Rotenberg David - Act

Stories can reveal the truth even if they are not truthful.

Graffiti on the canal street subway wall, circa 1976

I have taught professional actors for over thirty years. I began teaching between directing gigs in regional theaters when I was trying to stop smoking, hence no more work in bars. Yes, they allowed smoking in bars back then. I taught in my Manhattan apartment three nights a week my wife was very patient. In my second year of teaching I was contacted by a young man from Yonkers. He asked if I would set up a class for him and three of his friends. I asked about his background. He was not strictly an amateur, but he was clearly not traveling on a traditional professional trajectory. What he clearly was, was hungry. So I agreed.

On that first night he showed up with his three friends, one of whom was a dark-eyed young woman whose anger was so close to the surface that her face was in almost constant motion. That initial class we talked through some basic concepts, did a bit of improvisation and broke down a simple scene. Because the young woman decided that she wanted to just watch I suggested the three men prepare something from David Mamets American Buffalo for next week.

As they left, they put the money for class on the coffee table. It was obvious to me that the money they gave me was their food money. It was a moment that I have never forgotten.

I watched them from my brownstone window as they trudged through the snow and grime toward the Lexington Avenue subway.

When I picked up the money theyd left for me I immediately thought of the responsibility it imposed on me, and, to be frank, it frightened me.

It was the beginning of my thinking that it was no longer good enough to deliver hashed-over versions of the old acting tropes. Their food money obliged me to relook at what it was that I was teaching and had been taught, and upon closer examination and research I was shocked at how little serious reassessing had been done in the field. How few changes had been made to the classic acting texts, despite the clear fact that an actors world had changed drastically. More on that later.

The following week my Yonkers actors announced that they were ready to show me American Buffalo. I said sure, assuming that they had put a few pages of the play on its feet. They started into the play from the top. They did the whole play, cover to cover, without a break. What they did manage to break in the course of their performance was the mirror over the mantlepiece, a lamp and a windowpane. When they were finished, they turned to me as if to ask, So, what do you think, Coach?

What I thought was that hunger was an essential part of being a professional actor and that these young actors deserved more than the old acting dogma Id been taught.

One of these four aggressive young actors eventually barged his way into the profession. The other two men gave up the fight after a few years. The young woman well, its been my experience that anger can be a terribly destructive emotion when it is not understood.

That was one of the few times in my life that I taught beginners. I still dont teach beginners, and this book is not intended for beginning actors, although if they have enough hunger, theyll be able to find their own way of using the ideas and methods in these pages.

Like most good ideas, the concepts in this book are easy to learn but may take a lifetime to master. Because nothing of any value can be put on a 3 by 5 index card except the thought that Nothing of any value can be put on a 3 by 5 index card.

Acting teaching can be roughly broken down into those explorations that are about finding notes on an actors emotional piano keyboard and those explorations that are about how to play those notes. This book, and my work for the past thirty plus years, is primarily about the latter: how to play the notes you have found; how to understand what your notes mean; which of your notes are no longer any good; which have been false from the beginning; which notes can replace bad notes; which notes are available to you but you dont know about either because they are in a blind spot or are yet to be discovered; and, most importantly, how to play the notes you have in a fashion that, as Shakespeare says, will discourse most eloquent music (Hamlet, act 3, sc. 2).

I have often envied piano teachers at least their students can see the notes they need to play. As an acting teacher you must suss out the notes in an actor and then, as Hamlet says to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, know my stops... pluck out the heart of my mystery... sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass (act 3, sc. 2). In fact, that is exactly what an actor does the actor knows their stops and plays them in such a way that they produce most eloquent music that shares the heart of [their] mystery with the viewing public.

The actors territory is the human heart. It is an uncharted land sometimes defended by terrifying dragons, but it also contains great glories, music and deep human truths. To the hungry actor it is the only land worthy of investigation.

This book, ACT, attempts to give the actor a compass and a few points of entry into that divine territory. It is a journey that, for an artist, lasts a lifetime.