneak into the room and steal something that Person A has hidden in the room. You have to get whatever it is NOW and you CANNOT wake Person A up. As if – Person A has something that you desperately need and if you don’t have it now, you will have to endure horrible consequences. And – (as) if – Person A catches you or finds out you have taken this thing, he/she will hunt you down and make you miserable for the rest of your life however long or short that may be.

In order to do this exercise truthfully and purposefully, you must craft the imaginary circumstances that make sleeping and stealing a necessity. You need to know:

Who is Person A?

Who is Person B?

What is their relationship to one another?

Where are they?

What is the hidden object?

Why does Person B need the hidden object now?

Why does Person A not want Person B to have the hidden object ever?

Now, under those imaginary circumstances, Person A SLEEPS and Person B STEALS. Sleeping and stealing are verbs. That is what you are DOING. Do that and invest yourself only in that doing. And…GO!

The exercise ends when Person A wakes up and catches Person B or when Person B successfully steals the object and gets out of the room. Here’s a little caveat Person B cannot do anything to Person A to keep them from waking up. Leave Person A alone. You steal the object.

So how does the concept of acting is doing relate to real life? Again, it seems simple and obvious, but a lot of people (I’m including myself) never actually get around to DOING what we say we want to do. We spend a lot of time thinking about doing, planning how to do something, waiting for the perfect time and perfect circumstances that will allow us to do something and talking about doing.

All of the above things are good things – thinking, planning, talking. The trouble starts when we get stuck in thinking, planning and talking about and never make the leap to actually DOING.

We read books that tell us how to do what we want to do and buy products that promise to make what we want to do easier to do. And, still, we don’t ever get around to actually doing the thing we want to do. Everybody falls into these same traps. It’s just part of being human.

So first of all we need to know that we aren’t the exception in this. And then we need to acknowledge the things we have accomplished. Because, being human, we tend to minimize our accomplishments. We’ve been there and done that. It isn’t a big deal to us any more because we’ve already done it.

Here’s and example: I was surprised by a young lady’s reaction to the fact that I had lived in New York City. She looked at me and said, “Wow! You really lived in New York?” My first reaction was, “Yeah. So? No big deal.” I had forgotten that I used to be that young lady. Eons ago when I was a girl growing up in West Texas and I met someone who lived in New York I was completely star-struck. So when this person gave me that same look, I realized I had forgotten who I used to be. A wide-eyed young actress who wanted to make it in the Big Apple. I actually supported myself as an actress in New York City for a year at least. I had an Equity card, I paid my rent and I put food on the table. That’s something! It’s something I constantly diminish. So – no more! That’s a big accomplishment and I’m putting it on my list.

What are your accomplishments?

What have you done that you don’t give yourself credit for?

When you are a great grandmother or a great grandfather what stories will you tell about your life that will make your great grandkiddo’s eyes open wide so you can hear them say, “Wow, Nanna! You really did that?”

When you ask yourself what stories you can tell them also ask yourself what stories do you want to be able to tell those kids. What do you need to do to be able to tell the stories you want to tell?

And – what are you willing to do this week to get yourself closer to being able to tell that story?

I’m asking these questions of myself and of you while keeping in mind that, as a great CoachU teacher once said, we are human beings not human doings. (Which is another interesting discussion to have in the future.) This isn’t about making a great big to do list and crossing off the action-filled minutes of our lives. This is about who we are and what we really want and asking ourselves if we are willing to do what we need to do in order to have what we want. Writers write. Actors go to auditions and act. Painters paint. And as human beings we have the ability to create whatever we want to create with our lives.

Tags: Acting