Method Living

So, someone asked me the other day, what is Method Living?

In short, to see the world through the eyes of a true artist. Nothing more, nothing less.

Traditional method acting employs a tactic of what is called "sense-memory techniques" to draw upon real life experiences from the past and use them in your current character. It's sort of an 'imagine me if I grew up this way' technique, which is the basis for most of modern acting. 

What many people mistake for the whole of method is the whole thing where you are in a character for weeks on end and acting all weird on the set as that character. That is only 1 singular method technique, and it gets a bad rep for the whole Daniel Day Lewis thing. And then there's the method exercises that can go awry in acting class where they do psychology games to "break down" an actor's psyche and get closer to some Id form of the creative process. I don't mess with those in my workshops or my classes. If you want to get broken down to pieces psychologically, there's lots of free ways to do it.

My technique is Method Living. True method living is training yourself to see the world, the people in it, and your own damn self, freely and unabashed, and without judgement. (As the late great Colonel Kurtz taught us through the eyes of Marlon Brando, "it is the judgement that kills us"). For many of my students the hardest part of reaching their potential is allowing themselves to act freely and without embarrassment.

Some of the most creatively expansive things I've ever done on stage took place in my acting class at Northwestern University. I was fortunate. I was honored to have the great David Downs leading my class for 3 years, and the environment he created was one of discovery, and freedom. He encouraged us to reach for new and abstract ways of relating to a character, whether bringing in an observation from an animal at the zoo, or choosing a music number to emote fully and unhindered. One of my favorite exercises we did was when Professor Downs gave out the assignment of going to a statue park and working up a silent story (essentially a mime short) that would lead up to the pose of the statue. 

Although I didn't fully realize it until much later, these types of exercises garnered the state of mind to observe and report the essential ethos of story telling. In most art forms, this can viewed as some heady, intellectual, abstract thing. But acting burns away all of that. And not to say that acting isn't an intellectual sport, but first and foremost, it IS a sport. It takes athleticism. It takes a oneness of mind, body and soul. (And like good music or dancing, it does help if you have soul).

An actor (on stage or screen) gets to be the maestro of moments. It is the stringing together of instances of clear lucidity that pulls an audience in, or makes the character "fly off the screen" so to speak. Too many people think that you have too try hard to emote. It is largely the opposite. If anything you have to try hard during your homework. By the time you get to the set, everything must look effortless. This is only achieved by an extremely high level of preparation.

When I was in the jazz band in high school our music director Mr. Kirk, (we should've called him captain) he had a great saying that has stuck with me to this day. He said that "when we go up in front of the school or at competition, that is a performance. What we do here during class, that is a rehearsal, and what you do at home to prepare for class, that is called practice."

Your homework is your practice. Make sure and put the time in by yourself or you will wasted the time of your fellow actors when you go in for scene study. All of this becomes easily apparent when it is time to actually do a tech week in a theatre run, or heaven forbid, the inescapable table reading. Seeing the world in a constant state of creativity (and keeping a good actor's journal along the way) is the best way to be constantly practicing, constantly taking in new ideas and modes of living and ways of seeing the humans around you. Take notes, but no judgement. Just observe, and let it soak. But you have to put in the time. And you have to want to get better, every single day.

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