Advice from the Players E-Book

Laura Barnett

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 181

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Essential tips and advice from stars of stage and screen. Actors know the best source of advice on the profession is other actors. Nothing compares with the wisdom and practical know-how acquired through years of working in the business. Advice from the Players features a host of tips and guidance on every aspect of the actor's craft, direct from some of the best-known stars of stage and screen, including Julie Walters, Lenny Henry, Harriet Walter, Simon Callow, Mark Gatiss, David Harewood, Jo Brand, Simon Russell Beale, Lesley Manville, Zawe Ashton and Mathew Horne, amongst many others. Drawing directly on their own personal experience, they offer essential advice on topics including: - Applying to drama school - Getting an agent - Auditions - The dos and don'ts of rehearsal - Acting for camera - Acting comedy - Coping with stage fright - Surviving the tough times - Staying inspired, and much more…Candid, passionate, sometimes contradictory, often very funny – Advice from the Players is a book to turn to whenever you're in need of guidance or inspiration, whether you're a working actor, at drama school, or involved in amateur theatre. It is also an invaluable introduction for those considering a career in the performing arts, and a fascinating read for anyone who wants to know what it's really like to be a working actor.

Leseprobe

ADVICE FROMTHE PLAYERS

Laura Barnett

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Introduction

The Players

Part One: Learning the Craft

To Train or Not to Train?

Acting as a Child or Teenager

Applying to Drama School

Surviving Drama School

Training for Musical Theatre

Passionate Amateurs: Finding Other Ways In

Some Words of Caution

Part Two: Landing the Part

Getting an Agent

Confidence: The Magic Ingredient

Networking

Auditions: A Guide to Success

Typecasting – and How to Live with It

Learning to Say No

Coping with Rejection

Part Three: Preparing the Part

Building a Character

Lines – and When to Learn Them

The Dos and Don’ts of Rehearsal

Part Four: Getting It Right

Making Use of Technique

Acting for Stage

Acting for Camera

Acting Comedy

Acting Shakespeare

Improvising

Coping with Stage Fright

Staying Sane When Things Go Wrong

Going the Distance

Part Five: Taking Criticism

Directors: The Good, the So-So, and the Downright Awful

Reviews: Friend or Foe?

‘Reputation is Everything’: How to Ensure Yours Stays Good

A Few Words on Fame

Part Six: Keeping Going

Day Jobs: How to Make Ends Meet without Losing Hope

Exercising Body and Mind

Surviving the Tough Times

Making Time for a Life Beyond Acting

Staying Inspired

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright Information

Introduction

‘What advice would you give a young actor?’ This is the question I asked a different actor, roughly once a month for seven years, as part of ‘Portrait of the Artist’, a series of artist interviews I conducted for the Guardian.

The actors’ answers were diverse, and invariably fascinating. Martin Shaw said it was best not to even try acting unless you have an absolutely burning desire to do it – and to walk away immediately if you are at all attracted by celebrity. Penelope Wilton advised listening to your fellow actors above all other things. ‘Acting is a communal thing,’ she said. ‘You must make sure you don’t act in a bubble.’ Stephen Mangan’s advice was characteristically frank: ‘Be on time, work hard, don’t be a dick.’ And Olivia Williams simply said, with (I suspect) her tongue placed firmly in her cheek: ‘Do something else.’

Over the years, I formed the impression of a repository of advice living in the heads of busy professional actors: passed on occasionally to those just entering the profession, in rehearsal rooms, on film sets, or over a few beers in the pub – or, indeed, in newspaper interviews such as mine. As the wife of an actor, too, I knew – and still know – how invaluable this advice could be to the listener: my husband often comes back from rehearsals fired up by the conversations he’s had with older actors; carrying their battle-scarred tales of auditioning, touring, working with directors they variously admired or loathed. But generally, this repository seemed an untapped resource: a library, if you like, with no catalogue; no means of accessing the books that line its shelves.

This, then, is what I have tried to do with Advice from the Players: place a ladder up to those tall, dusty shelves, and draw down the books that seem most interesting and most useful. Each of the twenty-six actors I have interviewed for this book has kindly, with the honesty and candour that the best actors all seem to share, scoured their minds and memories for the hard-won lessons they have learnt thus far in their careers, and would like to pass on.

They, and I, have every sort of fellow actor in mind as the recipient: from the teenager enjoying her Saturday performing-arts classes, and thinking about applying to drama school; to the twenty-something graduate writing endless unanswered letters to agents; or the seasoned amateur performer in his sixties, looking for tips on how to sharpen up his act.

I have arranged the actors’ advice into six chapters, each of which reflects a different aspect of the profession – from training, to keeping going through hard times (of which, as any actor will testify, there may be many). Read the book cover to cover, if you like; or dip in and out whenever you feel like it – to build your confidence before that big audition, perhaps; or while preparing to rehearse a play, and wondering just how much research you should be doing to shape your character.

Some of the advice will be contradictory – every actor’s experience of the profession is unique, after all – and you may find you disagree with some of it. But even in disagreeing, you may discover that new light is cast on aspects of your work. For this, ultimately, is the central purpose of this book: to provide guidance and inspiration on every aspect of the actor’s complex, fascinating craft. These are not rules to follow slavishly, but slivers of experience – some funny, some practical, many both these things – cut from the varied lives and careers of professionals who know how challenging acting can be. And, of course, how endlessly rewarding.

Laura Barnett

The Players

Jane Asher

Paul McGann

Zawe Ashton

Bill Paterson

Helen Baxendale

Jenna Russell

Tracie Bennett

Simon Russell Beale

Jo Brand

Antony Sher

Simon Callow

Samantha Spiro

Brian Cox

Imogen Stubbs

Oliver Ford Davies

David Thaxton

Mark Gatiss

Luke Treadaway

David Harewood

Mark Umbers

Lenny Henry

Harriet Walter

Mathew Horne

Julie Walters

Lesley Manville

Samuel West

LEARNING THE CRAFT

To Train or Not to Train?

Three years at drama school, a university degree followed by a postgraduate acting course – or relying on raw talent and accumulated experience? There are many routes into acting: here, our Players reflect on the paths they themselves took, and weigh up the pros and cons of training.

You don’t have to be a trained actor, or have been in the business for many years, to be any good. That’s nonsense, patently: you can get someone off the street who can be stunning. Some actors are very snobbish about this, and feel that it shouldn’t be so. It may be annoying, but it’s true. Jane Asher

Training gives you the chance to play roles that you will probably never be cast as, and to act without the pressure of real audiences and critics. You’re students, so you’re forgiven. You can have a go at finding out what it is that you actually like doing. Julie Walters

I never had much training. I learned on the job. Keep your eyes and ears open: everyone’s always got something you can learn from. Put it in the box to bring out another time. In our game, there is no right way or wrong way. Jenna Russell

Training is incredibly important. I didn’t go to drama school because I started off life as an academic; it wasn’t until I started working as a lecturer at Edinburgh University that I thought, ‘Actually, this isn’t what I want to do with my life.’ But by that time I was twenty-seven, and I thought it was too late for drama school. I missed out on many things by not training. As the decades passed, this has probably corrected itself. At least, I hope it has. Oliver Ford Davies

I always had a certain facility for acting. If I’d become an actor straight away without going to drama school, I would have just emphasised that facility over and over again. I think I would have been the most hollow and shallow actor that existed. But that’s just me: others get on very well without formal training. Simon Callow

Everybody should do drama training – even scientists. It’s about learning how you deal with yourself: about meeting yourself, in terms of your voice, your movement, your imagination, your thinking. It’s physical, it’s spiritual, it’s mental, it’s emotional. It’s every aspect of a human being under scrutiny. The better the school, the more that’s taken care of. Brian Cox

There’s no bar to success in this game.

It doesn’t matter where you’re from; it doesn’t matter whether you’re fifteen or thirty-five.

I’m a comprehensive-school boy from

Small Heath in Birmingham:

I’d only read three plays when I turned up at RADA.

None of that matters.

The business needs fresh faces, fresh energy. You learn on the job, and you never stop learning.

David Harewood

Going to drama school is particularly important if you’re not from London, and you don’t know anybody in the business: it gives you a chance to get an agent. That’s what happened to me. I had no belief that I would actually ever get paid for acting. I remember being amazed when I actually got a paid job. In fact, I’m still amazed every time it happens. Helen Baxendale

Acting is not just about being an actor: it’s also about understanding your place in the world. What drama means, what writers do; the dangers of fashion; what’s popular but isn’t necessarily good. Through training, you learn to purify and rarefy and boil all this down to something quite essential. Brian Cox

Go with your gut about whether drama school is for you. I’m from quite a working-class family. We didn’t have much money, and when a London drama school offered me a scholarship and I turned it down, they called three or four times offering me more and more money. But something in my heart said, ‘No, this is not for you: you are learning as you go.’ I continued as a stand-up – and I don’t regret that one bit. Mathew Horne

There are people who haven’t been to drama school and are great actors and have done very well. But I also know some so-called great actors who could have gone to drama school and learnt a lot. Brian Cox

My regret is that I never went to drama school – I started so young. To learn technique at drama school is very, very useful – I had to pick it up in bits along the way, from directors or voice coaches. You do pick it up over time, but I’d have liked to have it all officially, much earlier. Jane Asher

People who haven’t trained actually tend to be much more technically conscious than actors who have. A proper training, you see, is really about a technique of the emotions, rather than a technique of skills. Actors like Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi haven’t trained, as such – they just learned on the hoof by observing other people. Simon Callow

Acting as a Child or Teenager

Are those weekend drama classes worth it? Should you apply to join the National Youth Theatre? And what are the potential costs of becoming a child star? The Players who also started young share their wisdom.

If you’re starting out as a child actor, as I did, don’t take it too seriously. It’s important not to get too intense about the whole business of acting. Once you’re in the rehearsal room with the director you’ve got to take it deeply seriously, of course – but when you come outside, try to keep it in perspective. Jane Asher

I have a horror of six-year-old children going to full-time stage school. I think it’s wrong. When you’re little, theatre should be fun. Send children to drama groups instead. They give young children confidence; there’s no pressure. Jenna Russell

You know if you want to do it or you don’t: you’re massive on am-dram, and a big musical-theatre geek, or you’re not. So if it’s something you want to do, do as much performing as possible. I was a geek until I was about thirteen: then I got into girls and Radiohead. I still did all the am-dram and performing, but I stopped being madly intense about it. David Thaxton

Drama groups are a great idea for young children with excess energy. I was five when I started at Anna Scher. I instantly connected with it. I walked in and saw a row of laundry baskets arranged on a stage: one marked ‘masks’, one marked ‘wigs’, one marked ‘props’. I remember going, ‘Yeah, I’m going to like this.’ I ended up staying for fourteen years. Zawe Ashton

I strongly recommend auditioning for the National Youth Theatre. It was a very useful place to find out about drama school: I met a lot of people there who were a year ahead of me in the system, and already auditioning. I remember sitting in the halls of residence, writing down a list of the five drama schools that everybody seemed to keep talking about. Then when it came to auditioning, I was able to stay with people I’d met at NYT, all round the country. Luke Treadaway

Audition for the National Youth Theatre. I went when I was sixteen. The process of auditioning, and then of doing a four-week summer school with like-minded people from all over the country, was intense. It was probably the first time I’d met other people in the same gene pool who really wanted to act for a living. It can be intimidating – but you’ll learn a hell of a lot. Zawe Ashton

As far as acting in childhood goes, I’d say: don’t.

I’m lucky that I survived it. Both my parents loved all of us desperately, and I wanted to do it. But I have memories of being away from home at a very young age, and being homesick. Going up for an audition against loads of other children is very difficult: children will come up against enough knocks without having to put themselves up to be knocked down. Then there’s the terrible business of whether you can break through into adult roles. You see so many big child stars who do end up rather messed up.

Jane Asher

Applying to Drama School

There are currently eighteen accredited drama schools in the UK, and countless other acting courses are springing up offering everything from month-long workshops to postgraduate degrees. At the most prestigious schools, thousands of young actors are often competing for every place. Here, our Players guide you through the maze that is choosing a drama school, and give the inside track on standing out from the crowd.

Aim high. Apply to the best-known schools, as they will usually attract the best teachers. If you’re lucky enough to have a choice of places on offer, go for the one where you feel you can most easily talk to the auditioning panel: the place that feels like it ‘gets’ you. Harriet Walter

It’s awful that you can’t

get grants to go to drama school any more:

it’s going to be a profession full of middle-class people.

I know it’s expensive:

if it was me now going into drama school, I wouldn’t be able to go.

But please still do it, whatever your background. We need you.

Julie Walters

Start with the best drama schools, and brace yourself:

there’s an awful lot of people trying to get in. I was very abruptly, and rather cruelly, turned down by the two top schools.

It’s a good lesson for the life of an actor, really:

you will always be competing for parts against the odds.

Antony Sher

Do your research before you go to drama school – and don’t be swayed by your teachers. Mine dissuaded from me going to drama school in favour of an academic degree: I only just realised the mistake in time, and managed to change my course at the last minute. Take all the advice you can – but don’t let anyone put you off by telling you that acting is going to be hard. Of course it is: that’s not a reason not to try. Zawe Ashton

There are a few unknowns in an audition, and it’s up to the actor to make them as few as possible. If you’re doing audition pieces for drama school, then you should have chosen pieces that you can’t wait to do; that you’re good casting for; that you know terribly well; and that you do terribly well. If none of these things is true for you, choose another piece. Samuel West

Most of the accredited drama schools offer a good training. What really counts is the contacts the school has, and how they can propel you into the business. After a three-year course, you really do need to know what the prospects are of getting an agent and a job. It might sound quite Machiavellian, but it’s very important. Samantha Spiro

A one-year course is a better option for a lot of people than a three-year degree. The whole point of it is to get an agent anyway, so if you’ve got a one-year course that you know good agents will come to at the end, just go with that. David Thaxton

Study something else at university first, and then do a one-year postgraduate course. It’s becoming increasingly important for actors to have a fallback position: something else you can do in case you’re out of work for a year. Teaching and tutoring are both great options. Oliver Ford Davies

Don’t ever be deterred because of your background. We got the best of times in the fifties and sixties: doors were opening rather than closing. I was actually given a grant to go to drama school. It wasn’t huge; perhaps £250 – but in those days, that was enough to live on. Bill Paterson

If you have a sense of the theatre as a vocation, and as a very significant job – as it might be if you were a doctor or an engineer; that you absolutely have a massive contribution to make to society, and it is vital that what you do is as right and challenging and brave as could be – then you should try to find a drama school that suits you. Simon Callow

Make sure the college has a very rigorous television course. The industry’s changing, and your training needs to reflect all aspects of the business – not just stage, but film, TV and radio. David Harewood

Your training should set you up for everything. Nowadays, you need to do a fair amount of TV and camera work at drama school as well as theatre. We only had one weekend on that in three years, which now seems ludicrous. At that time, there was an old-fashioned opinion that we would go into the classical theatre and have a career based solely on that. That model isn’t relevant any more. You will want to spend a lot of your career doing telly. Samantha Spiro

Start with the accredited schools. There are some new schools that aren’t yet accredited, but there are many more that never will be. We’re training too many people, and some of them in the wrong way. Some of the teaching is very good, but some of it seems to fit the actor to the profession, rather than the other way round. Samuel West

Don’t just choose the best drama school: pick the place you feel most comfortable in. I ended up at RADA by accident, and I was very lucky. But some people I know went to schools they didn’t particularly enjoy. Some students are much happier with a more physical training; others with musical theatre. So think hard about the kind of training you want to do, and where you want to do it. David Harewood

Read the prospectuses carefully. When I read RADA’s, it seemed like a holiday camp. And when I read Drama Centre’s, it sounded like a concentration camp. I thought, ‘That’s what I need: an acting boot camp.’ And that’s very much what I got. Simon Callow

Surviving Drama School

You’ve chosen a school, you’ve secured your place. Now the real work must begin – and seriously tough it can turn out to be. Let the Players inspire you to get the best out of your training.

Start from a humble point of view about your own knowledge. Be open to everything. It’s better to risk being a prat at drama school than in the outside world. Harriet Walter

Maintain your own identity. It’s very easy to go into drama college and come out a decent singer and dancer, but look the same as everyone else. That’s boring. Know what you’re good at: find your niche, and do it really well. And go easy on the fake tan. David Thaxton

Remember, throughout your time at drama school, that you’re there for a reason: you love acting, and you’re good at it. They wouldn’t have let you in otherwise. Some people start feeling, within a couple of weeks, that they’re an absolute fraud. But what drama school is ultimately doing is giving you tools for your toolbox. You might not use any of these techniques for a few years, but your vocabulary will be hugely enriched. Luke Treadaway

It’s impossible entirely to get rid of self-consciousness as an actor, but a good drama school – and one you work hard at – should free you from it to a large extent, so that you feel you are emboldened to make brave decisions (and fail at them if necessary). At drama school, you’re not worried about what the casting director who’s in tonight thinks of this decision; what your agent thinks; whether this is going to go down well with the TV executives. All those things make actors less good. Drama school is a very good place not to have to ask yourself those questions. Samuel West

The things I learnt at drama school are things I still employ to this day, almost fifty years later. It’s only as I get older that I think, ‘Oh, I see, that’s