Thinking = Subtext

The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival will take place in Los Angeles in early February.  Colleges from across our region will be bring students who have been nominated for Irene Ryan awards to downtown LA to compete to go to Washington, DC, for the national festival.  I have the honor of working with two very talented young men who are in the competition.  They have chosen as one of their selections a scene from Bent.  Bent is the story of two gay men in a Nazi concentration camp.  It is a challenging play and the scene they have selected is an extraordinarily emotional piece.  Yesterday, after they went through it once, we talked about the importance of the inner monologue, the subtext, that colors the written words of a play.  In other words, the thinking.

I've been cogitating a lot about thinking as it pertains to acting.  And I've come to the conclusion that what we are thinking when we speak is as important, if not more important, than what we say when we speak.

I don't know about you, but I always have an inner monologue running when I'm in conversation.  I may be unusual, but I don't think so...oops, there's that word again.  We've all had conversations where underneath we've thought, "I can't believe I'm saying this."  Or again, "I wish I could change the subject."  We all preview what we are going to respond to what the other person's saying.  Our likes and our dislikes run under our dialogue.  This inner monologue enriches a character we are portraying when we act.  The subtext shows when our characters are having difficult conversations, when we are revealing secrets, when we are telling truths.

This inner monologue is especially important when you are acting for the camera.  The camera reads a person's eyes.  Eyes that are thinking are much more interesting than eyes that are just remembering written lines.  Your face speaks volumes even when you don't have any words.  For the camera, you are what you think.

As someone who has trouble turning off her mind, thinking is not a problem for me.  Going for the hard "think," the inner voice that is confronting the things I don't want to think about is usually my challenge.  And it is the hard "think" that most drama is about, those hard truths that we'd rather hide from ourselves.  The "dark corners" we would rather not shine a light on.

So for my students, as we work on Bent, I am going to challenge them to think, to take that thinking to the hard places.  They have the ability and the talent.  I can't wait to see where they go.

Staying Positive

Acting is a difficult business.  You wait for an audition.  Often the opportunities don't come.  When you do get an audition, more often than not it's just that, an audition, no job.  You can go long stretches without work.  As a matter of fact, I just went through five dry years.  Acting can be a depressing, gut-wrenching business.  The trick is to stay positive.

How do you do that when most actors, or at least this actor, are insecure and sure they will never work again after their current job ends?  A really good question.  As I often tell my students...most actors have a screw loose; we're a little insane.  If we weren't, we'd have jobs that had some security and a reliable paycheck.  So how do you stay positive?  I don't have a really good answer, but I'm working on it.

Part of staying positive is believing in something, anything, but especially yourself.  Believing that something larger than yourself is ordering the universe can put life in perspective and give you something positive to hold onto.  You don't have to necessarily believe in God.  I do by the way.  But believing that there is a presence, a higher power, that makes living possible does help.  It works for AA.  Acting is an addiction for me, so I have to take positivity one day at a time.  For me, if God believes in me, I have to believe in myself.

Another part of staying positive is not putting all your creative eggs in one basket--acting.  Those of us who are artists usually have other creative outlets to get us through the dry spells in our main field of endeavor.  Many actors paint, or make music.  Johnny Depp, for instance, has a band.  I myself write.  I'm working on a book.  This allows my creative juices to flow even when I can't get acting work.

I also use visioning as a way to stay positive.  I have a vision board with the goals I want to achieve and I look at it often.  I remind myself of the goals I have accomplished and focus on ways to address my current goals.  I use my vision board as a visual pep talk when I begin to feel down.

Building a community of support can also help maintain positivity.  I've been blessed with a group of Power Ranger fans who encourage and support me and friends and family that believe in me.  Knowing that there are people holding good thoughts for my success lifts my spirits and buoys me when I begin to doubt.

I'm banking on positivity to make 2013 a very good year.  I believe that all good things have arrived already for me.  Just like Christmas, all I have to do is open the packages.  There will be days, I have no doubt, when it will be harder than it is today to be positive.   But I'm working a positive program and I am succeeding.  Today and every day, life is getting better and better.