The simplest advice is often the best.
This line is the crux of it all, it seems to me.
So basic, on one level and
So essential on another that it feels like a no brainer.

What do you do?
Oh, just suit the action to the word and the word to the action. That’s it. Oh, and don’t go so far that you look like a maniac rather than a human being.

But it is quite remarkable how easy it is to stray from this simple bit of strategy.
You could spend years doing any manner of techniques that pull you in many directions, you could stomp, you could repeat, you could make funny noises and funny shapes, you could dredge up your childhood traumas, you could lie on the floor panting, you could imagine your arms radiating out like tree limbs, you could spend years in ballet. . . .but all of that is to simply bring you back to the basics of word and action, action and word.

Like I’ve said I like some discretion in my theatre. I know it’s not the fashion. But I like my theatre thoughtful. I like it discrete. And I especially like performers who can use their own discretion.

Reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking showed me something about my leadership. I lead best when I have followers who can do that, who are independent thinkers, who listen to their inner tutors, who honor their own discretion.

I do not do well with the opposite sort – the sort who need to be told what to do, who feel insecure unless they are following explicit instructions – the ones who’d rather let YOUR discretion be their tutors, having none of their own. I keep waiting for them to uncover their own wills, to grow, to discover their discretion for themselves while they spend a lot of time trying to convince me they have none.

When actors first begin to learn the ways of acting, most are deathly afraid of out-Heroding Herod, of o’erdoing it but most are in no danger of that. Most beginning actors suffer from this second issue – they are mostly too tame, usually out of fear of being the opposite. This continuum of o’erdoing it and tameness strikes me as very similar to the concept of Jung’s Shadows. The tyrant is afraid of his weak shadow and the weakling is afraid of his inner tyrant. Our timidity comes from fear that our inner tyrant will stalk out and start o’erdoing it. Our robustious tyranny is born from fear that everyone will see our weakness, our tame pussy cat within.

In watching young people learn acting, almost everyone starts on the timid side of the spectrum, afraid to stick out and be seen. And usually there’s just one or two that o’erdo it, that go too far, that when they play anger, go storming loudly round the room. But one or two of those is enough for the rest of the group to fear becoming that very thing.

Teaching, then, for a little while becomes about delicately handling the brave little tyrant, about encouraging everyone’s little tyrant out of themselves, letting them all go too far before teaching them how to reign the tyrant in.

The slippery slope of artistic despair – the moment you think, “I can not do it! I don’t want to! I’ll just have a sandwich instead.”
This is where a structure really helps. This is how you avoid the panic. This is how all the discipline you put into place actually keeps you going.

I came to this place to write. I carved out a big hunk of my schedule, took myself out of the loop and found myself with this solitude. And I can feel the fear slipping in, the panic. . . the “what if I came all the way out here and I came up with nothing? What if it’s all a big waste of time?”

But the years of just getting on with it are stronger and can hold back the waves, like a well built dam, it only lets the smallest trickles of that water through.

Like a vaudeville punchline – the rhythm, the repetition, the structure so repeatable, it has been repeated for centuries. Classic comedy. Classic Shakespeare.
And for me, a woman without much religious instruction, it actually taught me a little something about Herod. I learned who Herod was by way of this ham over-doing it actor going past the bounds of what is reasonable.
And I just love the sound of this line. Just the sound of it.

Most of the time, I’m a big believer in non-violence.
You know, I’d go for negotiations before the punch in the mouth.
But situations like this, I might be able to get behind. Terrible acting? Definitely whipping is an appropriate response. Not from the actors, or directors, or anyone inside the process – but from the audience? I’m okay with this as a response.

But actually, it’s rarely the actors that deserve the whippings (though they are often insufferable.) It’s usually the creators of the piece, or maybe the producers who could do with a public beating. Like, who thought this was a good idea? Who will take responsibility for this drek? But, of course, I only ever enjoy the idea of it for a moment before I really think it through.

I guess what I like about the idea for a moment is the idea that an audience could care enough about a performance or a play to get up the energy and focus to give someone a whipping. Even standing ovations feel half-hearted in many theatres, like they’re standing because they should, or because they paid too much money to NOT make themselves enjoy it.

So, no, I don’t think I’d whip the passion tearing fellow who o’er does Termagant. Nor would I whip the director for pushing him in that direction. Nor the producer for putting things together in such a cock-eyed fashion.

I guess that’s one of the reasons we dispensed with whipping as a means of civil enforcement years ago. It’s a bit of a blunt instrument for something much too complex. But I do wish we all cared enough to want to whip.

This passion is something that can be torn, that can be ripped into rags, that can split and break and be reduced to tiny tatters. I picture passion as a bit of silk, a sheet, perhaps or a bit of lingerie. It is something to be cherished, to be stroked and enjoyed not something to be ripped to pieces like yesterday’s newspaper for the gerbil cage.

A passion can be secreted in the pocket of your dressing gown, revealed to only the chosen few, or waved over your head if you’re feeling public about it. A passion can be wound round your heart, nestled between your breasts, draped across your lap.
A passion should be treated with respect – not balled up and destroyed.

O dear American Actor, PLEASE heed this advice! I have seen so many shows that were nothing but shouting, where the arc of the show was, as far as I could tell, not-shouting to shouting to louder shouting to the loudest shouting and finally resolving to uncomfortable silence. Smoothness would be a welcome change of pace, my friends. Temperance is not often talked about in praise of performers – I’ve never read a review that praised an actor for his temperance. But I value it more than almost anything else. Generosity and temperance, give me those performers. You can keep the shouters.

I will take this as my mantra from now on. I do try to use all gently. To use my body gently. To use the people I encounter gently. There were so many years in which people were pushing me to be harder, to be rougher and firmer with people. It ran counter to my intuitions but I would try to do as I was told. I wanted to be right.

But I’ve been on the planet long enough now that I no longer care about being right for others. I’m much more interested in being right for me. And using all gently is right for me. And it somehow touches me to think about it, to imagine aiming at this idea instead of the old models of pushing violently, of using things and people roughly, storming through the planet and the world on it with a “Get out of my way” energy. It might not be possible to achieve the things I want with gentleness. . . but I’d rather achieve nothing with gentleness than achieve something with violence or force. It would be an empty victory.

There are moments, when you first start acting, in which you really do have no idea what to do with your hands. I can remember standing onstage, fully able to recite every word of my lines but utterly confused about what to do with my body. I have memories of my arms hanging by my side, seemingly 12 times bigger than usual, unwieldy and foreign – like someone had replaced my arms with two giant malevolent worms. Controlling those worms felt almost impossible – I felt I had to move them very forcefully to move them at all. It was as if the signal from my brain was full of static and in order to get the message out, it had to be repeated and exaggerated – sometimes it overshot the mark. I think this must be what happens to those people who saw the air too much. The signals have filled with static, the worms take over and they end up making absurd, disconnected gestures instead of their normal human ones.