So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.
Even though this is poetry with rhymes and all, don’t think of it that way. Deal with each line as if it is a line of dialogue. Take each line off the page in pieces, looking up any words you don’t know. Don’t worry about understanding the whole sonnet as you work. Instead, let each phrase into your head and allow it to make sense in itself. Say it simply. Whatever the line means to you at that moment, say it with your own feelings.
Gradually, you will become aware that this short series of lines is making sense to you and creating feelings in you. It will also allow you to become comfortable with Shakespeare’s phrasing and vocabulary as well as his imagery. Don’t try to be poetic, and don’t panic about not understanding the sonnet at first. Be patient, work in pieces, and it will come to you.
After spending at least a few days exploring the first sonnet, try another. Men and women both should find Sonnet 29 interesting and rich to work on.
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
After working on these two sonnets, you may want to continue with others. I think it is quite valuable to work on a new sonnet each day for a couple of weeks. After the initial insecurity even experienced actors feel beginning their work on sonnets, I have found that actors discover a true exhilaration in these gems.
Then go on to soliloquies. You may use those suggested earlier in the book. Or women should try Isabella in Measure for Measure, Act II, scene 4:
To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,
Who would believe me? O perilous mouths,
That bear in them one and the self-same tongue
Either of condemnation or approof,
Bidding the law make court’sy to their will,
Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite,
To follow as it draws! I’ll to my brother.
Though he hath fallen by prompture of the blood,
Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour,
That, had he twenty heads to tender down
On twenty bloody blocks, he’d yield them up,
Before his sister should her body stoop
To such abhorred pollution.
Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die:
More than our brother is our chastity.
I’ll tell him yet of Angelo’s request,
And fit his mind to death, for his soul’s rest.
After reading the play and working for at least a week on this soliloquy, begin your work on a scene from the same play: start with Isabella’s entrance in Measure for Measure, Act II, scene 4, with Angelo.
ANGELO. How now, fair maid!
ISABELLA. I am come to know your pleasure.
Men should try Angelo’s soliloquy in Measure for Measure, Act II, scene 2:
From thee,—even from thy virtue!—
What’s this? What’s this? Is this her fault or mine?
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most, ha?
Not she; nor doth she tempt; but it is I
That, lying by the violet in the sun,
Do, as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be
That modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman’s lightness? Having waste ground enough,
Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary,
And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie!
What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?
Dost thou desire her foully for those things
That make her good? O, let her brother live:
Thieves for their robbery have authority,
When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her,
That I desire to hear her speak again,
And feast upon her eyes? What is’t I dream on?
O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue. Never could the strumpet,
With all her double vigour—art and nature—
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite. Ever till now
When men were fond, I smiled, and wondered how.
And then try Measure for Measure, Act II, scene 4, with Isabella. (Start at the beginning of the scene or at Isabella’s entrance.)
Note: When you read the play, do it from beginning to end out loud, not just your lines but all the lines. Don’t rush your reading. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. You will find it getting easier and easier to understand the dialogue and be free with it. You will also find your speech relaxing and becoming less regional. If you do this with a number of his plays, you will never have any trouble acting Shakespeare. It’s what I did when I was a student. And it has made Shakespeare’s work accessible to me and a joy to read, to act, and to teach.
EPILOGUE
“ … What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!”
—Hamlet in Act II, scene 2
A specific role—especially a great role—requires that the actor prepare in specific ways. An aspiring actor also needs to prepare, in a broader way, for the acting life.
I encourage young actors to go to college—to a liberal arts college, not a conservatory for acting. It is important for young actors to study things that will expand their knowledge and trigger their imaginations, so that they will grow as people and have something to bring to the roles they will eventually play. After college there is plenty of time to go to a conservatory for graduate studies in acting, or for professional training in New York or Los Angeles. But the broader personal studies should continue. Listening to classical music, reading the great novels, poetry, and plays, going to the ballet, and wandering through the great museums broadens your interests, your ear, your eye, your language, taste, and curiosity. It makes you not just a better actor but a complete actor.
I have nothing against rock, rhythm and blues, and other popular forms of music—in fact, I am a lifelong fan of jazz and blues—but I think classical music opens us to sound and feeling in a very different way. It offers a more complex and subtle range of textures, a more elaborate vocabulary. Without the distancing effect of language, it connects directly to our emotions, probing the unconscious and stimulating us profoundly. No wonder research shows that children who are introduced to classical music at an early age display greater concentration, better verbal skills, and higher IQs.
And listening to the music of a given period is crucial preparation for specific roles, like being exposed to the air people breathed in that time and place. If you want to act the characters of Shakespeare, Molière, Chekhov, and Ibsen, you must have John Dowling, Lully, Chopin, Mussorgsky, Schubert, Schumann, and Beethoven in your ear, in your soul. The music will affect how you move, stand, talk, even think. You must be within the sounds of the time in order to embrace the text and freely explore it.
If you are new to classical music, don’t stop listening to the music you love. Just
add to it. Start with Chopin, because he’s so accessibly emotional. Or if you prefer, Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven. Buy a recording. Go to an orchestra concert or a recital. Ask a friend who knows something about classical music to make some recommendations. Better yet, if you can, take a listening appreciation class.
Look at great art—not reproductions but the originals, so that you can see the artist’s brush strokes. Instead of connecting you to the period through your ear this will connect you unconsciously through your eyes. As Jennifer Jason Leigh comments, art “moves you in a way that’s not cerebral. It can tell you so much about a condition, or about a state, a feeling, a relationship.” You don’t need to be a scholar to get something out of a piece of art. In fact, small, regular doses are probably best, to keep the imagination from working overtime. When I was a student in New York City, I spent an hour of almost every day roaming the galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I discovered the monumental power of Rembrandt, the intimacy of Vermeer, Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Manet. It took me six months just to make it through the Impressionists. Little by little the paintings taught me to see faces and expressions, human life, the way these great artists saw it. I still can’t stay longer in a museum than about an hour before I start to tire from the images coming at me, visual art is such a powerful stimulus.
Go see classical ballet. It’s an acquired taste, and it may take a while for you to appreciate it. But ballet unites music, drama, and movement in a way that is enormously inspiring for an actor’s sense of the stage and his movement on it. The drama in ballet is expressed in pure movement. I still rank among the most memorable interpretations of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew a touring production by the Stuttgart Ballet, choreographed by John Cranko. His view of the story and the characterizations of Kate and Petruchio by dancers Marcia Haydee and Richard Cragen were a revelation to me, and I learned more about Kate’s final monologue from the pas de deux at the end of the ballet than I had from a year of touring with the play. In fact it is a love duet between Kate and Petruchio, not a monologue for the actress.
Reading classic novels, poetry, and plays stretches the actor in a different way. It exposes him to language that is richer than our own, and it imparts an understanding of history that period movies, written from a modern sensibility, can’t. It also allows him to imagine the landscapes, customs, and manners of a given period. And it can be valuable as inspiration for contemporary characters as well.
When I began work with the brilliant French actor Tcheky Karyo on a Neil Jordan film, The Good Thief, he had just been reading the Portuguese poet Fernando Pesoa, who wrote, “Make your reality a dream and your dream a reality.” Tcheky had to play a detective in the south of France who is conflicted about his job. Among other complications, he has grown fond of a thief (played by Nick Nolte) who is also a gambler and a drug addict and will spend the rest of his life in jail if he is caught again. On the face of it, the script was a thriller, and the dialogue seemed almost cliché. But Pesoa’s poetry had inspired Tcheky with all sorts of ideas and fantasies. He began to see his character as someone who has difficulty with his reality—“Maybe he’s quite slow, always bothered by something, forgetting to tie his laces on his shoes, attracted by innocence, sincerity.” Tcheky sensed a melancholy in this character and found himself drawing on the music of Mahler. Its spirit of melancholy was mixed with curious flights of lightness and charm. Although the story and character were contemporary, the complexity of the poet’s and composer’s works played in the actor’s ear and heart, bringing out hidden depths.
After all these years, I have not lost my love of art or music or dance or literature. It is much of what I am, and maybe the best part. It’s also why Shakespeare, Molière, and Chekhov came so easily to me as an actor. Exposure to great art and artists has given me a broad and deep view of character, and a confidence in my own instinct and imagination. It has inspired me, and it can inspire you, if you give it a chance. It will help you to bring greater depth and imagination to your characters.
So if you want to be an actor, immerse yourself not only in theater but in art, music, dance, and literature. And while you are soaking up art, keep on acting. By all means, pursue the chance to act in whatever medium you can, but always find time to act in plays. I always tell actors, “Make the theater your anchor. Then you will always know who you are.” Plays are about character, and on stage there is no place to hide; the audience sees every response, unedited. It’s just the actor and the script, and the actor is responsible for everything he says and does. Much as I love film, I still believe that the soul of acting resides in the theater, and it remains the best place for the actor to learn about himself and his acting.
Many colleges have a constant roster of student productions. If those opportunities are available to you, use them. If there is no theater where you are, create one. Put on the great plays—Shakespeare, Chekhov, Strindberg, Ibsen, Molière, Brecht, Beckett, Miller, Williams. Throw yourself into great works so that you have great writers’ dialogue to explore. This will take you to explorations of yourself. It doesn’t matter whether you succeed in the part or not. You are young. No one expects you to get it right, especially with these plays. But if you fail on good material, you will still learn. And you will not be afraid of these plays later, when you are supposed to know something.
Finally, avoid expending your energy on too much consideration of “the business.” Put your concentration on the work of growing as an actor and a human being. Discover what makes you tick as an actor. Use what works and discard whatever gets in the way, no matter how sound the concept. Find your own way, and “the business” will find you.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the help of David Finkle. He encouraged me to write it in my own words so that the reader could hear me directly. He helped me to trust my writing, which was very difficult for me. I thank him for his generosity in sharing himself, not just his expertise and insight, but his warmth and sensitivity. The enormous amount of time we spent together from the very beginning of this project made the book a reality.
My editor, Rebecca Saletan, did something for which I will always be indebted, and for which I cannot thank her enough: she listened to what I said about acting, and she truly “got it.” Because of her integrity, the editing was always true to my work. She helped me to clarify a process that seemed impossible to get down on paper. In addition, she made it possible to bridge the gap between the literary and performing worlds with wit, intelligence, and unwavering honesty.
Thank you to my agent, Charlotte Sheedy, whose wisdom and enthusiasm set all the wheels in motion.
My endless gratitude to Kevin Kline, who, in allowing me to talk in depth about our long relationship as teacher and student, continues to astonish me with his courage and determination to take risks. It is this quality, combined with his boundless imagination, that touches all of us who love his acting.
To Brigitte Lacombe, un bisou for your incredible artistry, and for making it fun!
My thanks to Ellen Wolf for transcribing my longhand scrawls, and for helping to fill in gaps in the writing from a student’s point of view, by allowing me to tape some of our coaching sessions together.
To the actors who provided interviews in which they shared their experiences of working with me, I offer my deepest gratitude. They have made this book a personal journey which I hope will give the reader a more organic understanding of the work I do. Thank you to Kevin Kline, Glenn Close, James Gandolfini, Matt Dillon, Christopher Reeve, Peter Fonda, Bridget Fonda, Ally Sheedy, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tcheky Karyo, and Chris Noth for giving me the gift of your time, your thoughts, your words.
To the long list of actors I have coached and taught, a special thank you for your trust. Working with you has given me a lifetime of joy.
Most of all, I want to thank my wife, Sandra Jennings, for never taking her hand from mine. It was her idea that I write this book—and her conv
iction that I could do it if I trusted myself and my instinct, in much the same way as I ask actors to do, when I ask them to reveal themselves in front of an audience and take that thrilling leap of faith to freedom, which is what acting is all about.
Copyright © 2003 by Harold Guskin and David Finkle Introduction copyright © 2003 by Kevin Kline
All rights reserved
Faber and Faber, Inc.
An affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
www.fsgbooks.com
Designed by Abby Kagan
eISBN 9781466801660
First eBook Edition : September 2011
First edition, 2003
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Guskin, Harold, 1941—
How to stop acting / Harold Guskin.—1st ed. p. cm.
1. Acting. 2. Acting—Psychological aspects. I. Title.
PN2061. G79 2003
792’. 028—dc21
2003040891
How to Stop Acting Page 18