Sometimes creativity in teaching is a matter of figuring out how I can match my expertise to the needs of the students. This can be a tricky process.
It’s January, 2004. I’m guest-teaching an advanced on-camera acting workshop. I’ve planned a lesson according to what I know about the typical students in the class, based on my past experiences as a guest instructor for the workshop. Typically, students are placed in the advanced level class because they have completed three months of study in the beginning level, or because they have been doing professional on-camera work without prior training, or because, a long time ago, they took theatre classes in college.
The regular teacher, Philip, is a casting director by trade. He teaches the students about the mechanics of on-camera acting, and about how to do a good audition. My job, when I come in, is to give them some hard-core acting training, to cover the sorts of things that Philip can’t speak to, since he has no background as an actor himself. Tonight I’m planning a lesson on “making it real.” I’ve noticed, when I visited this class previously, that the students often perform their material as if they are “reporting” it, rather than as if it’s really happening to them. My goal for the evening is to show them how to tap into their ability to believe what they are performing.
It’s a small group tonight, only four students. I ask them to introduce themselves and to give me some idea about their background in acting. Good thing I asked – it quickly becomes apparent that I have grossly misjudged who I would be teaching. As it turns out, three of them have more extensive, and more substantial, professional acting experience than I do. The lesson I had planned would be just short of insulting to actors at this level. Problem: What do I have to offer these folks?
I go ahead with the warm-up, hoping it will buy me enough time to revise my plan. Each student is asked to go on-camera and tell three stories about themselves, two true ones and one fictional one. The goal is for the rest of us not to be able to tell the difference. Afterwards we’d discuss how they made the false story seem real, and talk about how the same process can be used with a script.
But this is too basic a concept for these students. It’s Acting 101. What can I tell them that they don’t already know?
We complete the warm-up and I’m able to give a few tips to each student, mainly about technical matters relating to how performing for the camera differs from working on stage, and we have the discussion I had planned. They’re engaged, but nothing exciting is happening, and when I teach, I want exciting things to happen. Where can I take this lesson that will mean something to these students?
Still unsure, I move on to the next activity I had planned, a classic exercise called Minefield. Minefield has three phases. First, students are asked to walk across the playing space as if they are crossing a minefield. Then the instructor places crumpled paper “mines” on the floor and asks them to cross again, with their eyes closed. If they touch a mine, the instructor shouts that they have been “blown up” and have not made it across the field. In the third phase, the instructor “gives them another chance” but does not actually place any “mines” in the field. The students cross with the same feeling of danger and uncertainty as they did in phase two, simply because they believe in the real possibility of getting “blown up.” The point, of course, is that the experience they have in phase three is the sort of thing they should strive for when performing a script.
The students begin phase one and I find the answer to my problem. As they walk across the space, they begin doing what actors do, they “perform” the minefield. They make big, clear gestures, and create exaggerated characters and dramatic interactions, and give the audience lots of information. And it’s all very fake. Their acting training and experience is working against them, preventing them from creating a real, truthful moment. So my job, tonight, will be to show them how to just be themselves in the situation for the camera. The class becomes about how to NOT act.
After Minefield, we do scene work and it’s tough for them. They are really at a loss without being able to hold a character up in front of themselves. We struggle with it, and it’s hard work, and they dig in and try to figure out how to do this. In the end everyone has some degree of success, and everyone has a clear idea of more work that they will need to do.
And in the end, every one of the four of them pulls me aside before leaving the studio, and tells me how important tonight was to them, how much they learned, how much they think the lesson will help them grow as an actor. That’s the sort of exciting thing I was going for.
