The Present Actor: A Practical and Spiritual Guideline to Help You Enjoy the Ride by Phillips Marci

Author:Phillips, Marci [Phillips, Marci]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2012-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

Our greatest glory consists not in never falling,

but in rising every time we fall .

- Oliver Goldsmith

CHAPTER 3:

THE ART OF MARKETING YOURSELF : WHO YOU ARE (AND WHY WE WANT TO KNOW )

The Internal Stuff

W e are all incredibly different and we are all incredibly similar. There are many people who look a lot like you and even more who are “your type”. There are many people who share your sense of humor, world view or personal taste. We are all part of one huge tapestry - all connected and more alike than Governments would like us to know and Yankees / Red Sox fans would have us think. But no one else has the exact same thought process or sees life in the exact same way as you do. How could they? Information and experience, no matter how universal, gets filtered through your unique sieve. You’re a magical mixture of your personal influences, upbringing, dramas, traumas, epiphanies and DNA -- and so there is truly only one You.

That makes you fascinating. Why don’t you trust that? I believe that the single biggest mistake that you can make as an actor is not showing us who YOU are. Ultimately, when we’ve determined that you can act and that you meet whatever external requirements might be needed for a role, it really gets down to Who You Are. Some actors innately understand this, but many don’t.

When you’re in class or have recently graduated from an acting program, you’ve spent a lot of time doing scene study, movement, etc. Training can be a wonderful thing. Be it Grad School or a Meisner class, acquiring tools or sharpening those that you already have can be enormously beneficial to you. The problem comes when you can’t differentiate learning devices in class from the things you should carry with you into the day-to-day professional world.

I can’t begin to count the number of actors that I audition who see the character as a foreign entity outside of themselves rather than seeing the character as a relatable extension of themselves. I’m not talking about someone’s personal acting process here, I’m talking about something on an even grander scale. It’s the philosophical question of “I” as a Being that’s separate from the world or “I” as part of the fabric of the world. However you choose to see it, we are all connected. Whether you like it or not, most of us have the same basic physical processes, male/female plumbing, the same need for food, water and shelter. Almost everyone desires good health and love (be it romantic, spiritual or existential). There’s a lot of speculation about what the most important thing in life is. Many people say “Health - without your health, you have nothing.” Others say “Love. Without love you have nothing.” Both extremely valid philosophies, but I never liked the fact that if I embraced one answer it implied that I was giving up the other.... what is this, “Sophie’s Choice”? I prefer my Dad’s

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.