How To Stop Overacting
How to stop overacting
When an actor is overacting it’s uncomfortable for everyone involved and the actor finds himself wondering, what am I doing wrong? What’s wrong with me? I’m a bad actor… all those horrible inner condemnations.
It’s never wrong!
It is valuable information!
It lets you know that you need to revisit your technique.
The definition of technique: “The manner and ability with which an artist, writer, dancer, athlete, or the like employs the technical skills of a particular art or field of endeavor… specialized procedures and methods… way of accomplishing.”
Technique is one of those things that you learn… and then you let it go until you need it.
It becomes like a grid inside your process that you can rely on when you run into problems. A map helping you find your way.
Uta Hagen introduced The Object Exercises as a means to “… tackle a variety of technical problems…” in order to explore her own human behavior as a base line for discovering her character’s human behavior.
Technique helps the actor reliably recreate a ‘real’ experience in their work.
A ‘lived’ experience.
It is the practice of recognizing and utilizing the basic principles embedded in every dramatic scene and integrating those principles into your practice as discipline.
It guides you when you’re stuck, or falling, or blocked.
A grid that holds you.
“On maps a grid is used to help you find a particular thing or place.”
A reference…
In the art of acting your grid brings out your unique human qualities.
As you feel the support of the grid—a trust in your method—your acting is freed.
I like to push my actors to the edge of the grid. Not off! This is where they do their most meaningful work.
They seem to hold on and fly at the same time...
The actor can wildly explore—spilling over with reckless creative abandon.
Which we want!
Actors sometimes get lost in between—losing their footing, losing their way. They lose the integrity of the drama and themselves in the process.
Your artistry is like a tree. It needs certain conditions to grow. There is an interior process and an exterior process always unfolding that must be secured.
If the tree is growing off the edge of a cliff it’s in jeopardy. It might be snapped in two by the wind or completely uprooted. It needs to be secured to the external structure.
It needs to hold onto the grid.
When an actor loses their way an anxiety kicks in and the actor goes on over-drive or the opposite, shuts down, because the security that anchors the actor is lost.
Wear that grid onto the stage.