[col-sect][column]I took my first ever acting class last night. I walked up to the third floor of this old building in Gastown, walked down the hall and turned into this room, no idea what to expect. I stroll in someone says, “Hi.” “Hi, I’m Patrick.” “Hey Patrick just introduce yourself to everyone.” “Hey everyone.” “Everyone” is about 8 or 9 other students, most in their early 20’s, about half guys and half gals. I shake hands with this one guy, take my coat off, get this: roll up my sleeves!, make a couple smiles and sit down. The instructor (I’m presuming) is sitting in a big cushy old arm chair in front of us with her back to us. I’m thinking that this is the only class I’ve taken in which the instructor and students are facing the same direction; we’re all facing a single small square table & two chairs in the centre of the room illuminated by two portable work lights fastened to the ceiling with extension cords strung across. The instructor is in her late 30’s, confident, well made-up, in designer jeans and dirty blonde pony tail; she’s seated with crossed knee and busy writing receipts for everyone. My first impression of this affair at this point: well, I don’t know what’s going on, but receipts? Ok, so it’s at least legit. 

A few minutes pass. I still don’t know what the hell is going on, but from the casual chatter and relaxed posture of most of the other kids, they’ve done this before and they know each other; I gather that I’m one of a few newbies in a month to month rotating course. A note about the demographic of the class: I’m the second oldest in the room and hey! I’m also not the guy with the longest hair. There are three black people. Three! In one room! In Vancouver, in my experience, unprecedented. (Background for those not familiar with Vancouver’s ethnic mix: for our level of pride for diversity, Vancouver is not home to many black people. At all.) 

Ok, and the receipts are done. So now handouts. Its organized: My role and partner have already been determined in advance; I’m given a photocopied one-act play called “Domestic Violence”. Ok. I have a quick look: there are two characters and only one is male. So that’s me. Read a bit more. Huh, okay it’s a guy who’s unsatisfied with his marriage. Gee, there’s a massive leap in logic. Still no introduction or anything. Fine. But now we’re out of our seats and all walking to the other end. For something. We’re standing in a circle and okay we’re doing vocal warm-ups. Oh man. Tongue twisters. I had to read this aloud to everyone present:

Betty Botta Bought A Bit Of Butter And Said She
“This butter’s Bitter. If I Bought A Bit Of Better Butter It Would Make the Batter Better”
So She Bought A Bit Of Better Butter And It Made The Batter Better.

Yes it was hard. Then, still in a circle, we had to construct a collective story on the spot each speaking just one word like the telephone game. Also hard. Especially because the guy before me said “pickle.” Pickle? You childish dumb fuck. What is this grade two? What am I supposed to say after pickle? Well we pushed on and made a lame story about mustard ketchup and pickles. Please this must end. And it did. 

Read all over

Then STILL not having any introduction as to what will be happening over the course of the, ah, course, we go back to our seats and transition directly to the “readings.” I’m like what? Okay, readings, meaning we’ll each go up to the front and read our part with our scene partner. Pickle fuck head and his partner are first up. Pickle and girl sit down at the table. Everyone’s still shuffling into their seats. We’re all ready to go and this guy walks in. Another long hair! Now I’m number three in guy hair length. I didn’t know who he was, but he’s like 25 minutes late. Instructor’s like, “Ah there he is late as usual. Late guy (I forget his name), you’ll have to do each warm up tongue twister at the front.” He saunters in taking up more space than he has and sits down next to me. then he makes a loud water drop sound effect from his mouth. Instructor goes, “I haven’t heard that in a while.” I’m thinking, What? What is this? Random unprompted sound effects? I don’t know man, stuff happens in this room. You just have to let it go. I’m cool. And now Pickle and girl read their parts. Pickle was reading aloud like we did in Grade 9 French. I was confused. What’s with the dead-pan recital; I thought this was an acting class. Are you acting like a dumb-ass? Is that you’re part or is that just you? It was just him. Fifteen minutes later it ended. I had no idea what their scene was because my brain shuts down when pickle does dead-pan. Total non-sense. Brain says, “Deude, you’re not missing anything. Just recline into your internal dialogue and re-emerge when pickle’s done.” The best part was when Instructor said, “Come one Pickle, stop reading like that.” 
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Then the post scene instructor comments. This class is based on the work of acting coach Uta Hagen: you are always coming from somewhere and going somewhere. We’re encouraged to explore the how’s and why’s of your character. Think these through in advance. What was I doing just prior to this scene? What is my present state of being? What are the immediate circumstances? What is my obstacle?  We have to write these answers out for ourselves. Okay, we’re up next. I had only about 20 seconds with my partner Katie before we went up. She said, this woman is nothing like me. I said yeah, she’s some kind of relationship perfectionist or something. Well, let’s give it a go. So we sat down and just went for it. It was actually a lot of fun. My character is this guy who is frustrated that his wife is so eager to please and so accommodating and apologetic, despite his being a lazy ass. She wants him to be happy, yet he’s not. I thought that it’s fairly straight-forward to imaging where this guy is coming from. Men need challenge. We stagnate without it. I was feeling it until the character says:

“Why should you change? You’ve already reached perfection. Where can you go from here? I’m the one who has to change. I have to get away. i have to find someone who’s loathsome and worthless. Someone who never bathes. Someone who makes me look good. You can’t give me what I need.” 

Men & Women 101

No. Wrong. The guy has a legitimate beef. Nobody will be satisfied with a suckass do-gooder. It implies that we could have done a hell of a lot better. Mother Nature has designed men to be inspired by women who are a challenge. Elusiveness, unavailability, high standards. These make us want to aspire to be better. To improve. Being stuck with someone who’s sole goal in life is to kiss our ass is the opposite. It’s life sucking. We stop trying, stop improving, stop growing. It’s death. That’s the reason. He’s shrinking. My take is that the writer was aware of the condition, familiar with the frustration of a man with a wife who’s a pleaser, but doesn’t understand where it comes from. He’s patching in what he doesn’t understand with what may make sense to him: the analysis is not deep: “Well why would you be frustrated with someone who tries to please you? Well because you don’t deserve them.” No. Not how it works. This is a logical argument. But the causes of attraction and its opposite are counter-intuitive, not logical. Attraction is determined by a primitive algorithm devised by Mother Nature not to make us happy but to make us attracted to those who will give our offspring the best shot at survival. Completely different objective than happiness. We’re not attracted to those who are submissive or meet our every whim, but to those who stand up to us, those with fight, those with higher status. If you understand game and attraction, it’s pretty clear that the direction the writer takes is just wrong. A guy may think that he wants someone to please him, but what he wants beneath the surface, beneath his consciously knowing it, is the chase. But to chase, a man needs someone who’s not in his face 24/7. The frustration doesn’t come from self-hate or the petty need to look good in comparison to a low-status wife; in fact, a low status wife LOWERS a man’s status and self-worth. A hot wife who’s confident and knows her worth improves your status. Improves your life. Sigh. You can’t teach this stuff. 

Explore the space

That error aside, the part is fun. I get to lose my temper. I get to make my ‘wife’ cry. That’s cool, but it doesn’t take long to realize that there are infinite ways of expressing each line. I tried a few during the reading: I intentionally cut off my partner’s last word; I whispered; I played with the rate, slowing down in mid-sentence. There’s so much you can do. And a lot of these go through your head as you’re reading, but you’re partly confined by the fact that you are in fact reading. So you can’t do a two handed grab of your wife’s shoulders if you have the script in hand. You can’t get up and walk around or kick something if you’re trying to keep pace on the page. You can’t play with your iPhone as she’s rambling on – you’re stuck to the paper. So, to really explore this, you have to memorize. Probably totally obvious, but if you’ve never thought about it before, when you try it, it’s clear immedately.

Every course I’ve ever taken has been about preparing for the future. Write this down. Memorize it, document it. Apply it. You’ll need this for your career. It’s all been so future-oriented. But acting class is completely different. The objective is to learn how to be “there” in the moment! Total inverse. But despite the lack of conditioning or preparation that I’ve been able to acquire through previous education, I think I can handle it. It’s like knowing that there are a thousand solutions and you want to try them all. thing is tat you have one read in front of the group. After it’s dine, for the next two hours you sit and watch. It would SO much more effective to study privately. 

I walked out of class with this polar opposite thoughts alternating in my head: one was that acting was really easy. The other was that acting is really hard. 

One interesting observation: I started studying building technology and then architecture over ten years ago; I’ve got 6 years of experience, two degrees, professional affiliation, ticked all the boxes and yet until I get my exam results show up in the mail, I still can not legally call myself an architect. But in contrast, in acting, on your first day of class, you’re an actor.[/column][/col-sect]

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