My apologies to those of you who followed my blog up until this time last year for not updating on my progress earlier. My year of acting training at RSAMD was hugely demanding and involved many ups and downs- emotional, psychological, physical, mental, personal, professional, artistic- you name it. I would not have missed it for the world, even despite the financial sacrifices Karen and I have had to make, and the creative frustrations of being thrust back into the world of being a student again. Worth it though, on balance. I will treasure many experiences. The chance to play Leontes in The Winter's Tale a definite high point, as was getting a huge burst of spontaneous applause for the Angelo-Isabella scene from Measure for Measure at Shakespeare's Globe. Development work on Nicola McCartney's Hartland an immensely challenging, but important experience for me as an actor too, as it has converted me to the notion of playing the personal truth of the text, rather than habitually over-thinking.
To assert that much of the teaching has not been useful would not be right. However that is not to say I will be using a lot it; rather that I have learned some important things about what really does not work for me as an artist. And that was an important, necessary albeit very difficult process for me to go through. Having been asked to assimilate some techniques that felt awkward and unnatural to me, and made me uncomfortably and overly conscious and formulaic in my approach, I gradually arrived at a point of complete saturation about 10 months into the course. I got so fed up with the application of theory about acting that I realised that it was better for me to rely on my instincts and concentrate on stating the simple truth in the moment as i experienced it. And stop trying to work so bloody hard! The misapplication of certain Stanislavskian principles inspired guilt that I wasn't working hard enough. I resented having to do mountains of research and mental preparation to access my emotions. It should be approached with a sense of play. And the goal should really be about not acting. I don't mean I am about to give up performing (although nothing is currently on the immediate horizon just yet!), but in the sense of 'not acting' written about by Harold Guskin. This constitutes a major turnaround for me, similar to the ideas that underpin Practical Aesthetics in fact, an approach I was villifying only 18 months ago (q.v. Feb 2009 previous post)! In fact Mark Westbrook's Acting Coach Scotland which teaches Practical Aesthetics recently made me an honorary member of their Advanced Acting class! And I have to say I'm enjoying it enormously.
By the end of the RSAMD course I had started to believe I had become a worse actor than when I started the course. Many of my friends said that this is a common experience for those who go to drama school- that one becomes so saturated in the conscious application of technique that it starts to stall the car that is the Unconscious, temporarily disabling the muse that is one's creative engine. The important thing was to keep hold of is the fact that would be only temporary and it was worth struggling on until you come through the crippling self-doubt stage.
About the Masters, well I could choose to feel indignant about getting within just 0.1% (one thousandth of a mark) of being awarded a Distinction and ending up with a Merit award; but hey, my college tutors have their priorities and focus, I have mine. So I'm gonna just let it go and move on up!
A big thanks to those of you who provided me with answers to my questions for my research into spiritual empathy and the actor's process. You all helped me enormously to clarify my own ideas about my work, and cut through much of the new age esotericism that had my head in an awful muddle for a long time.
I've returned to teaching full time now (A salary cheque at the end of each month! yey!)- a wiser, slightly humbled individual perhaps.
All my other students on my course graduated (the majority of us with Merits, and six with Distinction!). Well done all, and wishing you all the very best for your future careers.
I'm now preparing to direct Neil Simon's 'Lost in Yonkers' and then Joe Orton's 'Loot'. So more updates to follow very soon- I promise!
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