In this spirit, I offer the following ideas. Some of what I outline here I would consider to be rules. Other items are merely guidelines, a flexible approach to use as you embark on what I hope is an exciting and fulfilling journey of exploration.

Get a Journal.

     If you don’t already have a journal or a notebook that you are using for your class, get one. I am partial to the ubiquitous marbled composition books that we all know so well. They’re inexpensive, and if you’re really pursuing this craft, you’re going to be going through a lot of them. Have it by your side all the time as you go through your work, whether it’s in class, when you’re alone examining the text and the character, or in your rehearsals with your partner.

Read The Play.

     The first thing you must do after your teacher assigns you a scene is read the play. The whole play. This I consider a hard and fast rule, with absolutely no exceptions. Now some of you reading this may be thinking, “Really, he had to tell us that? Of course we have to read the whole play. Who would think we didn’t?” Well, I’ll tell you. After several years of teaching, the answer is, “Many, many more students than you would like to think.”  If you already have a firm grasp on this and don’t need it explained, or you think it is too elementary, feel free to skip ahead to the next section. Why must you read the whole play? Here’s a story that might help to explain: I was once teaching at an acting school that shall remain nameless, and one evening I received a telephone call from the director of the school.
     “I have to ask you something,” he said.
     “Shoot,” I said.
     “Why are you only allowing students to do scenes from plays you have read?”
     I sighed and groaned, very loudly, but only on the inside. Clearly, he had gotten a complaint from one of the students regarding some very strong criticism I had leveled in class that day. The student had been working on what I call “The Hot Dog Scene,” from Angels in America. He was playing Joe Pitt, and at one point in the scene, when Louis was talking about how his friend is ill, the actor playing Joe put his hand on his arm, attempting to console him. I immediately stopped the scene. I knew in that moment that he hadn’t read the play. He didn’t know that Joe was gay, and hiding it. I asked him if he had read the play and he said no. I said, “You have to read it.” He said, “The whole thing?” And then I had some choice words for him.
     Back to my phone call with the director of the school: “Well,” I said to him, “as I have explained several times to the class, when I assign a scene from a play, they have to read the whole play, and …”
     He cut me off. “Why?”
     Another sigh and groan from me, and I think that the sigh might have been audible. “Because, even if I assign the first scene of the play, if the last line of the play involves your character saying something like, oh, I don’t know, let’s say it’s, ‘But Mom, I’m GAY!’ followed by a blackout, that is perhaps information that you need about your character even if you are only working on the first scene.“
     “Oh, I get it,” the director of the school replied after a moment’s thought. “But then how come they can only do scenes from plays that you have read?”
     Another sigh, another groan. This time, both were audible. “Because it is also information that I, the teacher, also need to have if I am going to effectively guide the student through the scene.”
     “Oh. Okay,” he said. He clearly didn’t like it, but he couldn’t argue with it, and so he had to go back to the disgruntled student and explain that, yes, learning how to act was indeed going to take some effort on his part.
     It is a good idea, if possible, to read the whole play in one sitting, since that is how they are meant to be experienced. At scene breaks, if there are any, close your eyes for a brief moment. Take a few breaths, then read on. If there is an intermission, go ahead and take it. Go to the bathroom, have a cookie or a glass of water, then get back to the play. Don’t have a drink with alcohol. Stay present with the story, attuned to which characters, themes, and events resonate with you, and which do not. You may have your journal near at hand as you read, but I would recommend against jotting things down as you go through this first read process. Rather, give yourself the gift of an uninterrupted read so that you can have the experience of the play.

Begin Your Analysis of the Text.

     When you are done reading the play the first time, now you can go through it again, jotting down notes and questions. Look up definitions of words you don’t know, check Wikipedia for information on references you don’t understand. Make sure you can follow the timeline of the piece, both internal and external, and where it takes place geographically. If the play does not take place in the present day, when does it take place? If the geographical setting is significant, do some research. A friend of mine, Gene Franklin Smith, wrote a play called Boise, USA, that takes place in, you guessed it, Boise, USA. It deals with a scandal and witch hunt circling around the investigation and allegations of child abuse and homosexuality in this Midwestern town in the ’50’s. Do some research. If you type “Boise” and “homosexuality” into Google, the autofill prompts you to “Boise homosexuality scandal,” and if you click on that, you get more than 500,000 hits that bring you to a wealth of information. This is a very simple example of how you can do research and where you can begin your inquiries. Use your imagination, and follow it wherever it might lead you for background on the time, place, and society that surround the events of your text.
     During this process, you now want to have your journal by your side, and use it to jot down facts, ideas, observations and further questions … always, further questions. Use your imagination. Ask yourself questions about your character, even if they seem at first irrelevant to the issues at hand in the play. If you can’t think of enough questions yourself, turn to Google again, and type in “acting character questions” and look at how many hits you get. Any of those results will be fertile ground and yield rich results.
     As you continue on your research on your role, (and it should be a continuous process, no matter how long you are working on the role), don’t be too rigid in your approach. Keep your spirit attuned to the happy accident. More than twenty years ago I was in rehearsal for the play Two Rooms, by Lee Blessing, playing Walker, a reporter pursuing a story from a woman whose husband is being held hostage in Beirut. I figured that Walker would be incredibly well versed in what was going on in the Middle East with kidnappings and terrorism, so I started to wade my way through two books,From Beirut to Jerusalem, by Thomas L. Friedman, and A Peace to End All Peace, by David Fromkin. Weighty tomes, both of them. Reading them was daunting work, and while I found that I was learning a lot about the forces leading to the tensions and crises in that part of the world, it didn’t seem to be helping me with the work of the play, which after all required human relationships between the actual characters. Then one day in a bookstore, an interesting title caught my eye, and I took the book down off the shelf. It was The Journalist and the Murderer, by Janet Malcolm, and it examined the complicated relationship between the journalist and his subject, as they spend time together while the journalist is gathering the information for work. Now that was what I needed, and it ended up informing my performance in that play in a profound way, and changing the way I work to this day. My approach now is to find and inform myself on as much of the world of the play as I can, focusing on such aspects as will influence mycharacter and my behavior. Such inquiry deepens not only my work as an actor, but also my view of, and relationship to, the people and the world around me. That is the greatest reward that this career has to offer: An eye-opening quest for a greater understanding of humanity.

In the next post, Part 2: The First Rehearsal.

You can listen to my father discussing his book An Improvised Life, A Memoir, in an interview on NPR’s Talk of the Nation here, or if you are interested in ordering a copy,  you can follow this link to Amazon.

Transcript of Matthew Arkin’s Interview on Dr. Bob Phillips’ Coping Conversations, on June 18, 2012. You can listen to the original audio here.

Announcer: You’re listening to Coping Conversations on copingconversations.com. And now here’s your host, Dr. Bob Phillips.

Dr. Bob Phillips: Hello again, everyone. I’m Doctor Bob Phillips. Welcome to Coping Conversations. My guest today is actor Matthew Arkin. He has performed on Broadway, in movies and on television, and is also an acting teacher. Matthew, welcome to the show.

Matthew Arkin: Thank you for having me.

DB: First, give us a summary of your acting career.

MA: Well, let me see. It started in 1968, when I was eight years old. I did a short film that my father directed. He directed my older brother Adam and me in a short film called People Soup which was based on a short story that he had written … His acting career was going well and he was starting to want to direct a little bit, so we spent three days making this film and it was just me and Adam in it and it ended up getting nominated for Best Short Subject in ‘69 or ’70 … a terrific, sweet little movie, and that’s where I got my SAG card, at eight. Then I continued working here and there through elementary school and high school, an episode of Kojak, An Unmarried Woman, and then I took a detour after college. I wanted to try something else for a little while. I ended up going to law school and practicing law for five years. But then I wasn’t happy doing that, so I quit in 1989 and came back to acting and started doing a lot of theater in New York, and like every other theater actor in New York, the obligatory episodes of Law and Order, et cetera, et cetera. And all of that eventually lead to Dinner With Friends, which was I think my favorite play that I’ve had the privilege of being associated with. Since then, it’s just continued with New York theater and regional theater, and some film and television work.

DB: Well, you’ve been in so many different modalities … do you have a preference? Do you prefer stage or screen or the tube?

MA: You know, I don’t really have a preference. I love all of them. I love different aspects of all of them. Theater is such a laboratory, where you really get to dive in and spend weeks and months building a character, getting the chance to work on new plays and do really fine detail work, and then film can be a little like that, because it moves a little slower than television, and you can have some time to work on something, and then television is like a quick combat raid where you can come in and be shooting two scenes on an episode of a TV show and you’re there for six hours. And that’s all you have to do it. So that can be really interesting and exciting in another way, and you have to shorthand all of the tools that you use in those months of working on a play. You have to suddenly put all of that stuff to work in six hours and try to create something that has the depth and details that a theatrical performance would have, in that short period of time.

DB: Matthew, the Arkin name is certainly a recognized name in show business. Talk to us a little bit more about your acting family. Is there a friendly competition? Do you work together well? Are there different types of rolls you each prefer?

MA: I think there similarities that we all have. I made a joke a couple of years ago because there was a play that my older brother had done a workshop of here in California, and then he ended up not being available for the production and they cast me. Right after they cast me I got a call from a theater in New York asking me to do a play there and I said, “I’m not available. I’m doing this play in California.” And so they called my younger brother Tony, and he ended up doing a phenomenal job in this play in New York. And I was joking that now they’ll want Tony for something and he’ll be unavailable so they’ll call Dad. And I said “You know, maybe we should just rent a room somewhere, with a card table, and we should just sit around and play gin rummy and have a phone on the table and the phone will ring and we’ll say ‘You need an Arkin? How old? We’ll send one over.’”

DB: That sounds like a good story, and it’s good to hear that kind of camaraderie between brothers and the father and all of that.

MA: Yeah, we’ve all had the chance to work together at different times over the years and we’ve all really, really enjoyed it. This play that I just did down at South Coast Rep. One of the workshops of it, it was about two brothers and one of the workshops of it was done with me and Adam did it, and it was just a ball. He unfortunately was unable to do the production, but we had a great time together.

DB: Talk to us about your teaching. That’s interesting because there a lot of people who go into show business, but they really remain on the performing side. But you’re bringing something in addition to the table.

MA: Teaching is really … I get such a benefit out of the teaching. Aside from enjoying it, it really requires me to sharpen my thinking on things, and it requires me to go back to basics. Which is so important. I think no matter what level you are in your career, you have to go back to the basics all the time. So I started teaching … I sort of fell into it several years ago. I was meeting a friend for lunch who was taking a class at HB Studio in New York. And I was standing in the lobby and the director of the school walked through the lobby and remembered me from my time there. And he stopped and he said “What are you doing here?” and I said, “I’m meeting a friend for lunch,” and he said “Oh. Do you want to teach here?” and I was so surprised — that’s where I had studied and I held the teachers there in such esteem, it never occurred to me that they might want me. And I thought about it, and I said, “Yeah, I would like to,” and they ended up putting me on the staff. And I really enjoyed it, and got a lot out of it, and found that I had some talent for it. Then when I moved out to Los Angeles two years ago I started my own class here, and have since taken on an associate teacher, a woman named Melissa Kite who teaches the class with me. And I think it’s a really interesting class because we have very different backgrounds, and we really have a very dialectical approach to teaching, because we have different points of view about stuff. We have similar points of view in terms of where we want the students to end up, but different ways of getting there. And so we really challenge each other, and challenge the students to build their own tool box. It makes for a really interesting evening.

DB: Do you feel that people who are interested in being performers really should be schooled in this type of environment? Do you find that there are some people who are such naturals that they don’t need it?

MA: I think everybody needs training. Natural ability helps you get through a reading or one performance, but the ability to keep doing it over and over and over again, and to refine it for theatrical work … I think training is really crucial for that. And then also I think if what you want is a career, rather than a job, I think training is so important because I think we see, particularly in Hollywood, we see so often that somebody has a particular quality that they are able to market and that makes them popular, and that can bring some very high profile, immediate success. But to turn that into a long term career, I think takes craft, and craft is something you have to learn, you have to work at.

DB: So you find that you’ll channel what you have learned through your years into your students to try to help him to develop their own voice?

MA: Yes, absolutely. And I think it’s so important also to teach them … there was a brilliant quote that I just heard last week for the first time, and I posted it up on my Facebook page and I posted it on my Tumblr page.
It was a quotation from Orson Welles talking about the actor’s craft, and he was saying that every one of us has every bit of every character we’re playing inside us already, and that the job of the actor is not to put something on for when you’re going on stage, but rather to take the parts of you away that don’t serve that character. And I think he ends it by saying everyone has a murderer within us, every one of us has a saint within us. And I think when you’re able to go inside and look at those parts of yourself, that that’s when you can bring some truth to your portrayal of a character on stage. And it requires a lot of courage, because it requires us to go to some dark places and admit that we have that kind of darkness inside us, and also, equally challenging, it requires us to go to places of light, which is also frightening to go to, to say that I have heroism inside me. A lot of us say “Who am I to say ‘I’m a hero?’” Well, we all have heroic qualities, we all have dark qualities, and the courageous actor will look at all of those places and bring them to their work.

DB: What are some of the most difficult things that you’ve encountered as an actor and how do you try to help your students to overcome those things?

MA: The hardest thing that I’ve had to face as an actor … I think is  … I’ve been really blessed to several times be cast in the role that would have the moment in the play that could be subtitled “And now a word from our author,” if you know what I mean, where the character finely gives voice to … really what the play is about, and there can be an impulse in those moments to bring a lot of showmanship to it. And I think what those moments really require of us, more than any kind of showmanship, is a willingness to get out of the way and let the truth of the play come through, so that rather than behaving as some sort of trophy on a pedestal, you’re more behaving as a vessel or a conduit, and that requires you to just trust and relax. So we spend a lot of time in class, Melissa and I, a lot of time in class getting … working with our students on exercises that will get them to trust that they are enough; that their impulse, that their truth, that their worth, is enough. They don’t have to put anything on, they don’t have to pretend. And it’s really exciting when you see people start to trust themselves.

DB: It almost sounds like you’re bringing an element of psychotherapy into your work.

MA: There is that aspect to it, although we are very clear with the students that that’s not what we are. I think those pathways are crucial for an actor or any artist to go down, the pathways of self-exploration, be it psychoanalysis, be it meditation, be it with your rabbi or your priest or your pastor or you’re imam. I think you’ve gotta go down those roads. I don’t think you should do it with an acting teacher, but I think our job as acting teachers is to foster and encourage the exploration that hopefully the student is doing on their own in appropriate modalities.

DB: If people would like to get in touch with you to learn more about what you’re doing or possibly get involved with one of your activities, what’s the best way for them to reach out?

MA: The best way is to go to my website, which is just my name, matthewarkin.com, and all of the information about my career, about the class, is on that website. And you can also email me through that as well.

DB: What are your hopes for how you want your career to move forward from this point?

MA: My dream is to spend my time divided between teaching, theater and film and television. I’ve been fortunate to work in all of those areas. I think they all feed each other, and there’s a great deal of excitement to me about the variety, of waking up … for instance, today I have this interview with you. As soon as we get off the phone, I have a voiceover audition. And then I teach tonight, and then tomorrow night I start teaching at a new school. I’m teaching at South Coast Rep, and then I’ll be involved in a reading of a new play later this week. So the variety keeps me interested and alive.

DB: Well, I’m glad that it’s keeping you alive and looking forward to good things ahead. Matthew Arkin, thanks so much for being with us on the show.

MA: Thank you for having me. This is great.

DB: And thanks to all of you for joining us on this episode of Coping Conversations. This is Dr. Bob Phillips reminding you that no matter what problem you may face, you can always improve the quality of your life. So long for now.

Announcer: This concludes this edition of Coping Conversations. For further information, or to contact Dr. Phillips, please go to the Center for Coping website at www.coping.com, or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/centerforcoping for updates, information, or news about the latest shows. In the meanwhile, we invite you to return often for more Coping Conversations.

"80% of directing is casting, and another 18% is the ground plan."
​
​Elia Kazan, as reported by Austin Pendleton in an interview on Theater Talk.

Playwright John Kolvenbach, a friend, has developed what he calls “A Practical Guide to Producing a Kolvenbach Play.” In reading it over as I guide students through his work, I have come to believe that it provides insights that are useful to actors addressing any text, not just the wonderful plays that John has written. I offer it here and encourage you to read it, and also to pick up some of Mr. Kolvenbach’s lovely work, if you haven’t had the luck of running into it yet.

From my observation of various rehearsals over the years, what works and what doesn’t. The plays present a dual challenge: they are technically difficult and they require all the heart you have to give. They are demanding. May this make them less so.

The beats and pauses are plot. They aren’t theme. They serve the same purpose as the lines in the play. They convey information. If they are adhered to, the meaning of the scene should become quickly clear.

A pause is twice as long as a beat, roughly.

The plays are scored, and the music of the play is essential to the experience. The audience will only receive the play if the music is in place. The plays should sing. To do this, keep the ball in the air. I’ve heard this called “repartee” though I don’t think it’s that, exactly. I’ve worked with directors who have had ping pong tables in rehearsal, likening the dialogue to the game. Technically, (especially in the more comic plays) it’s that there is no pause after your line and before mine, unless one is written. No space for thought. Throw it back and forth.

Then, when there is a beat/pause, take it. You will have earned it. Don’t coast up to the stop sign and then creep away. Slam on the brakes and peel out.

But the music cannot be mechanically performed. If you bat the dialogue back and forth, it will be dead and the audience will not receive it. It must befull and fully lived in. You’re living through the scene, with a foundation of the score beneath you.

The score is there to reinforce intention. So go get what you want.

It can’t go too fast. This happens a lot. Don’t speak too fast. It’s difficult, but you need to excise filmic, behavioral pauses without allowing it to become a runaway train. The actors need to be on their front foot, but they must be in control of it, they have to Own it. My characters don’t speak quickly, they react immediately.

The best way to get the music of the play in place, in the bodies of the actors, is to run lines with someone on the script, calling out the beats/pauses when they occur. This must be done again when the actors are on their feet in the scene. Run lines with beats/pauses vocalized (say “beat.”) The actors can do this too, speaking the beats/pauses as if they were lines.

If you just review these things at the table, the actors will get cranky. They will begin to feel put upon. So it needs to be drilled. I encourage the director to be more like Balanchine, less like Freud.

The stakes in every scene and in the play need to be as high as is possible. Please don’t stage them as funny. The comedy will play if the music is in place. The people are real and want real things and each actor needs to bring themselves to the play Personally. The plays can hold a lot, please fill them up.

Then if you have the music in place, and the souls of the actors exposed and at risk, then you can let it rip. The plays require passion.

All of this should lead to freedom. After all the work is done, improvise within a very supportive form. The plays should end up being exciting to perform. Wild. And the audience should feel a great sense of suspense.

They don’t mean a thing if they ain’t got that swing. Good luck.

JK.
​
John Kolvenbach’s plays include Goldfish, Fabuloso, Love Song, Gizmo Love, and On An Average Day.

I believe that the work that we do as actors and writers sends energy out into the universe, and we can never know where that energy is going to go, or what it is going to do when it gets there. Meditating on this simple fact can be very freeing in your work. It will help you to get your focus off of yourself. It will make your work about something outside yourself, and your petty concerns. That will make you a better actor. It is ironic, but true, that the less you think about yourself, the more of yourself you can bring to your work. Of course, so many of the jobs that we do to survive seem to have no redeeming value other than the money that they bring us. This is true even of many high paying acting jobs: the Tide commercial, the 3 episode arc on Gossip Girl — probably not going to save a marriage with either of those. But again, links in a chain, and work that enables you to go out and pursue all the other jobs that do have the potential to be a gift in someone’s life. Think of the Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who does liposuction, breast augmentation, botox and collagen injections, and then volunteers at a low income medical care clinic and fixes a child’s cleft palate. One job supports the other, and a life is changed.
This is an excerpt from the article An Actor’s Credo: Why What We Do Matters, which appeared in my blog in January, 2012. To subscribe to my newsletter, containing these and other articles on acting technique, click here.