The Right (Brain) Approach to Acting

I suspect more than a few of you will identify with the below correspondence:

Hey Les,

I think I tend to think with a director’s mind, so when I’m approaching scenes, I think of the final product and how that’s supposed to look instead of all the layers and history and images and thoughts that need to be underneath to get there.

I guess my question is just kind of like, how do I stop doing that? Is it just that I need to let my right brain take over more? Or what?

Dear Director,

Yeah, well, that’s the difference between directing and acting. I had the same problem. I think it’s because I never understood that the road to the product in acting class (i.e., a performance), was any different from the road to the product in English literature class (i.e., a paper). To me it felt like acting class was that same as English lit class, except at some point, after eons of discussion, we got up on our feet and said lines.

But there is a HUGE difference. In English lit class, it’s so much theory, and philosophy, and DISCUSSION. We need to discern the character’s tragic flaw, determine how this text differs from similar texts, determine the themes, etc. In acting class, we don’t need a lot of that stuff – and even if we do, we don’t need as much. We have a different job. We need to figure out how this PERSON THINKS in THESE RELATIONSHIPS and CIRCUMSTANCES and GENRE. Then, we need to look at the text, recognize what the writer is doing technically, and execute the crap out of that. It’s the difference between looking out onto the piece, looking down on it or looking around at it, and RISING UP INTO IT FROM WITHIN IT. It’s the difference between creating a robot — like in WESTWORLD, and conceiving a real, human child – like in bed. One is fake, the other is real.

It was NOT EASY for me to learn to work a different way! I had been endlessly lauded and rewarded for my ability to work in that directorial fashion. I had NO INTEREST in letting go of what got me into Yale, got me award nominations, and leads in stuff. It wasn’t until it stopped working – or at least it wasn’t working as well as it needed to work to enable me to only act for a living — that it occurred to me that there might be a better way. Once I found it, it wasn’t like I was able to throw the old way away. I had to kill myself to change the old habits.

I did it by simply no longer allowing myself to have an overview or external view of the piece or my role in it. EVER EVER EVER. I did Thoughts Out Loud. I Covered Up the Page. Incessantly. I didn’t allow myself to know what was coming up. I certainly reflected upon what had happened in the past, but he future? No. That is the only way I was able to be in the moment.

For some of us – that’s the way it goes. Some actors can ONLY be in the moment. It’s almost impossible for them to recognize or execute a technical. Those actors have to do the same thing with technicals that you and I had/have to do with the organics of listening. MAKE IT HABIT. It’s why we DON’T DISCUSS. It’s why we rarely talk story. (We almost always know the story in tv and film; it’s not complicated. What’s to discuss? It’s not Ibsen, for God’s sake.) By Covering Up the Page and doing Thoughts Out Loud like a religious zealot – actually PREVENTING ourselves from looking at the thing as a whole – we are finally able to force ourselves to be IN it — INSIDE of it — as opposed to AT it — OUTSIDE of it, looking in.

So yes, some people do this inadvertently (primarily right brainers). But those of us who learned how to MASTER school, how to take tests, and write papers that got A’s and be teacher’s pets? It’s MUCH harder for us to be in the moment – to not direct (ourselves, other people, the whole freakin’ shebang). Because we’ve learned that an external view can help us win. And it did. For a long time. So why would we wanna stop? But now we’re here in the Big Time and we are competing with people who are using their right brains exclusively. They are LIVING in their intuition. Our left brains cannot compete with that level of genius. But! If they use only their right brains and we use both? Then? SOMETIMES WE WILL WIN. We might never be quite as genius as someone who doesn’t really use their left brain at all (i.e., think about the lead character in RAIN MAN – due to his profound lack of abilities in most areas, his ability in ONE area is phenomenal), but most roles don’t need a crazy person. They need a solid actor who understands both the technical AND the organic.

So hang out in and learn to love, appreciate, respect and ADORE your right brain as much as you already love your left. If your left is running your acting, it will always be slightly not real – slightly not – great; slightly mediocre. Your only hope is the right.

Does that help?

Love,

LK