Use All Gently

SCENE II. A hall in the castle.

Enter HAMLET and Players

HAMLET

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,
trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,
as many of your players do, I had as lief the
town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air
too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently;
for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,
the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget
a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it
offends me to the soul to hear a robustious
periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to
very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who
for the most part are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such
a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it
out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.

First Player

I warrant your honour.

HAMLET

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion
be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the
word to the action; with this special o'erstep not
the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is
from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the
mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of
the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone,
or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful
laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the
censure of the which one must in your allowance
o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be
players that I have seen play, and heard others
praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely,
that, neither having the accent of Christians nor
the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of
nature's journeymen had made men and not made them
well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

First Player

I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, sir.

HAMLET

O, reform it altogether. And let those that play
your clowns speak no more than is set down for them;
for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to
set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh
too; though, in the mean time, some necessary
question of the play be then to be considered:
that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition
in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.

Exeunt Players

You Are An International Phenomenon

THE WORLD IS YOUR STAGE.

I teach a series of workshops for emerging professional actors to learn how to establish and maintain their acting career. The series includes workshops on marketing and promotion, and preparing for auditions. In one class, I present a series of maps to the actors and ask them to identify their target market. The first is a map of their city, the next their province, then Canada, then North America and, finally, the world. The presentation speaks for itself.  There is no "local" market for a professional Canadian actor. I haven’t yet met a full time professional actor who only works as an actor, only in one city.  Narrow your market that much and you’ve probably diversified into other fields besides acting...

Google any significant film or TV production that’s been shot in the last decade and you’ll get thousands of hits from around the world.  I just tried it and I found a French website about “Less Than Kind”, A Greek website about “Degrassi” and a Portuguese website about Gary Yate’s “High Life”.

It may feel great to be a comfortable, safe, relaxed, part-time Canadian actor, but when we audition for any significant Film or TV project, we are competing with actors from other Canadian and American cities and often actors in other countries and continents.

If you audition for a lead, supporting or principal role on an ACTRA production, you should assume you are competing against actors in Toronto, Vancouver, New York and L. A.  If they’re looking at six people for the role in Winnipeg, there are probably another eight actors auditioning in Vancouver, eight in Toronto, eight in New York and twelve in LA - and the L.A. actors probably have whiter teeth. An international co-production may have you auditioning against actors in Britain, Belgium, New Zealand or France.

Even if the role you are auditioning for is a small “Actor” role that is likely to be cast locally, the director and producers are still comparing your work to all those other actors in all those other cities.  Make sure they’re seeing you at your best.

In a busy centre like Toronto or Vancouver, actors have many opportunities to audition.  I’ve heard different statistics, but it’s reasonable to say that actors in a busy centre may audition for twelve or fifteen roles for every job they book. When I worked in Vancouver, I auditioned anywhere from two to ten times a week in the busy season.  An actor in a larger centre auditions more often in three months than a Manitoba actor auditions in three years.  That’s a lot of practice.  That’s what you’re competing against.

There are advantages to being a “local” actor. If the project is being shot in your town, the producers want to take advantage of provincial tax credits by hiring as many locals as possible.  They also save on airfare, hotels and per-diems by using local talent.  It makes sense, financially to hire a local actor for a locally shot production.  That’s your advantage over the out-of-town actors. It cost less to hire you.  But, it’s only an advantage if your audition is as good or better than the actors in other cities.

Remember the directors, the producers and the casting directors all want you to succeed. They want the next actor that comes into the room to be the one they cast.  They want to say yes to you. You just have to ensure them that they are saying yes to the right actor.

All you have to do to succeed is to do the work and be prepared for EVERY audition.

Read the script, do your homework, learn your lines, be professional, be focused and, most of all, be excellent.  See you at the next audition.

John B. Lowe

Lowe's ACTORNYMS 3

A Good Performance is:

Active - Play actions. Pursue objectives. Don't Show. Do!

Connected - Connect to moments, to others, to body, to emotions.

Truthful - Don't pretend. Be in the moment. Act. React. Really.

Lowe's ACTORNYMS 1

I like to be called an actor.

I'm not keen on being called an artist.

Acting involves more than art.

Art enriches, but the audience needs to be engaged and the story needs to be told.

Acting is:

Art

Craft

Technique

I Succeed When You Succeed

In rehearsal, performance or in an acting class, actors need to feel free so they can be free to explore all aspects of the emotional life of a character and scene. Actors need to be uninhibited and emotionally vulnerable. They can’t be restricted by self-censorship or fear of failure. Actors need to feel safe enough to drop the defenses they’ve developed for life in the real world and remove their carefully crafted social masks so they can be as playful, as open and as un-self-conscious as a child.

A good director or acting teacher will create a working environment where actors feel secure and emotionally protected so they can quickly develop enough trust to be vulnerable and uninhibited. This can’t be treated casually. The importance of a safe, nurturing working environment for actors cannot be overstated. An actor’s creativity flows freely when they are unimpeded by judgment, analysis and censorship. Collaboration works best in an environment of openness and trust.

In my acting classes, I use many games and exercises to develop an environment of trust. One series of exercises involves actors passing balls around in a circle. These exercises have many steps and variations, and I won’t go into detail here, but there is an important point of discussion that arises when I first introduce these exercises to a group of acting students.

I use air-filled toy balls about the size of a volleyball. They’re very light and bounce easily. When the first ball is introduced into the circle, the actors are simply instructed to call out someone’s name and pass that person the ball. I usually let this first game go on for several minutes without further instruction and, almost always, the speed of the game soon increases and one or two actors start throwing the ball in ways that make it difficult to catch. Others quickly pick up on this trend and start tricking each other into missing a catch. Within minutes, the ball gets out of control and bounces out of the circle.

This trend used to frustrate me until I realized it’s an excellent illustration that helps actors recognize the behaviour and attitudes they’ve learned on the playground and the sports field. The ball bouncing out of the circle is an eloquent demonstration of how competitive, selfish behaviour is counterproductive to collaboration and teamwork.

Teamwork is as fundamental to actors as it is to athletes. But, there’s a significant difference in how we view success in the performing arts versus the way we measure success in competitive sports. It’s an important difference that actors must understand.

Simply put, success in sports is called winning, which implies there must be a loser. In other words, success is measured against the failure of others. The implication – right or wrong - is that for one to succeed, others must fail. To be the best is ideal – so we must strive to be better than everyone else and work to make others fail. This attitude may be a key to success in sports, but it’s the key to failure for an actor. That’s the attitude that caused the ball to bounce out of the circle.

Just like in sports, an actor is part of a team. They must work with the other actors, the director and the crew to do the best work possible to succeed as a team. However, the success of an actor and the production are dependent on the success of everyone and enhanced by the failure of no one. An actor doesn’t succeed by winning because there is no one to defeat.

When the young actors in my class are encouraged to throw the ball with the intention of ensuring a successful catch, their focus shifts from the throw to the catch. They make eye contact with other actors in the circle, communicate readiness and carefully throw the ball in a manner that ensures it will be caught. With this small shift of attitude and intention the ball tossing exercise can quickly and easily be developed into a complex series of exchanges with several balls moving rapidly around the circle in complicated patterns with very few missed catches. Now, the ball rarely bounces out of the circle.

Throwing a ball around in a circle seems quite simple but the actions of throwing and catching are not the point of these exercises. When both actors commit completely to the successful completion of the ball transfer, they start to trust and rely on each other and they almost always succeed even as the task becomes more challenging and complex. The important discovery for the actor is the powerful connection that is formed between people who are focused on the successful completion of a shared task with openness and trust.

The beauty and magic of acting are manifested in the unspoken connection between actors who are fully committed and openly engaged in the action of the moment and the almost divine exchange of energy that occurs through that connection.

Friendships, marriages, families, communities and even nations are created and succeed not just through action, but also through the personal, emotional and spiritual connections that are created, revealed and renewed, by those actions. Electing an exciting new leader, playing a game, making love, singing in a choir, watching a play and acting are all actions. But it’s the powerful personal connection that occurs between the people who are openly and willingly sharing those actions that is valuable, joyous and wonderful.

When actors in a company or a class can feel free to work with openness and trust in a secure, supportive environment where everyone’s success is equally important, collaboration and creativity will flourish. When everyone’s success is valued, everyone’s success is assured.

Good advice for actors. Good advice for all of us.

Acting and Learning

There are many reasons people become actors including creative expression, personal growth, the desire to perform and to be part of a creative community. Fame and fortune are short lived motivators - there are much easier ways than acting to achieve both.

What I love most about being an actor are the opportunities to learn. That’s mostly what’s kept me doing this for over thirty years, first as a student, then as a professional actor and now as a teacher – the opportunity to learn, grow and develop as an artist, a teacher and a person.

Actors, playwrights, directors, designers, technicians and filmmakers are always learning. It’s fundamental to their work. Theatre and film use a combination of performing arts, visual arts and literary arts to engage, entertain and enlighten us about our lives, our world and the human condition.

To be an actor means that you are always learning about your craft, about yourself, about others and your relationship to the world. Actors never stop learning.

I am currently the director of the School at Prairie Theatre Exchange, a professional theatre company in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. I am honoured to be given this opportunity to share my craft and to create an environment for actors of all levels to continue to learn in a creative professional environment.

This blog will be my way to share what I've learned and will learn...

John B.


ABOUT PTE SCHOOL www.pte.mb.ca

As part of an established and respected professional theatre company, PTE School has the resources, the expertise and the environment and to ensure a quality learning experience. Whether you’re a student, an emerging theatre artist or an established professional - or if you just want to have fun, PTE School will help you learn and grow as you develop skills you can use on stage, on camera and in real life too. We want to welcome you into our creative community.