What is the Net we want to be without . . .?

When was the last time someone told you to: "Look before you leap."? How many parents have told their kids: "Use your head!"? How many teachers have exhorted their students to: "Think it through!"?

As a kid, I walked around with these stock phrases, and more, pasted to the inside of my skull - and, perhaps, in the world of Mechanics and Brain Surgeons, Lawyers and Stock Brokers (actually I don't know about those last guys any more)- it works.

In the world of actors, not so much. Thinking. Uh, uh. Not during performance. We've been told since childhood that we can try to control the outcome of any endeavor by conscious thought, using the old noggin, as it were. Conscious thought is the net - and the actor has to catch the trapeze without it.

Acting, during performance-and even during rehearsal-is a matter of immediate, emotive response to what happens in the moment. What we acting teachers like to say to the actor(aren't we smart!?): "You don't want to be in your head - you want to be in the moment."

The truth of the matter is that audiences don't go to a movie or a play to see what the actors are thinking about the text. Audiences go for the feeling.

The actor has to think at home. It's home work, building a structure for the performance, learning that structure, ASSIMILATING IT and then LEAVING IT TO WITHER OUTSIDE THE STAGE DOOR!

Let me offer an example. When I learned to drive. That's me and my Plymouth at the top of this post. Stick, baby, stick - the first several lessons, with my poor pop turning green (not with envy) in the passenger seat, I put my brain box in gear as I learned how to change gears without smacking into fire hydrants, old folks (there was no points system back then) and other animate and inanimate objects.

Dad lived through it, I lived through it - and pretty soon, I didn't have to think at all about the mechanics of operating a car. I'd learned. It was part of my muscle memory and I no longer had to pay attention to it.

It's the same for the actor. You learn the role and everything associated with the role (much more about this in coming entries) and let the performance flow freely without conscious thought. No other way to fly, boys and girls. No other way.