Acting : Responsibility of Actors by Neil Schell

Once again, I would like your feedback on this article I wrote a few years back. Thanks much. The Responsibility of Actors by Neil Schell Actors carry many responsibilities. To many such a word as “responsibility” might seem a bit repulsive or scary. Equating the word “responsibility” with negative ideas is usually borne out of past experiences. You know, a parent coming down on you hard for not taking “responsibility” for the state of your bedroom or the heavy-handed teacher declaring your lack of “responsibility” for not having completed your homework. When a word is used in threatening situations over and over, one can get the idea that it’s a bad thing. It seems like it comes from that gruff world that so many stoic, serious people seem to preach as being “reality.” The truth is it’s a good word to embrace. I stumbled across a definition of responsibility that I love using. It kind of wipes away all of that threatening stuff and gets me to see the truth of the word “responsibility.” Responsibility is the action of disallowing anything to get between you and that thing or idea or person or duty you are taking responsibility for. If you want to take responsibility for your car working when you need it to, you don’t let inoperable parts get between you and your car. It is a certain thing that a flat tire will not allow you to drive until you take responsibility for that inoperable tire and fix it. Once fixed, the flat tire is no longer sitting between you and your car. Similarly, an actor can’t let anything, anyone or any idea get between them and the success of their career. If an actor says, “Oh, my agent takes care of everything.” they are letting that idea get between them and their career. Which means they are not being responsible when it comes to their career. Another example of allowing an idea to get between you and your career is blaming. Anytime you blame a person, an economic condition, your age or your hair color you are allowing those ideas to get between you and your career. You can make up many examples for yourself and after you do so you will clearly see the truth of what responsibility is - not letting anything get between you and whatever it is you are taking responsibility for. With that in mind, what is it the actor has to take responsibility for? The list is huge but some things are much more important than others. Finding out what the priorities are is the trick to being an efficient person and to simplifying the subject, art and business of acting. Figuring out what the important things are is the hard part. One of the things that is, in my opinion, near the top of the heap, if not at the very top, is the audience. The audience is the end user of what you do. Without them there is no movie to be made or TV series to shoot. And acting on a stage would be...well, you get the idea. Sometimes it’s easy to fall into the idea that the consumer of your skills is the casting director, director or producer. It is true that they may be involved in your employment but the final consumer is the audience in every case. So how on earth does an actor take responsibility for their audience? Well let’s take a good look at it. If responsibility truly is not allowing anything, including ideas, to get between you and what you are taking responsibility for, that means anything that gets between you and your audience has to be dealt with. Can’t think of anything? How about this very simple example - mumbling all of your lines? Mumbling gets between you and your audience. By not correcting this you are irresponsible to your audience. They can’t hear you. When I am part of an audience and can’t decipher what an actor is saying, it breaks whatever empathy I had for that character as well as the suspended disbelief I had for the story. I get a feeling of being “kicked out.” The bottom line is; the story I am watching becomes much less enjoyable. This is what is called “loosing your audience.” If you were to sit down and review all of your work, including what you do in an audition, with the idea that you didn’t want anything to get between you and your audience, you would be heading directly at attracting a bigger audience. The bigger your audience, the more employable you are - everybody wins. © Copyright 2009 by Neil Schell ______________________________