There’s no such thing as a bad actor. There are plenty of awful directors though. When a performance isn’t working, it may seem like the Director didn’t “reign it in enough” or, conversely, didn’t “push enough” (although in Australia – the latter rarely happens). Most of the time, a poor performance is a result of poor listening skills. Actors don’t just listen with their ears. A good actor listens with their entire body. Here are some great things for a Director to say when things aren’t working right.
- Keep it simple
- Just talk and listen
- Play off her energy
- Communicate
- Stay with each other
- Let yourself hear what she’s saying
- Watch her eyes
- Just talk and listen
- It’s okay to relax
- Give the lines to each other
- Let yourselves connect
- It’s okay to engage and be affected by her
- I like it when you come off each other
- You can pay attention to each other
- Don’t say the lines until you feel like saying them
This list is taken from Judith Weston’s Directing Actors (p86)
Great book. Unfortunately mine is 4000km away.
I’ll probably be posting lots of other stuff from this book anyway. Maybe making a PDF cheat sheet. There’s no copyright on this stuff. Judith has pretty much taken her stuff from the myriad of Stanislavski, Chekov and Hagan books that are out there anyway. But she’s pretty good about turning it all into plain English.