ATO ESSANDOH, PART 2

In the second part of our interview with Ato Essandoh (Garden State, Blood Diamond) we discuss the process of auditioning and callbacks with the likes of Martin Scorsese, letting go of the desire for fame, and what it’s like to work on a TV show with Barry Levinson.

The NYC Actor Podcast is available to download or subscribe to at iTunes!

Ato Essandoh (Garden State, Blood Diamond) Skypes in from Toronto where he is currently shooting the new TV show Coppers. In Part One we discuss the unlikely journey from chemical engineering to acting, how film, theater and TV are the modern forms of story telling – a vital part of human existence – and why we should never apologise for being actors.

The NYC Actor Podcast is available to download or subscribe to at iTunes!

The 10 Qualities of an Actor

One of the first things my class ever discussed with one of my favorite acting teachers John Osborne Hughes. And it has stuck with me for all these years. I highly recommend signing up for a class with him the next time he is in town.

I believe these are also the qualities of a great human being.

1) Dedication

2) Self Discipline

3) Imagination

4) Courage

5) Humility

6) Modesty

7) Empathy

8) Inspiration

9) Awareness

10) Talent (this one is perhaps the most open to interpretation, but to me everyone has the capacity for talent – it’s not just about being born special. Talent is usually regarded by most as an untouchable gift. But I wasn’t born with talent as an actor. I was born with the desire to become talented and it has taken me years to get where I am. People might interpret the product of that as some kind of innate talent because they don’t know better, but I think even the great Meryl Streep – who still strives to be brilliant with every role she takes on – would agree with me.)

You guys! I just finished recording a podcast with the talented and divine Ato Essandoh… it is gonna be SO GOOD! Stay tuned. Should be up by Tuesday next week.

I just HAD to post this. This is the comedian I have been working with for the last year on her show NAKED PEOPLE. Her promo video shoot (where she runs around the city trying to escape censorship) got snapped by a number of publications the other day and it went viral. The comments at the links are as insightful and hilarious as the show!

theangeladee:

NAKED PEOPLE and Julia Wiedeman featured on NYMagazine, HuffPo, Refinery29, ChicRenegade, FashionIndie.com and TheGloss.com. One of the few times the words NAKED and VIRAL work well together : )

[BE WARNED! NSFW!!!]

Meryl Streep proving that you can grow old beautifully without surgery. Thank you!

bridgecomedy:

meganmtrombino:

Meryl Streep: The Fresh Air Interview (via nprfreshair)

#autoheroreblog

BAD SHOW! – How to Survive a Disastrous Performance.

It is inevitable, even with a well-oiled show, that we will have one VERY BAD performance. Everything will go wrong: lights will blow out, set pieces will break, offstage microphones will be switched off, a zipper will get stuck. And, to make matters worse the audience will be in a collectively judge-y state of mind – sat back deep in their chairs with their arms crossed, universally scowling at you as you step on stage. And a show that would usually garner standing ovations and screaming cheers from the audience receives a tepid applause at the curtain.

So what the hell do we do when it happens? We lean on our craft.

At the end of the day all the costume design, lighting, set, props, music, you name it, all of these things are there to simply enhance the most important aspect of the theater: the performances. And it is during these disastrous shows that you can separate the amateurs from the professionals.

As actors our brains are split in two. One part of it is the actors brain: Aware of those technical things that are happening and that should happen at every moment. The part of the brain that remembers blocking, to stand in a way that doesn’t upstage themselves or their cast mates, to ensure that they are projecting their voice to the back row so that everyone can hear them. The part of the brain that is aware when a line is dropped and how to pick it back up again and the part that knows to wait briefly until laughter has passed before they continue with the rest of the scene. Even the part of the brain that is aware that they are an actor standing on stage pretending to be someone else. And then there is the Character’s brain: The part of the mind that holds all of the character information developed in rehearsal and at home. Where they are from. How they feel about love, food, themselves, their mother, money, etc. How they feel right now. What they are thinking in every moment. What they want in the future, what they want in an hour, what they want right now – and all this is happening in the first person. The character doesn’t see the stage, they see their childhood bedroom. They know that beyond the walls is the rest of the house – not the rest of the cast backstage. Outside the window is the street and the trees and the family car – not the bustling city street behind the theater. And they have relationships with every piece of furniture, every prop that is connected to their characters life.

A really experienced actor has the ability to make all the noise of the actor’s brain recede into subconsciousness and allow the characters thinking to take over. When an experienced actor is faced with technical difficulty they instinctively fall back on the world of the character. Filling their mind with rich, sense-data and losing themselves in their imagination as if it were real. And they do this ALL the time – not only in crisis. They don’t expect laughter to be repeated where it was in the last performance. They have enough awareness to hear it when it does happen and to let it pass and carry on with their work. But there is no map that they lean on – no auto-pilot, if you will. Their character gets richer and richer with every show because they make that the most important part of what they do. Not the recognition. Not the set. Not the lighting. Not how they look (unless it is part of the characters personality to be vain).

The inexperienced actor is less stable in this technique. And this is why they lose confidence when things go awry. Their actors brain is so much in the drivers seat that they become painfully aware of everything they are doing and their character recedes away into the background. An amateur will get comfortable, even hide behind stage devices and audience reactions. They fall in to a robotic state of security: “I move here at this line. I sit down. I speak my line in that weird voice I’ve been working on. I raise my arm for this line because the first time I did it it got a laugh and I want to recreate that feeling I had when it happened” They’ll lean into the pauses that are usually there for laughter – even if the audience isn’t in fact laughing on this given night. And then they start to resent the audience for this betrayal. For not eating out of their hands like they did at the other performance. The inexperienced actor’s attention is on how they are being seen – the actor NOT the character. “Can they tell that I washed my hair today? That I got my teeth whitened? I heard there’s a critic in the audience tonight, do they think I’m amazing? Oh! Watch this funny and weird thing I do here!” etc. And NONE of this has ANYTHING to do with being a great actor. NONE OF IT! So, when technical issues arise the inexperienced actor loses steam and they lose it fast.

There are two key words here: Imagination and experience.

Every single actor that exists in the world play-acted when they were young. Maybe they hauled on their dad’s work suit and pretended that they were a grown up marching off to boss people around in their imaginary office. Or maybe they pretended they were a street urchin who has run away from home and is looking to be rescued by a dashing prince – a prince who is literally a figment of their imagination, yet they interact with them as if they were real (well, I did anyway; P). Imagination is the key to great acting. Actually, I think it might be a little bit more than that. It is more about the suspension of disbelief in response to ones imagination that is the real key. There has to be a complete surrender to the imaginary world for it to truly work. And a great actor is open to and adept at this.

Experience is just that. You don’t step on to a stage knowing how to best carry yourself and use your voice if you’ve never done it before. Go to a class show or see some live comedy sketches with a young/inexperienced cast and you’ll see that most of these actors have absolutely no awareness of how to perform on stage. Because they simply don’t have the experience. Glenn close can step on to any stage in the world and “instinctively” know how to hold herself and how much vocal projection she needs. I put instinctively in quotations because it’s not really instinct. It’s a skill that she developed over years and years and years in the theater. She might think it’s instinct at this point, who knows, but technically it’s not. The more we do something… THE BETTER WE GET AT IT! Reptition is at the route of everything we as human beings do and are. So, it is insane to think that people are just born great actors. Heck, great anything.

So. In the end what I’m saying is that if being a great actor is important to you then practice putting your attention on your imagination. The world of the character. If you’re dong a monologue to an invisible person (invisible to the audience, that is) then imagine them in front of you. What color eyes do they have? What do they smell like? What are they wearing? Do they ALWAYS wear this? What do you like about them? What do you hate about them? What reaction are you expecting  from them right now? And, by the way, this absolutely applies to film acting. You’re never really in the environment your character is in and a lot of the time when doing close-ups you may not even be acting off the actor playing the other character – it might be a bit of tape! Can you imagine acting in a movie like Dogville where the entire set is just white chalk lines on the floor? Naturally, because you might not have a whole lot of experience using your imagination like this your mind is going to wander back to the technical stuff. The audience. Your vanity. The set falling down behind you. The tape. Don’t worry about it. If you notice this then literally put your attention back on the world of the character. It might help you respond to the chaos in the moment without it actually detracting from the scene you’re doing. And you might find yourself reacting to it all IN CHARACTER, even. And those are the moments that are truly wonderful. And therefore, there is not a single thing that can really go wrong with the show you are doing even as it falls down around your ears. And that stuck-up, bored audience you were greeted with at the top of the show will be eating out of your hand by the end.