The Actor's Algorithm

Forward To Do, Or Not To Do? In 1600AD, Shakespeare wrote: “To be or not to be…” He did not write, ‘To do, or not to do.’ When Hamlet considers whether life is worth living, he largely considers life in terms of experiences. In the 33 lines of the famous speech, Shakespeare enscribes 13 human experiences, such as ‘heartache’, ‘shock’, ‘the oppressor’s wrong,’ etc. Shakespeare’s exploration of the human condition is heavily focused on human experience. In this speech he dramatizes human phenomenology, not human action. Today’s dramatic artists are taught that the human experience is best dramatized through action. Most actors take for granted the practice of assigning actions to lines of dialogue. Everybody does it. Few question it. This practice began in the 1890’s when Constantine Stanislavski taught his actors to do so at the Mosco Art Theater. He came up with the idea after researching the models of human behavior available to him at the time. He attempted to elicit realistic dramatic performances from his actors by utilizing ideas from a brand-new field of ‘science’ known as psychology. The emerging behavioral model of that time stated that humans desire things, and take actions to get those things. So Stanislavski applied that model to writing and acting. He instructed actors to identify what their characters wanted. He called it the character’s objective. Then he asked actors to identify how their characters would go about achieving their objective. For example, if the character wanted to get the girl, the character would achieve the goal by amusing her. Then the character might impress her. Next the character might invite her. So Stanislavski instructed his actors to break the script into beats, or smaller sections, and assign verbs or action words to each beat. Over one hundred and twenty years later this action-based approach is taught in studios and universities worldwide. The practice is included in every popular acting technique. Classical Acting Technique, Hagen, Adler, Meisner, Practical Aesthetics, The Method, Checkov, Spolin, and the many contemporary offshoots of those techniques all adhere to this exercise. This action-based practice is easy to teach, and it affects a type of behavioral change immediately. Most practitioners believe it works. The downside is the practice is an artificial construct: it is not how humans actually generate authentic behavior. How do I know this? I followed Stanislavky’s lead. I asked cognitive scientists. The initial discussions blossomed into an ongoing collaboration, which lead to a class entitled, The Science of Acting. As a requirement for The Science of Acting class taught at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts in 2014, twelve actors created final projects that incorporated science and acting. One student chose to capture and compare two different performances of a monologue. Her husband performed his favorite audition monologue for her, which she captured on video. She then introduced him to the brain based techniques in this book, and taped the second performance. She presented her project to the class. As we watched his first performance, we saw he was talented and very familiar with the monologue. However, the moment the second performance began, several students gasped aloud. We immediately saw and felt the difference. If we had only seen the first performance, it would have been labeled good acting. Once we compared it to the second, we could see he was acting in the first. In the second piece, his acting choices disappeared, he fully experienced the situation, and his language flowed as if he was constructing the language for the first time. I believe audiences have been conditioned to accept most acting as believable. But when an audience sees an actor immersed in a performance, we know it and appreciate the performance as sublime. Did this comparison illustrate that these new techniques are a great supplement to the existing practices? Yes. This young man had prepared using his own approach before adding the techniques in this book. Actor’s that use the action/objective approach will improve their performance by adding these techniques to their current routines. I also strongly believe these new techniques are a valid substitute for the old ones. To date, I have worked with only a handful of new actors; actors who have not yet created the mental habits instilled by the action-based approach. And in each case, they progressed quickly. These young actors developed healthy and effective practices to embody authentic behavior. These techniques can be used by actors who want to add a new tool to their actor’s bag of tricks, or they can be used to instill new habits, and/or completely revamp your existing approach. Acting techniques are due for an update. If the great Stanislavski were alive today, he would evolve his system, just as he did when he was alive. He would educate himself about advances in human behavior. He would acknowledge the changing needs of the actor as new technology emerges; movies, televisions, phones, augmented reality, virtual reality, and whatever’s next. And he would alter his system accordingly. If he knew that despite the wealth of knowledge readily accessible today, every university and acting program in the world teaches concepts based on obsolete psychological theories from the 1890’s, he would be flabbergasted! This book is for actors who know in their hearts they are capable of more: Actors who follow every step they were taught and yet, sense something is missing. This book is for actors who intuit there is a more organic, more efficient way to embody authentic behavior. It provides an alternative way to think about the skills of acting. It also offers a tangible step-by-step approach to embody authentic behaviors founded on contemporary knowledge that is better suited for today’s marketplace. The Actor’s Algorithm is simple to follow, efficient, and effective. It is a no-nonsense, skill-based approach that removes the guesswork from your craft, and enhances your artistic ability to create spontaneous, authentic behaviors in performance.