Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself

by Alan Alda

  How long he stays in his place depends on how long the children can go without giving him a thought. They may not feel like dropping what they’re doing to give him the attention he craves. He depends on their ability to know, like Wiesenthal, the difference between what they feel like doing and what they know is fair. I watch and wait for them to notice his suffering and take him in their arms.

  They don’t let him wait too long. They’re learning to feel for a fellow animal. And seeing them learn that, just as I watched Bea learn it, adds just a bit of feeling to my own life that it’s been worth living it.

  Chapter 8

  * * *

  “Love Your Art, Poor as It May Be”

  Sometimes, standing on the stage, I have an experience of unusual awareness. I know I’m in a theater and that an audience is watching; and I know that the woman across from me is not really who she’s claiming to be. And in spite of knowing we’re in front of other people, I know we’re alone in this room. I’m also aware of something much weirder than that. I’m aware that the two of us are other people, someplace else, arguing over something. We are so completely involved with this struggle, we could say almost anything at this moment. But we say the same thing we said last night. And I’m aware that this is because we’re acting. It’s like an endless arc of images in paired mirrors curving off into infinity. And when this moment is at its most intense, it’s at its lightest. There is no strain; in fact, there’s a feeling of floating. But, of course, I’m aware that, far from floating, I’m standing on a stage that’s raked for the audience to see us better, and I have to be careful where I plant my feet or I’ll lose my balance.

  This multiple awareness is for me the ecstasy of acting. When this happens, there doesn’t seem to be any part of my brain that isn’t working on something. The clock stops, and an intricate pas de deux takes place in slow motion. You choke with emotion, yet you feel nothing. You know everything and nothing at once. You walk a narrow beam a hundred stories high, but your steps are as sure as on a sidewalk. Failure can’t happen. Death is remote. There is no way to know what you’ll say next; and then you say it. And you notice that you’re saying it slightly differently from the last time you said it at exactly this moment.

  This is what it was like for me the year I played in Art at the Royale Theatre on Broadway. Each night, I was dropped off at the entrance to the alleyway and walked down the narrow space between a neighboring theater and a bar, past huge bins sometimes overflowing with the rancid trash from the matinees of three theaters. Inside the stage door, I would write my name on the sign-in sheet, say hello to the doorman, and head up the stairs to my dressing room. Then, within a few minutes, Victor Garber, Alfred Molina, and I would be sitting on straight-backed chairs in a tiny room, where we would lock in a session of ribald laughter and merciless rudeness that would last for an hour. We never talked about the play; we just made fun of one another. And then a few minutes before the curtain went up, we would throw on our stage clothes and resume the jousting until a second before the curtain went up on my first lines to the audience. As Victor and Fred came onstage, it was as though we had never dropped the connection we had backstage. We were alive to one another, flushed with the present moment. We took hands like skydivers—and went up instead of down.

  Once you taste this beautiful madness, you want it again and again. It’s delicious. And in that moment when nothing else exists but you and them, and yet everything exists, that’s a moment when you know what it is to be alive.

  Whenever they ask me to talk to young people who are learning about the theater, I go, hoping to find the words that explain what makes this happen to me. I’m hoping, of course, that it might happen to them, too.

  I don’t try to teach them acting. I’m not so sure I can teach. Once, when I was doing a play in London, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art asked me to come and talk to their kids. The night before, I went to sleep thinking of what I’d say. As usual, I wanted to tell them something they’d remember forever. And when I sat down in front of them, I said, “I’m going to tell you something you’ll never forget. It’s an acronym: A. C. T.” And then for an hour I spelled out what each of those letters meant. The only problem is that I haven’t any idea now what I told them. As a memory aid, it seems to have been a disaster. “A” might have stood for dramatic action, and I think “C” was concentration, but what could “T” have been? “Try Not to Forget Your Lines”? I don’t think I’m a teacher.

  But I do like to infect people with enthusiasm. I’m avid about being avid.

  So in 1998, during the run of Art, when Victor and Fred and I were having this extraordinary experience of utter and total connection, and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts asked me to talk to their graduating class, I went.

  The academy had a special place in my heart, but not because I ever went there.

  Forty years ago when I was starting out as an actor, I wanted to enroll at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts as a student, but I couldn’t afford the tuition. I couldn’t really afford the bus fare to get down there. I also had the misguided idea that if I trained as an actor, the training would somehow rob me of my natural genius. So as a result, I was self-taught, and it took an extra ten or twenty years to get rid of some of the bad habits and pretentious mannerisms I had, many of which came from my natural genius.

  I didn’t want to swamp them all at once with talk of ecstasy, so I noodled for a while on the edges.

  I think I would offer just one or two little suggestions. One has to do with energy. Laurence Olivier said that the actor’s job is to supply the audience with energy—and some people think he might have been overly generous in that area, sometimes giving us more than our money’s worth. But energy is a fact of nature. Nothing takes place without energy. On the stage, just as in the rest of nature, there’s no chemistry without energy. But, as in science, it has to be appropriate and sufficient. It has to be genuine, truthful. The energy some actors avoid is the fake, actorish energy of a century ago. But it’s not necessary for us to mute our energy. Muted energy comes off as a form of stage fright, and it often is. Instead of muting it, we need to tune it to the right frequency.

  We ought to avoid underacting with the same determination with which we avoid overacting. It’s just as boring. In fact, the greatest pleasure onstage comes from being able to drop acting altogether and just zero in on the other person and on what you want from them and, given everything your character is capable of, get it in the best way you can.

  Then I got a little closer to the real thrill of the thing.

  People have been analyzing acting for at least a couple of centuries now and sometimes arguing about the best way to do it. The debate is often divided between a view of acting as an internal process and an external one. But I don’t know if the good actors I’ve worked with are that much different from one another. One way or another, we all seem to get transformed by our imaginations. When we’re cooking, something happens deep in our brains that affects us profoundly. Sometimes it happens as a result of studying the psychology of the character, and sometimes it’s just putting on the clothes. Suddenly, there’s a glorious moment where acting falls away and you’re speaking with utter simplicity. Fancy acting can often feel seductively grand ( for the actor and even sometimes for the audience). But for me, simplicity is the greatest joy for us all.

  Everybody knows that. Or at least we’ve heard it often enough: Simplicity is everything. But how do we get there?

  Jimmy Cagney used to say, “Just stand there and tell the truth,” which for most of us is easier said than done. But is acting telling the truth or just lying well? Some actors I’ve met are convinced that being a good liar is the same as being a good actor. I don’t think so, but maybe acting is like the rest of life: The rewards go to those who can tell the truth and also tell an occasional lie when absolutely necessary. Either way, it’s still not easy to tell the truth.

  Sometimes we’re too anxious to even know wh
at the truth is. Anxiety is a powerful toxin. You can think you’re calm, in command of the moment, and be undergoing an anxiety attack as big as the Norman conquest. Learn what makes you anxious, learn how to control it, or it will control you. You’ve probably already developed defenses against anxiety that seem useful to you. They may even seem attractive—little smiles and perky gestures—but you’ll feel better when you can drop them. There’s no power like the power of the calm and confident. Jack Nicholson said acting is 90 percent nerve. Sometimes when I’m anxious, I remember that and it helps. It helps, as I go to sleep sometimes, simply to say to myself, I can do it. I’ve done it before, and I can do it now.

  Love getting better at it, not getting praised for it. I learned that from my father, who began his career in burlesque. The comics would say of a performer who was constantly looking for praise that he was always taking bows. I learned from my father that if you’re just looking to take bows, you’ll almost always be disappointed, because the applause is never loud enough. The bow is really just a gracious ritual. If it becomes your goal, it’s a drug. The performance itself offers an ecstasy far greater than the drug of the bow after the performance is done. Look instead to love the connection you can have with the other actor, with the moment itself.

  That moment can happen when you perform an art. Any art. It’s a moment like no other. And the better you get at it, the better it feels. But to say you can perform an art isn’t as grand as it sounds. It’s just a good connection between your brain and your fingertips that lets you do something that lifts the spirit. Like pitching a really beautiful fastball. I’ve come to believe that it doesn’t matter how simple the art is, it’s worth all the affection I can lavish on it.

  When I was young, Actors’ Equity had a quote on the cover of their magazine. Always the same one. Each month, when the magazine came in the mail, I studied the cover for a few minutes and thought about it. It said, “Love your art, poor as it may be.” I may have the words wrong, and I forget who originally said it—it was either a Roman or Shakespeare talking like a Roman. But loving your art, no matter how humble it is, can transform you. It’s worth the trouble it takes. It’s true it can sometimes bring you despair, but it can also bring you ecstasy, just the way loving a person can.

  I knew if I kept talking about ecstasy like this, I was going to make them think they could get there in some abstract way. I wanted them to understand that you have to take simple, concrete steps. For humans, flying isn’t magic; it’s physics.

  It helps to remember a few basic things about acting. Show up on time. Know your lines. Respect your fellow actor, your director, and yourself.

  Please, do respect your fellow actors. We’re part of a vast, convivial community. We’ve all run the same gauntlet, and we’ve all had to contend with the unemployment office, unhelpful employers, critics, landlords, and tax collectors. When your friends are up for a part, encourage them. When you’re in a play, give the other actors the stage when it’s theirs; when it’s your turn, take the stage with gusto—and then give it back to them. And when you go backstage after a show to see actors, you’ve got to remember you’re entering a burn ward. These people are raw, and this is not the time to analyze their work. You hug them and say, “You were wonderful.” You have to say You, you have to say were, and you have to say wonderful.

  Don’t try to be honest. The actor is a raw, open wound after a performance. You can’t say, “The play was wonderful.” That means you’re deliberately avoiding talking about the actor. You can’t say, “You are wonderful.” That means he’s wonderful in general, but not tonight. And you have to say wonderful ( brilliant is okay, too, but nothing less). No one needs to hear they were interesting or that they looked as though they were having a good time.

  You probably even need to say, “The play was wonderful,” even if it was a turkey. Never forget that when you go back after a play, you’re talking to the walking wounded.

  And when you’re acting, remember that it’s play. Enjoy it, and enjoy it deeply, richly. Use your intellect as well as your emotions. Try to find out what connects the Apollonian and the Dionysian; the serious and the antic. One without the other is not as satisfying. There are at least a couple of ways of looking at the actor. One is as a priest performing rituals of reconciliation, enlightenment, and dedication…or as a clown performing acts of rudeness, appetite, and functions of the body. Find ways of serving as both.

  There’s an ecstasy to acting, and that ecstasy is a glorious experience, but acting is something else, too. It’s a service to the people who come to the theater. Acting may look like the parade of the vanities, but in fact it can be a noble calling. To be able to be another person on the stage, to let an audience feel that person’s vulnerability, that person’s follies, that person’s courage, fear, strength, lunacy, as their own is to give them a chance to understand better what it means to be human.

  It had taken me a long time to understand what I was telling them that day. My education in the theater started when I was nine, stepping onto the stage with my father and feeling the warmth from both the spotlight and the audience. We were entertaining soldiers and sailors during the war. Performing next to him, I felt my father’s love. He was expressing it through sharing the stage with me and allowing me into his profession. This was, I think, the most intimate he could get. He seemed embarrassed to express emotion or love in other ways.

  As I got older, I was carried along by the pleasure of my contact with the audience. My sense of worth was reinforced by knowing I could please them, so I became good at making them laugh. I knew instantly how pleased they were. But it was still mostly about me.

  When I got older, there was a turning point—a realization that when I went onstage, it wasn’t entirely for me: I had a service to perform. I still got pleasure out of it. It was still intoxicating, but now I began to realize I was also there for these other people, out in the dark of the audience. I’m not sure when this thought first came to me, but I think it was in my twenties when I saw the film Pather Panchali by the Indian director Satyajit Ray. There was a moment toward the end of the story when the father returns from a long trip away from home with gifts for his daughter, who he finds out has died in his absence. The simple power of his realization that he has missed his daughter’s illness and death hit me hard. I knew instantly that it was possible to be absent without ever leaving home. In my own way, I might have been as cool with my children as my father had been with me. A feeling of rawness stayed with me for days. It was as if something in me that I didn’t need had been ripped out of me. A way of behaving that wasn’t good for me or those I loved had been removed, not gently by persuasion, but in an instant, with violence. For a few days, at least, I had been changed by the experience of simply watching a movie. If I could go through this, sitting in the audience, what must other people be going through? It was somewhere around this time that I began to understand that the audience wasn’t only there for me; I could be there for them.

  I had to find a way to put this into words decades later. In 2006, I was invited to another academy. I was asked to join the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Each year, in a tradition that goes back to John Adams, a new group of artists, scholars, and scientists is brought in, and I was asked to speak at the induction ceremony representing all of us from the arts and humanities. This scared me. I wrote about a dozen drafts, each one lamer than the other. Then I remembered what I had learned about my own art, poor as it was: that I was there to perform a service. And when I thought about that, I realized how much alike the humanist scholars and the artists really are. We’re all trying to answer similar questions, and we probably had very similar origins.

  It wasn’t long ago, not even a tick of the cosmic clock, after we first appeared on this wet rock spinning through space and time, that one of us put his handprint on the wall of a cave. Whatever else it meant, that handprint said, “I’m here.” But even before that, there must have been dance and song. Th
ere must have been vocalization; the hubbub of community; the glee of existence. All this, I think, was the birth of the arts.

  We made notches on sticks to count and keep track of things, but the notches we made in our brains were the crucial ones. We began parsing our language so that, in a string of sounds, the order of those sounds had meaning. This let us communicate the huge difference between “My foot is on the rock” and “The rock is on my foot.” At that point, I would think, we could start parsing not just our words, but the world itself. We could go from the statement of “I’m here” to questions like “Where is here, what is here?”—“What’s that over there?”—and the big one: “Who am I who is asking all these questions?” And that, I think, was the birth of the humanities.

  We have all traveled different paths in search of an answer to a question that has nagged us for thousands of years: What does it mean to be human? Together with our colleagues in the sciences, we search endlessly for an answer to that question: What does it mean to be human? It may be the most critical question we’ve ever asked in the life of our species, especially now—when our ability to destroy ourselves is so much greater than our ability to understand ourselves.