Saturday, March 7, 2009

Do Be Do Be Do

"Try to find verbs . . . and avoid adjectives."
Sam Waterston

A lot of people have questions about what they should be doing to survive—or, if possible, thrive— in this economic downturn. We certainly can’t say acting techniques are going to solve the problem, but they do provide a helpful way of looking at the whole concept of an action plan. Sam Waterston’s advice about adjectives and verbs is a central idea in acting theory. Like most of the smartest stuff, it pretty much boils down to common sense, but not enough actors (or real-life decision-makers) take advantage of its full power.
 
Say you’re Dorothy, plopped down in the Land of Oz. Things are scary and you’re unhappy. What do you do?
 
Well, before you can decide what to do, you have to know what you want.
 
Since you’ve seen the movie before ending up in this horrible situation, you know you want to get home to Kansas. But say you don’t have the benefit of this foreknowledge. If all you know is that things are scary and you’re unhappy, you might think what you want is to find security and happiness, anywhere you can find them.
 
Now say you’re just you, but in the following situation: You’ve just been laid off. Things are scary and you’re unhappy.
 
What do you do?
 
Like Dorothy, you should start with determining what you want. And also like Dorothy, you may well want to find security and happiness.
 
The problem both you and Dorothy face is that that goal, though a great one, is not specific enough to be achievable. There’s no direct route to security and happiness. Would that there were.
 
In Dorothy’s case, she takes the first important step toward her goal when she gets concrete and decides that what she wants is to get home. There’s a person (a wizard, actually) who has the power to get her there (or at least so she thinks). She sets out to persuade that person to give her what she wants. There may now actually be a direct route to her goal. (In this case it happens to be yellow.)
 
Once she has specified her goal, it becomes—not easy, certainly, but easier—to do things that might help her achieve it. Pick up some potential helpers along the way. Throw a few apples. Steal a broomstick.
 
An actor playing Dorothy, if she’s any good, is going to concentrate on Dorothy’s specific, achievable goal and finding ways to actually achieve it. She would not be well advised to put most of her energy into making sure the audience thinks Dorothy appears Dorothy-like, whatever that might mean. This is a fundamental misconception a lot of non-actors have about the craft of acting. They think it’s primarily about taking on lots of characteristics that are not your own, turning yourself into "someone else." And yes, being flexible, able to take on non-habitual attitudes and behaviors, is important to an actor—but a good actor puts her focus not so much on how she’s being but on what she’s doing. Not the adjectives, but the verbs.
 
Dorothy herself (if she were real) would probably not be particularly worried about how Dorothy-like she’s being in this situation. She might even find that the whole idea of "being in character" flies out the window when she discovers herself capable of doing lots of "uncharacteristic" things in pursuit of her goal. Is melting down a witch, even accidentally, a Dorothy-like behavior? Who cares at that point?
 
So the actor playing Dorothy puts most of her energy into pursuing Dorothy’s goals, by doing everything she can to achieve them. Many of the elements of acting that non-actors often think constitute the craft (facial expression, line delivery, emotion) actually arise largely as by-products of that active pursuit of a goal.
 
It’s a technique that makes a lot of sense in "real life," as well. If you’re laid off, you’re not going to get very far by focusing on being resilient or being ruthless or being employable. If your child has broken an expensive dish, simply being angry does no good on its own, and neither does being reasonable. Those are not goals, and they’re not steps toward achieving goals.
 
Part of this is vocabulary, but the way we put things says a lot about how we’re thinking. If "be reasonable" really means, among other things, "use examples to make points that might change the child’s behavior," then great—just choose the latter way of putting it, and you won’t get caught in a vague, passive stance. If you decide the active equivalent of "be resilient" is "make a list of all the transferable job skills you’ve acquired and brainstorm about possible job opportunities," then great—that’s how you should put it to yourself. And then you should do it.
 
Take Sam Waterston’s advice and find the verbs, because that's where the action is. Take the emphasis off who you are and what you’re like and put it on what you do and might do differently in the future.

1 comment:

  1. I love your blog and this entry in particular really resonates with me. Life is about doing, which is not the same as being busy. Doing can encompass anything from practicing stillness and choosing not to do anything before one is sure what to do to taking visible action quickly. I am always amazed at how big projects get done and when I look back on anything big I've accomplished, I realize it took one small action after another after another. Thank you for your thought-provoking and well-written posts - I look forward to more of them!

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