ACTORS: That string of comments I put up yesterday, was meant to illustrate, this: Instinct, intuition, imagination are the critical components to success. Technique can be acquired along the way - but it must NEVER BE FOREMOST in your presentation - or even in your thought - about process.

Technique is the INVISIBLE base which helps channel process. But we must NEVER see it or be aware of it. ANYTHING at all that puts you in your head is counter productive and must be avoided - no matter the teacher, director, school. You will not succeed with technique layered on top of your own reality.

Question: How do you achieve this?

Laurie Mayper: I am not an actress. Isn't it desirable if actors learn all the techniques in a class or workshop setting, practice and risk mistakes, but then on the job, the challenge is knowing which one to use for each scene, and using the skill to do it well? The best actors make it look easy on screen or on stage, because they look natural, and you can't tell they are acting. I took a short acting course in order to improve my script writing, and acting (for me) was not easy and I did not do it well.

Sean Bardgett: Its like life, you have to live in the moment and and be aware of your surroundings like any person would. Your soaking in your environment rather than questioning it.

Mark Schoenberg: ‎Laurie Mayper - That's because, it IS natural, Laurie. The point, I think, is that you must be able, from the get-go, to move seamlessly into the REALITY of text. Technique provides the structure on which you hang the reality. Like everything we do growing up, we think to problem solve. Mom says"use your head", dad says " think it through - ad nauseum. So for a kid wanting to be an actor, feeling before you think is counter intuitive. Yet - it is the only thing that actually works. In the examples I posted yesterday, I talked about Gary Sinese who was self taught. Instinctively, he understands that to be real, the only thing that counts is what he feels in the moment. Acquired technique tells him what to do with what he feels - but the craft is invisible. In your acting class, you were, undoubtedly, plagued by consciousness of self - which is a beginning actors worst nightmare. When we are "in the moment" we are never self-aware. If a new actor can't get through that - he can't, unfortunately, be an actor.

Sean Bardgett: Not a successful one anyways!

Mark Schoenberg: Coffee houses are filled with 50 year old baristas who say they're actors. But they are really baristas. Nothing wrong with that, except their dreams prevent them from living a life free of illusion. Don't get me wrong. Plenty of very talented people, don't get the break they need, or the timing is wrong - or , or, or. But it's the ones who hang onto a mistaken idea of what they're able to achieve that I feel badly for.

Mary Beth OD: I think it just helps to be a little bit wrong in the head. Then, you can invest in whatever reality suits you, or your needs!

Mark Schoenberg: MB - If you choose to live a large part of your life through non-existant people, you ARE wrong in the head. Tee Hee, as Calypso Schoenberg would say.

Mike Lummis: As Mamet says,"The audience will teach you how to act." You can study for years but the real lessons are learned onstage. Sometimes too much learning has confused me and I go back to the basics of trying to be genuine and react to my partner. I saw a 13 yr. old in a film by Ingrid Veninger and he was brilliant. He'd never acted before and was the most natural performer on screen. I asked him how he did it and he said,"Well, I look at my lines and I ask myself,'How would I say that?' He wasn't being precocious. He meant it. It's deceptively simple,like all forms of art.

Mark Schoenberg: It is so simple, folks don't know how to do it. It actually just requires "the doing of it!"

Mark Schoenberg: ‎Mike Lummis Further to Mamet. The audience is a great barometer of when you are 1) cooking or 2) shitting in the pot. You have to have the instinct and imagination to know which is which.