Fuhgedaboudit . . .

Why is it so hard to just let the performance go? To trust that if you come into the scene, prepared for the first moment - all you need do is let the play/film, the other actors, the environment draw the performance out of you, spool it out as smooth as a cast by a well tutored fly fisherman. Imagine what would happen to that poor bugger if he insisted on examining the line every 6 inches or so. Hook removal must hurt like hell!

So why do you, dear actor, insist on examining every line before you speak it? The chief reason is that you don't accept the environment of the script as real and you don't accept yourself as real playing within it. Self-consciousness or, rather, global consciousness of self is the villain here.

In the real world, where everything for response to the environment, other people, our own joy and/or angst is provided, free of charge, so to speak, our behavior is natural and spontaneous. In the world of the script, as I've told you many times before, none of those stimuli are real at first. Your job is to place them in the text, using the environment, all dialogue and your own (actually, your character's) state of being as a source for all your responses within a dramatic scene. You learn all of this in order to assimilate it and then forget it!! Forget it!!

Forget it. That's not easy. You've been trained since birth to use conscious thought in order to produce a good result. It's the way 99% of people in the world operate. And you can't. You simply cannot do it and succeed as an actor. Forget the fear factor. Don't worry about giving up control of your performance. You're not giving up anything. In fact, you're enabling the dramatic circumstances to become your reality - which is essential in order to enable the audience, for a while, to accept what you're up to as the real thing.

Think, for a moment, about the best performances you've ever seen. What every one of them has in common is that you can't tell where the actor ends and the character begins. It's a seamless blend and you accept it as real.

I can't, simply by writing about it, jolt you into giving up conscious control of your performance. Believe me, I'd do plenty of butt kicking, if I was there, in the moment with you. You'd give up thought as a performance tool in self defense. I promise you, it would be ugly!! You wouldn't need Joe Pesce coming after you with a baseball bat. You'd have me, yapping, "Fughedaboudit!!"