How to Stop Acting

by Harold Guskin

  —Glenn Close

  Glenn Close hated to audition. When she first came to see me, in fact, she’d just had an audition, for The Manhattan Theater Club’s production of The Singular Life of Albert Knobbs—“a wonderful play,” she recalls. She was intrigued by the part of Albert Knobbs, a subtle and complex woman who had lived her life as a man. But auditioning made no sense to Glenn: “You go in and you read for five minutes, and that’s it. I started reading and I stopped and said, ‘You know what? I’m wasting my time and I’m wasting your time. And so, good-bye.’”

  That was not the end of the story, however. “It turned out that the fact that I had stopped and excused myself was the most interesting thing that had happened in the audition all day,” Glenn continues. “So they asked me to come back, but I didn’t want to go back until I really knew what I was going to do.” Glenn called Kevin Kline and he gave her my name. And when she came in to see me, she said, “I want this part. How can I get it?”

  We had barely started reading together when Glenn suddenly began to weep, and then she lifted the script over her head with both hands and let it fly. I ducked reflexively, but it landed on the floor just a few feet from where she was seated. Although Glenn has no recollection of this, I do—it was so vivid. But she does recall how frustrated she was: “I was tired of feeling vulnerable not knowing how to approach auditions. And I had been acting for a number of years.”

  She was desperately trying to get into the character of Albert Knobbs. Like most actors, she had difficulty breaking through the barrier of shyness when encountering a new role, as she describes in chapter I, and she needed long periods of rehearsal to build her portrayal. But there is little time to prepare for auditions in theater or film, and in the audition itself, the actor has only one or two scenes to define the character.

  When Glenn pulled herself together, we got to work. I told her to take the time to take it off the page. “Just that,” she says, “was major,” a way to avoid being in “this deer in the headlights situation where you don’t breathe and you’re not letting yourself be aware of the world around you.” We went through the script phrase by phrase, thought by thought, image by image for several hours that evening. Her work started to have a calmness and a freedom that hadn’t been there before. Her emotions were full. The lines were affecting her in a very subtle and personal way. She was truly beginning to find the character hidden within—a character whose real identity as a woman was not discovered until her death.

  But this was just the beginning of the character work. What to do about the audition the next day?

  I said, “Do the same thing. Take it off the page for them. Don’t worry about what comes out. It doesn’t have to be the same things that happened tonight. The lines and images may affect you differently tomorrow. Let it go wherever it goes. Most important, let them see you exploring right in front of them, without any care about whether your responses are right or wrong. Forget about performing for them. Let them see how you work, what makes you tick. Then they will get glimpses of your real response to this character and why they will need what you have to offer.”

  A few days later, Glenn called to tell me she got the part. She had approached the audition in an entirely new way. Instead of thinking about what she should or could do, she had taken the time to explore the text, doing what interested her with each line, each moment.

  Having landed the part, Glenn came back to work through the character of Albert Knobbs with me. She won an Obie Award for her portrayal, and over the next decade we worked together on almost all of her roles in film and theater, up through Fatal Attraction. She never went back to her old way of auditioning because she had come to a crucial insight: “It’s insane to go in and think you’re going to give a performance.” Instead, she said, “You come in with your own calm agenda, which is, I’ll see what I can do. All of a sudden you’re doing it on your own terms. It was from that moment that I was able to go on auditions and say, ‘You know what? I’m just going to throw out a couple of ideas,’ rather than saying, ‘This is going to be my performance.’” Freed from the pressure to perform, she could respond to her own and other characters’ lines with instinct and immediacy, revealing herself and the possibilities she offered for the character much more fully. And that is the best we have as actors.

  Most actors are plagued by auditions, especially at the beginning of their careers. This chapter is about how to deal with the problems actors face at auditions, and a healthy way to think about the process. Much of what I believe and recommend runs contrary to the general thinking on the subject. But over the years I have had a great deal of success helping actors prepare for auditions—inexperienced young actors as well as major established actors.

  My fundamental belief is this: auditioning is the beginning of the actor’s work on character—a free, responsive exploration that allows the director or casting director to see the instinctive connections between the actor and the character. Performance is an informed exploration an audience sees after a long, in-depth exploration by the actor in rehearsal.

  When you’re performing, you may think you have a road map—and you’ll have to get rid of it if you want to be any good. When you’re auditioning, you know you don’t have a road map. It’s too early to even pretend that you do. You are roaming around a new country, and if you see a road that looks interesting, you must have the courage and curiosity to take it, without worrying whether it’s a dead end. If the actor stops thinking that he can actually give a performance in an audition, his wide-open exploration can be very revealing both to him and to those who are watching, offering insights into the character they didn’t expect. But first he has to be armed with a few do’s and don’ts to overcome the obstacles to this freedom.

  Ignore the Casting Description

  Casting is a chemical thing: directors and casting directors have an instinct for it, just as actors have an instinct for acting. They may think they know what they want, but a casting description means nothing once they watch a real actor work in front of them. At that moment they are simply responding, and they can’t control their responses. They can intellectualize about what they saw after the fact, but the response itself is pretty much everything.

  It is necessary for the actor to allow this response. The more the actor tells them about the character, and the harder he tries to act the ideas spelled out in the casting description, the less opportunity the observers have to react. When every actor is going for the same thing, and the casting directors can see it coming, they get bored. What they really need is to be surprised. They need to discover the actor right there in the audition.

  In order for this to happen, the actor must be open and responsive to the material—that is, to the script and the dialogue as they affect him moment by moment. Since it is the beginning of his work on the character, the fewer decisions he makes in advance, the more possibilities there are to surprise himself and the observers.

  The hardest part of auditioning is being free enough not to care where you’re going with the character or scene, so that those for whom you’re auditioning get a chance to see you exploring in front of them. Exploration is more attractive, revealing, and useful than anything else you can do. But the actor often serves as his own worst enemy at the audition by caring too much about the casting director’s description of what he thinks the director wants, the director’s idea of what he’s looking for, and the actor’s own conception of what the character is supposed to be.

  Don’t look for right choices. Do what interests you and what you really believe at that moment, because that is the best you have to offer. An audition is about letting them see who you are, how you work, and how the material affects you. An audition should be as much for you as for them.

  Don’t Memorize

  I believe it is better not to memorize the lines for an audition. I know this is not the general view, but I think memorizing lines creates an added concern—you’ll be afraid that you will forget th
em. You should always have the script open and in front of you. If you really know a line, then say it. Otherwise, just look down and take it off the page.

  I’ll go further: you should never try to memorize anything!

  If you are working correctly, you will come to know your lines simply by listening to the other characters and responding. If you spend as much time as I am asking you to spend on taking it off the page, you’ll find you memorize the lines without being aware of it. Even long monologues come naturally and easily this way, because the thoughts and images in your head are coming from the lines you’ve taken off the page. There’s nothing, therefore, to forget.

  Prepare for Auditions by Taking the Other Characters’ Lines Off the Page

  When you prepare for an audition, take the other characters’ lines off the page as well as your own. By this I mean make their lines what you are hearing or what you are thinking about. Say them out loud. Improvise with them. Free-associate with them. Verbalize your thoughts and feelings about them. In fact, spend more time on the other characters’ lines. Make them yours.

  Working this way forces you to listen and to be available when auditioning and acting, instead of overworking your lines. By taking your attention off yourself and how you’re going to say your next line, you will be ready to focus on the reader and, most important, what he’s saying to you. How your line comes out is then a surprise. This is the beginning of real freedom in acting.

  Suppose I am preparing to audition for the role of Medvedenko, the schoolteacher in Chekhov’s The Seagull, and I’m preparing the opening scene we discussed in chapter I. I start with my first line: “Why do you always wear black?” I breathe in and out, letting the question roll around in my head and then look up and say the line out loud for myself.

  Then I look down at the next line. It is Masha’s: “I am in mourning for my life.” I take her line off the page, as I did mine. I breathe in and out, look up, and say it. Then I repeat it, making it mine: “You’re in mourning for your life?” I think, You believe your life is over? Why? I let her line wander around in my thoughts as long as it interests me. I think, What an over-dramatic load of crap! I may even verbalize it. Then I look down for her next line, “I am unhappy.” I repeat the process. I say, “You’re unhappy?” And then I verbalize my thought: “What do you have to be unhappy about?” I look down at my next line, “Why? I don’t understand …” I look up and say it for myself Looking down I read, “You are in good health.” I look up and say it, feeling irritated with her. “I’m the one who should be unhappy,” I say. She’s healthy! And so on and on.

  I repeat this for the remainder of the scene, taking the time to verbalize Masha’s lines and my thoughts about what she means. I spend more time on her lines than on Medevenko’s. This puts me in a responsive state with her lines, almost like listening. Spending so much time dealing with her lines and my feelings about them helps my own lines come to me easily and allows me to explore. Things become apparent to me about the scene but I make no hard decisions. If an idea strikes me, I make myself available to it. I don’t force myself to repeat it. In fact, each time I take my lines and the other character’s lines off the page, I let them go wherever they go. Sometimes I do something outrageous—yell when I’m saying something sweet, or do something stupid that doesn’t make sense, or gently say something that is really cruel—to allow myself to be arbitrary. In this way, I explore my lines and the other character’s lines in many different ways, opening myself to a range of possibilities.

  Dress to Feel the Part, Not to Look the Part

  Often actors dress to show the director what they think the character should look like. But if you are too specific about look or dress, you may shortchange yourself and the character. You must remember that you don’t know this character yet; you are just beginning to explore. And there is nothing more disconcerting than seeing an actor come into an audition in costume and make-up. It seems desperate and amateurish; it doesn’t allow the auditors room to respond.

  So don’t think about the look of the character. Instead, wear whatever makes it easiest for you to feel comfortable with the character’s words and lines. Let the character tell you what to wear or what not to wear. Dress for yourself, not for the audience. If you think you should be sexy, dress to feel sexy, not to look sexy. Trust your instinct.

  Don’t Work Yourself into an Emotional State

  It is not uncommon to enter the waiting area for an audition and see actors who won’t talk to or look at anyone else. They have worked themselves up into what they think is the requisite emotional state for the audition and are desperately trying to hold on to it while they go over and over their lines.

  This is not a good idea, because when the actor comes to audition, he may find himself waiting a very long time before he gets his chance to be seen. As the actor waits, that edge of concentration will drain out of him. When he is finally called, he won’t be able to listen or respond, for fear of losing what remains of his keyed-up energy. Working for the emotion, he will miss being truthfully in the moment.

  Don’t work yourself into an emotional state, because in the end, the emotion will be too forced. Trust yourself, and stay in the moment. As Glenn Close says so perfectly, “That’s basically the strongest thing you can show: that you hear, you respond, and you take your time to show there’s something going on between your ears.”

  Note: You may find the section on “Getting to Big Emotional Moments” in chapter 5 useful for auditioning as well.

  Come with Your Own Agenda

  Arrive at the audition with ideas or choices—just a few of them—that interest you. The more things that interest you, the merrier—but don’t set them in stone. Come prepared to play with them. Then you will be open to your responses in the audition room, and new choices may arise instinctively.

  I remember an audition for the Gravedigger in Hamlet at the Public Theater. Kevin Kline was to play Hamlet, and he didn’t like the candidates for the role that he’d seen in the director’s casting sessions. He called and asked me to read. I usually like to be outside productions my clients are involved with, but in this case I figured, what the hell.

  I had only a day to prepare. As I was exploring the scene on my own, taking the lines into myself and verbalizing them, I instinctively thought, “Don’t try to be funny, but allow yourself to be irreverent.” Even though I knew the play very well, I had never worked on the Gravedigger except to read opposite Kevin in coaching sessions. So for me, it was like beginning on a new character.

  I thought, I’m a gravedigger. Every day a new body Every time I dig a grave, another bone. Shovel them in, day in, day out. It’s all work to me. As I explored the lines over and over in the short time I had, I kept going to different places, sometimes bored, sometimes playful, mean, angry, clever, stupid—but interestingly, always uncaring.

  I thought, like all work, digging graves is probably boring. So I have to amuse myself. But how to keep myself interested? As I let the lines wash over me, I realized that the Gravedigger is messing with people all the time. For example, he mocks the coroner’s decision not to say that Ophelia drowned herself, in order to allow her a Christian burial. “Here lies the water—good. Here stands the man—good. If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is will he nil he he goes—mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself. Argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.”

  Everyone else is spooked by graveyards and death, but to the Gravedigger, they’re a job, so he sings while digging.

  HAMLET. Has this fellow no feeling of his business? ’A sings in grave-making?

  HORATIO. Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

  HAMLET. ‘Tis e’en so, the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.

  At the audition, I was singing very loudly and badly in the grave (I’m a terrible singer, but it’s fun to make people cringe) when I heard these lines. I thought,
Here’s a “dainty sense”—Kevin—to play with. In the script, my direction is “Throws up a skull.” I threw my book at Kevin. He was surprised and bobbled it. I grabbed the book back, looked down at the line, then looked up and said, “That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once.” A lot better than me, I thought, smiling. Everyone laughed.

  I hadn’t planned to do these things. But when I came into the audition, I could see that Kevin was somewhat uncomfortable with me there. I was letting him know that anything was possible, that he’d better stay on his toes with me. This choice came, like everything else that day, from my improvisation on the text, my personal response to everything playing on me in the moment, and a few ideas that interested me while “preparing.” I didn’t know ahead of time just what I was going to do, so everything was fresh.

  Kevin called to tell me how startled he had been, and how refreshing it was. And I was called back. At the call-back, though, the director started to direct me, and I saw that he had a different vision of the character. It was a legitimate truth about the character, but it didn’t interest me. I tried pieces of it on for size, to see how it fit, and then went back to letting myself wander through the scenes. He cast someone else in the part, and when I saw the production, it was clear to me that what he wanted wasn’t something I could have given authentically. Even if I had managed to tailor myself to look like what he wanted in the audition, I wouldn’t have had a good experience acting in the production, and he wouldn’t have liked what he got.

  Give Them Many Choices

  The key to auditioning is to separate yourself from the crowd—to give the observers many choices, instead of trying to please the director by guessing which one he wants. Remember, the actor who only concerns himself with being free and available to his responses is the actor who will be watched.