On Acting Classes and "Brutal Honesty"

I haven't had much formal acting training in my life. When I was a child, I took dance lessons for eight years (ballet, tap, and jazz, dropping ballet when it was obvious that I was not going to have the body for it), and piano lessons for ten, showing real aptitude there (my teacher begged me to study music in college, and later, when I met my husband, who has a computer science major AND a music major, I realized that this could have been a possibility. C'est la vie.). But even though I loved to sing, my parents never sent me to voice lessons, although I did sing in youth choir for a couple of years in middle school. And we never even considered acting lessons, although I did act in three plays in high school as I've mentioned previously. But the drama department in high school was for weirdos at our school, and I was already very active in band, flag corps and in my senior year, dance team. I also was in two sororities and had a full-time boyfriend all four years, so I had a very active social life (my senior year I went to 14 formal dances!). Taking acting lessons never occurred to me.

But there were two episodes early in my life that indicated I might have more aptitude for the theatre then my family suspected. The first happened in the summer before fifth grade, when I staged a full-scale production of a Scholastic play, "Princess Pat Will be Wed in the Fall," starring most of my neighborhood friends. Curiously, I gave myself a very small part, and chose instead to direct, showing early evidence of my natural tendency to lead which would show up in my business career. The rush that this successful production gave me (about 40 neighbors attended) emboldened me to adapt the Thanksgiving story for Mrs. Killen's fifth grade class, in which again, I gave myself a very small part, proud to be the writer. But the acting bug had bitten me, and it was to surface again, many years later, and take hold of me for good.

But still, when I began to act, I was often told I was "a natural," and since I got work easily from my first audition, I didn't think too much about classes. When I first moved to the Bay Area, I had started an "Acting for Singers" class on weekends that was supposed to be for ten weeks, but I dropped out after two weeks because I thought the teacher was abusive and insulting (remember this!). I didn't study acting again until five years later, in 2001, when I took my first class in musical theatre, which prompted me to start auditioning at the encouragement of my non-abusive, nurturing teacher. But as I began to add credits to my resume, sometime in the second year of my acting career, directors at auditions began to ask me about what acting training I had. Since the aborted "acting for singers" class and one in musical theatre no longer seemed adequate when I was auditioning for dramatic films and commercials, I decided to give some of the short courses offered at local casting agencies a try.

My first on-camera training was Auditioning for Commercials at Beau Bonneau Casting. BBC is probably the premier agency in SF; they handle almost all of the extra work for any TV shows and movies that shoot in the area, and a fair amount of commercials. Like most casting agencies, they also offer on-going classes in Auditioning, Cold Reading, Scene Study, and On-Camera Acting, to name a few. My first experience was eye-opening for me. We were given a "side" (a page with the script on it) and were told to take it and memorize it, then come back in five minutes to read on camera. This was my first time being taped for review, and I was horrified at how much I needed to refer to the text. I looked like a bobblehead. The teacher wasn't unkind, but he didn't need to be. I learned a valuable lesson about keeping my head still just by watching the tape.

More classes and workshops followed, mostly in weekend or one-night form. My first class in LA was with Kirk Baltz, a well-known acting coach who teaches a weekend-long "Actors' Intensive" that focuses on getting actors to reach deeply into their memories and bring out painful emotions in order to be able to access them for scenes later (it's called the Meisner technique). It's a great method of acting, but unfortunately I was still pretty sick with Lupus and the intensity was just too much for me. I only lasted one day. But I still use the basics of this technique to access emotions, especially when I need to cry for a scene.

Recently I have been attending one Casting Director Workshop a month at a place called The Actors' Collective in Hollywood. There are several acting studios around LA that offer these with some of the top casting directors on a regular basis. It is a great way to get seen by the people who cast the types of shows you are looking to be on. For example, I want to be on "The Office" (like nearly every other actor in Hollywood). The Casting Director is Dorian Frankel. She makes the rounds at most of the studios, and I actually did a Scene Study with her back in 2006. So far this year I have met the CD for "Chuck," and "How I Met Your Mother," another who casts Lifetime movies, and another who is casting a new pilot with Alyssa Milano, "Romantically Challenged." One of them said he casts as much as 70% of his co-star and guest star roles from the people he meets from these workshops. I haven't been called yet, but I am hoping!

What made me decide to start studying in earnest was two things: One, I noticed that my booking percentage rate (the number of jobs I get) from auditions is less than those I book straight from my head shots without auditions. This tells me that I am doing something wrong in my auditions, either with look, etiquette, or technique. And two, I was invited to become a member of the Hollywood Underground Theatre Company, and classes in On-Camera Acting, which focus on audition technique, were offered at only $25 a class, are a benefit of membership. So as of February 1,
I signed up for the first month with enthusiasm.

I was a little wary about the instructor when I received the confirmation and the writer said, "Don't be afraid of him - he's not mean, just honest!" She also told me that if I did not arrive before 7:30, when the class began, I would be locked out, and not to bother to try to come in. Okay, I thought, he must be really good. There were seven of us in the class, three of whom were ongoing students, and four of us who were new, all company members. The newbies seemed nervous, the old ones seemed submissive. My wariness intensified.

The instructor began class with a lengthy discourse about his methods which included the admonishment about being late. He then warned us, ominously, "I am not a nurturer. I am brutally honest. I will tell you the truth, and if you can't take it, you don't belong in this class."

I always wonder about people who use the term "brutally honest." I am all for honesty. I am a proponent of truth and open communications. But I don't believe honesty has to be brutal. I don't believe the truth has to hurt. I have found that, almost 100% of the time, people who use this phrase generally do so in order to have an excuse to act like jerks and to say whatever insulting comment that comes to mind in the name of "the truth." It's like Christians who criticize others at church and then say "I'm just saying this out of love." No, they're not. They are saying it to hurt you, most of the time.

So the class proceeded. The students who had chosen to continue with the [abuser] instructor read their scene first, then were evaluated. He told one young man that his new hair cut made his head look like he had a condom on it. He told a woman having problems memorizing her lines that she sounded less like a moron than she had last week. Then, with no direction or guidance, he had the four new students (including me) do our scenes, all shot in tight close up. After we finished, he smirked and said, "Well, I can see I have my work cut out for me." He asked if any of us had ever gone out on any auditions. When we tried to answer, he cut us off and said things like "I'm not talking about the crap that they post on-line, I'm talking about the real stuff, you know, that's on the alphabet, ABC, NBC....Any monkey can do commercials, don't tell me about commercials....Student films don't count. Theatre doesn't count....I wouldn't send any of the four of you out on auditions right now, and I would advise your agents not to send you out."

See what I mean? "Brutal honesty" as a license to act like a jerk, or as one of my friends who has a delightful way of getting to the point put it, "a monkey's nut sack." Another problem with these guys is that they can dish it out, but they can't or won't take it. Whenever any of us tried to respond to a criticism with anything other than an agreement, he would cut us off with another insult. He told one new student that he "mugged" for the camera; the student said "I know," and the instructor, appearing to be furious, said "I never want to hear that phrase again in this class. Because if you 'know' you do something that is wrong, then why are you still doing it?" He told me that I moved around too much on camera and asked if I was just nervous. I said no, thinking "why would I be nervous for this class?" In truth I had busted my butt to get to LA on time, and I was shaky from exhaustion but I wasn't going to get defensive with him, so I just agreed with everything he said.
I left the class feeling as though I had been in a boxing match and I had been TKO'd.

I felt demoralized for the next three days, and then I had a great audition after which the director told me my work was "lovely" (I later got the part, a lead in a play). That helped somewhat. And the next day, after a Casting Director workshop, I was offered the last spot in an Audition Technique workshop taught by Joseph Pearlman, the in-house acting coach at Creative Artists' Agency (CAA), the most prestigious agency in LA. Although this class was $50 per session, I jumped at the chance to study with the acting coach of such notable young actresses as Amy Adams and Zoe Deschanel. (By the way, I had researched the career of the brutally honest instructor; he has never cast anything but documentary shorts and has no teaching credits listed on his website.)

We started the class with Joseph on Sunday morning. He too began his class with a short introduction about his technique. He was warm and friendly, pointing out that he wanted all of us to succeed, and that it was his job to give us tips and technique to do so. He said that it was his style to "nurture actors," and to "help us learn in a nurturing environment." Hallelujah! This could not have been more different from the previous class. None of us were taped, but he had all 20 of us read the same monologue, then he asked us how it felt. Then he would help us work through whatever difficulties he observed. In my case, he said I seemed "tentative, a little stiff, a little fearful." I said yes, I was fearful, because of last week's acting class, when the teacher said that I moved around too much! He said, "Did that feel right to you?" And I said, "NO! No one has ever told me that before." He replied, "So then, throw it out. Just take what works and leave the rest." And then he said these magic words: "You have something very special, Jennie Floyd, and I can help you get to where you need to be." Music to my ears, balm to my wounded soul.

So I dropped the brutally honest instructor's class. Because I can't work with an instructor who treats their students that way. I can't learn that way. And the lesson I've learned is that I don't have to take that kind of crap from anyone. There are plenty of teachers out there who will treat their students with respect and get great results. And I found one when I wasn't even looking. "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."

Til next time,
Jennie