Drawing A Blank

I'm running a series of Acting Classes at the NVT at the moment, and the second one is tonight (Monday). The main umbrella theme of this series of classes is giving people the licence to make mistakes, to get things wrong, to go for broke, actually break things, and start all over.

Because that's the great fear that a lot of us have about acting, that there's a 'right' and a 'wrong' way to do it, and if you get it wrong, everyone around you is going to call you on it, and maybe even point and laugh. And people pointing and laughing is almost never good for the ego. In my acting classes, and also in the improv workshops I occasionally run, I subscribe fully to the idea that was thrust upon me when I first started learning improv, and I now deliver towards anyone in my classes: you can't get this wrong.

Of course, as a tutor or workshop leader, you might just be making a rod for your own back when you state to your students that you can't get it wrong. What you're trying to engender, obviously, is an atmosphere of, if not exactly fearlessness, certainly a group who have the willingness not to five a damn. Of course it's true that there are always going to be performers who are less obviously skilled than others: maybe they find it more challenging to be realistic, or perhaps they can't switch off the internal joker. Maybe, simply, they're just not that charismatic onstage. Whatever the reason, the secret code of 'You can't get this wrong' will solve those problems for a surprising amount of people.

It can backfire, however. I remember running an improv workshop a while back with a noticeable number of people who were clearly a little nervous at the whole concept of turning up on stage with no plan or preconception of what they were going to do. So I spoke even more than I usually do about this whole idea of not being able to get stuff wrong ('You can try, but you still won't get it wrong'), and in addition, I put forward quite a few simplified improv games that had a limited amount of outcomes. Much like a magician forcing an audience member's hand, if the nervous actors in the class only had a limited amount of choices available to them, then it was much less likely that they'd be able to get things 'wrong'.

That was the theory, anyway. There was one particular chap in the class who wasn't in any way nervous. And he made every attempt to systematically sabotage the acting class. He'd rehearse a scene with a partner, and then when sharing it with the rest of the class, he'd riff in an entirely different direction, leaving his poor acting partner nonplussed and confused. During a warm up exercise, which involved the group passing a long broom handle to one another in a circle, he snatched the stick off someone, and twirled it around himself, screaming like a samurai. After each incident, he would fix me with a baleful gaze, and, smiling softly, would say: 'well, you did say we couldn't get it wrong'.

Tonight's Acting Class will mostly be about the removal of choice. It's something that began to get discussed towards the end of last week's class: if, as an actor (or indeed, writer, or whatever) you are given access to a blank canvas, and told you can do whatever you want, chances are your mind will soon be as blank as that canvas. But if you're told that your story can only feature women, and has to be set before 1930, and most involve a secret revealed, well, chances are that your problem solving mind will already be hard at work creating a dialogue. Well, that's the theory, anyway. If you're in Brighton tonight, you may want to put the theory to the test.

In other news, I went to see Total Recall last night. There have been countless poor reviews, so I was able to go in with low expectations. These expectations were largely met. At the top of the film, when the various studio idents appear, the words 'Original Film' appeared, which, considering it was a remake, an' all, seemed a tad unfortunate. Turned out it was the wittiest moment in the movie, even if it didn't intend to be.