When you have confidence, you can have a lot of fun. And when you have fun, you can do amazing things.
– Joe Namath
I am beginning to better understand and appreciate the focus on relaxation by Strasberg and the focus on self-confidence in the actor by Meisner. After one week of rehearsals in a new play and one rehearsal for a new scene I’m working on I felt out of my element. I went home wondering if acting is for me and lamenting over the fact that I am just not a very good actor. It is amusingly frustrating how these insecurities of ours keep coming back.
After a few beers with a friend and colleague and sleeping the insecure feelings off I awoke to meditate on why this first week and rehearsal were so abysmal. I had worked for a year and a half on my artistic process and craft and had achieved many triumphs in which I had developed a confidence in myself as an actor. I had just begun to love being in front of people working my craft than alone or with my sole scene partner. So why was this past week a shot to my confidence and a step backwards?
It came down to pressure and stepping out into a new realm. This is the first production I’ve done since I was in a sixth grade production of The Sound of Music. Everything was new and I was out of my element, unsure of how to work outside of my guided classes. There was also pressure with wanting this first production to be perfect. I put it on a pedestal and set my sights purely on results. The same was true, I realized, for this scene work I’m doing. I was focused purely on results.
This new place and group of people for the production was a test to my confidence. I was shaken because everything was new and I was very unsure of how to proceed with a lot of things. But the overwhelming enemy was results based thinking. Looking back I could see how that encompassed my entire thought process and outlook on this production and scene. This caused my body to become tense. Which in turn that tension was what played through in my rehearsals, not allowing me to truly work my craft. That, in turn, allowed doubt to creep up and affect my self-confidence, which when mixed with this results based thinking only caused me to tense up more. A viscous cycle began on day one that culminated in a complete artistic breakdown by the end of the week. I couldn’t act because I was too tense to just be anything but tension and worry.
We have a saying in martial arts that in order to strike harder and faster one must relax more. Tension in the movement of a strike constricts the muscles and slows down and weakens the final strike. The same is true with acting albeit in a different way. Tension covers up any other acting by the actor and becomes the only visible thing to the audience. Tension is what plays, as my coach would say. You cannot “just be” when you are tense.
Which is why I think Strasberg felt relaxation was so powerful and vital to the actor. When we as actors are relaxed we can let out all the subtleties of our character and in short can “just be”. As well self-confidence is huge, as Meisner puts, for if we are confident in ourselves and our abilities we can be relaxed. Which, as I stated before, allows us to move into our craft unobstructed by tension. Self-confidence also helps us with moving into new productions and different environments. Our process of the craft and the work that needs to be done doesn’t change just the environment. If we can enter into each new work and new environment with confidence, we can be relaxed, and when we are relaxed we can then begin to act!