In my last essay, “The PROFESSIONAL Actor” I set out a list of demands and define what it means to be a pro­fes­sional. To be a pro­fes­sional actor, you must have PHD:

Pas­sion. Humil­ity. Discipline.

In my classes, I make a demand of all the actors to be pro­fes­sional. I expect a high order of dis­ci­pline. I do not accept at The Actor’s Foundry peo­ple who slack in their rehearsals. Who are not pre­pared in their scenes. Who are not treat­ing their part­ners with respect and dig­nity. I also demand that all play­ers have the humil­ity to bring them­selves to their work…and make it about their work. About their part­ner. And not about them­selves. Egos are checked at the door. And, of course, I’ve been defib­ril­lat­ing people’s pas­sion, open­ing up their full instru­ments, and demand­ing that peo­ple com­mit. Invest them­selves. Fully.

I am demand­ing them all to raise their bars and live up to their per­sonal poten­tials. That line – where the poten­tial in artistry, skill, and human­ity lies – that poten­tial is way up there. I want them to strive for and hon­our that per­sonal poten­tial, what­ever that is specif­i­cally for them. And then, when they do reach it – God help them – then I kick the poten­tial even higher and I force the actor to reach even further.

I am demand­ing that of them.

How­ever… life is point and counter-​point. Give and take. Bal­ance. So, the oppo­site of: “I am demand­ing of you…” is: “You are demand­ing of me…”. And so actors must. My stu­dents must hold me to my high­est poten­tial as a teacher. They must demand of me: to be the most pro­fes­sional teacher I can be…passionate, hum­ble, and dis­ci­plined. Hold me to it. And hold all my teach­ers of The Actor’s Foundry to it. To be…great.

So, what makes a great teacher? What must the actor demand of the teacher?

Here’s what I think the TAUGHT Actor should demand: a teacher’s man­i­festo…

In one of my last week­end inten­sives, I had this lovely actor up from Los Ange­les, a young Aus­tralian. Big heart. Smart as a whip. Gen­er­ous as an actor. And, well…not good. He was so clut­tered and con­fused, over­wrought with strange and bewil­der­ing “techniques”…that he could hardly get a truth­ful moment out.

He was the help­less vic­tim of bad teaching.

It wasn’t just that he and I dif­fered in our point of view and philoso­phies of act­ing. It wasn’t that his pre­vi­ous teach­ers taught dif­fer­ent tech­niques or came from dif­fer­ent schools of thought. This poor actor was lost. After years of “train­ing”, he couldn’t even really artic­u­late what act­ing is, let alone how it’s done.

Do not mis­un­der­stand me! It is essen­tial that there be dif­fer­ing, even oppos­ing opin­ions on what is act­ing. It is vital to the health of our craft that their be var­i­ous schools of thoughts, processes, meth­ods, and tech­niques. How else can the art evolve, grow, and adapt. There are teach­ers in Van­cou­ver and Los Ange­les that I admire. Who are my friends. Who I respect. And who I utterly dis­agree with on most of what they say! And yet, they are pas­sion­ate in their approach…and have intel­li­gently thought it through…and teach beau­ti­fully. So I admire them.

a teacher must be opinionated

That’s what you go to a teacher for: their opin­ions. A teacher is some­one who is show­ing you “the way”…according to them. A teacher must have strong, well-​thought out, spe­cific, pow­er­ful opin­ions, born of dis­ci­plined thought.

My Aus­tralian actor, how­ever, had been taught by the worst kind of teacher: a lazy one.
a teacher must have a clear, artic­u­late process

Act­ing is not magic. Act­ing is not some super­nat­ural trick­ery. It’s not a mys­ti­cal, instinc­tual art that some peo­ple have the great luck of being gifted in, while oth­ers don’t.

Act­ing is a craft. It requires a set of skills: intel­lec­tual, emo­tional, and actual. It is an abil­ity that can be taught through process and competence.

A great teacher will be a dis­ci­plined teacher: they will have a specif­i­cally drawn out process that is eas­ily artic­u­lated, so that the actor can learn, prac­tice, and apply it to the craft. Whether it be scene analy­sis, or emo­tional prepa­ra­tion, or action, activ­i­ties, block­ing, or any­thing else in our act­ing work, the method­ol­ogy needs to be pre­cisely spelled out and backed with intel­li­gent reasons.

In other words…

a teacher teaches and doesn’t sim­ply direct

There is a very, very spe­cific dif­fer­ence between the two. In fact, in my class, I ask the stu­dents to hold me to explain­ing which kind of note I’m giv­ing. I will say: “this is a direc­tion note” ver­sus: “this is a teach­ing note”.

A teach­ing note means I am deal­ing with this par­tic­u­lar actor, this par­tic­u­lar instru­ment, and what I see is or isn’t work­ing. I am address­ing their act­ing block (be it focal, emo­tional, or psy­cho­log­i­cal – the issue that’s block­ing their work). I am deal­ing with their tell tale signs, their “fall back posi­tions”, or their tricks and habits. I am work­ing around or remov­ing their ego/​insecurity appa­ra­tus. A note may be designed to give per­mis­sion to an actor to sim­ply be them­selves. Per­haps I am soft­en­ing their fears and encour­ag­ing their sense of play. Teach­ing them to breathe. Maybe even open­ing their dia­logue deliv­ery. What­ever the note, I am specif­i­cally work­ing on their process, in what­ever way is necessary.

A direct­ing note is a more sub­jec­tive one. It is to do with story. And block­ing. And how to approach genre. Or how to approach char­ac­ter in a par­tic­u­lar scene. Direct­ing notes often deal with tim­ing and tempo…maybe even the idiomatic read­ing of a line of dialogue.

These notes can some­times lead into the hazy area of “taste” and “choice”.

Even then, when I am giv­ing direct­ing notes, those too must be backed intel­li­gently with rea­sons and ratio­nale. I need to explain how I got to the note…whether it was derived through story, or human psy­chol­ogy, or per­sonal inspi­ra­tion and life experience.

a teacher backs up their notes with experience

When we have guest direc­tors at The Actor’s Foundry…Michael Nankin, Stu­art Aikins, Anne Wheeler, Ron Under­wood, Gary Harvey…they all teach from a director’s point of view. They are teach­ing the actor how they think, how they approach scenes. And they all agree with me that the biggest dif­fer­ence between a teacher and a direc­tor is that a direc­tor plays with the instru­ment…whereas a teacher builds an instrument.

What teach­ing can not be is sim­ply show­ing you. There are so-​called teach­ers, here and every­where, who are not teach­ing any­thing at all. They are direct­ing actors, with­out expla­na­tion as to how they got the actor’s there in the first place. They dan­gle the keys to the mys­tery of act­ing seduc­tively and then cash in on the years of classes that a sin­gle stu­dent will take. This is preposterous.

a teacher teaches peo­ple to grad­u­ate from the teaching

I love my stu­dents. I rel­ish hav­ing them in class and suc­ceed at pro­duc­ing exquis­ite work and affect­ing the peo­ple around them. I love see­ing them grow into a mas­tery of their craft. But I push them hard to leave as soon as they can​.My job is to get them to out­grow me. That’s the point. I don’t still see Madame Dufresne, my Grade 4 teacher, to work on my cur­sive writ­ing. I’ve graduated.

Yes…I build grad­u­ate classes and spe­cialty work­shops so they can prac­tice their stuff because an actor must con­stantly prac­tice. A Grad­u­ate Actor needs to stay fresh and sharp…and of course, there is always more nuance, more sub­tlety to find in their work.

I knew a teacher once who was a real char­la­tan. He was a sales­man. He would get actors to do the scene quite well, but he wouldn’t give any process and got actors addicted to him. They would end up being with him for sixty, sev­enty, eight con­sec­u­tive weeks, and would never grad­u­ate. And many dol­lars later, they still knew nothing.

How a teacher grad­u­ates pro­fes­sion­als is by giv­ing clear and coher­ent notes that are pre­scrip­tive and not just symp­to­matic. A dis­ci­plined teacher won’t sim­ply tell you what they see isn’t working…they will tell you where it comes from…and then how to fix it.

a teacher gives pre­scrip­tions for improvement

The really obvi­ous symp­toms early actors often exhibit are things like the slap­ping of the knee; the sigh between the lines; the swal­low­ing of sen­tences; the refusal to focus on the part­ner (or the refusal to look any­where else but the part­ner); over indi­cat­ing (like the check­ing the watch to say “I’m late”)…and many, many more pos­si­ble symp­toms. These of course get more and more sub­tle with expe­ri­enced actors until notes become more like: “you’re slightly melt­ing those moments together.”

All these things are symp­toms. They are indi­ca­tors of some­thing else going on. If a teacher only addresses the symp­toms, basi­cally say­ing “stop wav­ing your hands”…or worse…“sit on your hands”…that’s not a teacher. It’s a symp­tom reader.

Imag­ine going to the doc­tor because you have a rash on your face, and the doc­tor says: “Looks like you have a rash on your face. Next!” I imag­ine you’d get a new doctor!

A bet­ter teacher would get diag­nos­tic. They’d look for the ori­gins of the symp­toms. If the symp­tom is: “You’re not truly com­mit­ting to the verbs (the partner-​related actions) in the moment and not con­nect­ing with the dialogue”…then the dis­ease might be: “You’re not con­nect­ing with your part­ner, because of your fear of con­flict”. Or: “Emo­tion­ally, you’re block­ing this cir­cum­stance because this is ring­ing too close to home for you.” There are, of course, infi­nite num­bers of pos­si­ble dis­eases for the num­bers of actor symptoms.

The best diag­no­sis would be even deeper: “You’re not con­nect­ing with your part­ner, because of your fear of conflict…arising from your trauma in child­hood of aggres­sive angry par­ents and a Viet Nam War vet father who only com­mu­ni­cated through conflict.”

So that’s help­ful. We know the cause of the symp­tom. But that is still not enough. Imag­ine this time you go to the doc­tor and the doc­tor says: “You have a ter­ri­ble, ter­ri­ble rash…because you have a rare form of Mozam­bi­can Fever. Okay, thank you. Next!” Not very help­ful. What you need is a pre­scrip­tion to fix it.

So, back to our exam­ple, the teacher might say: “Here’s home­work: do a realization/​deci­sion rehearsal and delin­eate all the partner-​related actions towards con­flict verbs”…or might say: “Here’s a direc­tion: refuse to let him fin­ish his activ­ity so that he has to deal with you in the scene”. Or, best, the teacher will fix the deeper psy­cho­log­i­cal issue by hav­ing the actor push her way through into con­flict by deal­ing with her father through an exer­cise of some sort. For each spe­cific actor, there is always a pre­scrip­tive note.

By the way, no…acting is not ther­apy. It is, how­ever, highly therapeutic.

Act­ing is the art form of cre­at­ing real life: psy­cho­log­i­cal real­ism. So, nat­u­rally, per­sonal psy­chol­ogy and emo­tional hon­esty are a big part of act­ing class. The biggest dif­fer­ence between ther­apy and act­ing is that in act­ing we’re not try­ing to solve any­thing. It’s more a mat­ter of tak­ing own­er­ship of this things. In act­ing, we also have the joy­ful lux­ury of putting

all these things some­where: back into story.

a teacher is a guide to yourself…not a therapist

But, yes…the lines get blurred between act­ing and per­sonal psy­chol­ogy. Between char­ac­ter and self. Between art and ther­apy. At The Actor’s Foundry, we have a cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­pist on staff to answer teacher’s ques­tions, edu­cate the teach­ers on where that line is, and mostly…to refer actors to when those lines get blurred.

Some­times these more pro­found, per­sonal notes take time. A teacher needs to get to know an actor, judge their habits, learn their back­ground and per­sonal history…and really take note of what the actor needs and what they can han­dle at this time…before mak­ing the big prescription.

a teacher can’t grand­stand and eas­ily give the “big note”

A teacher can’t have any­thing to prove to their stu­dents, oth­er­wise they might feel the pres­sure to look bril­liant in front of class. Many teach­ers feel the need to be genius and show off with a big psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­nounce­ment about an actor. This can be very, very dan­ger­ous. Notes given to actors stay in actors heads a long, long time. I still remem­ber the notes I got as an actor twenty years ago in New York.

A teacher must know this and always take their time…not be pressured…and be absolutely cer­tain of what they are say­ing before they make any weighted statements.

a teacher knows when to say “I don’t know…yet”

For a teacher to hold on to this humil­ity, the teacher must have objectivity…the teacher must not be wor­ried about pleas­ing the stu­dent or the class. Impress­ing them. Or grand­stand­ing. A teacher has to be able to give the hard notes – or hold back on notes until they’re sure – with­out wor­ry­ing about los­ing stu­dents. Which means…

a teacher can never, ever need a student’s money

Absolutely, yes…a great teacher deserves to be remu­ner­ated. Teach­ing is hard. It’s unbe­liev­ably exhaust­ing. And those who do it well should be paid well. But a teacher can’t keep their objec­tiv­ity if they think of a stu­dent as a “client”.

I had this talk in class recently:

Stu­dent: I have expe­ri­enced this with a teacher before. I could feel that this guy, his teach­ing started to lean towards how we should be happy to pay for his class.

M.H.: Yeah, not good.

Stu­dent: He was sell­ing to us. And, I got out, right quick, after that.

M.H.: Yeah, good deci­sion. Because watch: I say, “I’m going give you a big note so you can have a big emo­tional reac­tion so you love me so you pay for my next class!” But, the note might be wrong, and I could be doing some seri­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal damage.

That objec­tiv­ity that a teacher must main­tain will also only hold true if the stu­dent is not a com­peti­tor. There is noth­ing worse than a frus­trated actor who teaches. The infa­mous “failed actor” teacher will only bring envy and resent­ment to the classroom.

a teacher teaches because they are a teacher first

A pas­sion­ate teacher who lives, breathes, and yearns to teach…more than they yearn to act…is a great teacher. Just as an actor is always research­ing their craft every­where they go, trolling life for expe­ri­ences to help their act­ing, and see­ing the world through the lens of behav­ior and emotion…the teacher thinks as a teacher first, always pulling from life lessons to impart to their students.

Even on set or stage, the great teacher can only think of their class.

Which brings me back to the very first point of this essay: that a teacher must be opin­ion­ated. Absolutely true. But…a teacher’s opin­ions need to be open to change.

a teacher is always learning

If a teacher has no opin­ion, that’s not a teacher. But nei­ther is a teacher who is so rigid in their way if think­ing that they are closed to any fresh ideas. If a teacher is cemented in their opinion…then this teacher is no longer learn­ing. That’s a lec­turer and not a teacher.

And if a teacher only has the opin­ions of their teacher or guru from the past…that’s a problem.

a teacher knows that act­ing is an evolv­ing art form

As a teacher I’m always absorb­ing new ideas, read­ing new mate­r­ial, ingest­ing new ways of think­ing. I’m study­ing psy­chol­ogy, soci­ol­ogy, politics…biography, his­tory, cur­rent events and min­ing for new ways to look at our craft. I’m con­stantly inter­view­ing direc­tors, writ­ers, suc­cess­ful actors…seeking new meth­ods, re-​formulating ideas, sculpt­ing tools, search­ing for new approaches to old prob­lems. Per­pet­u­ally refin­ing and fer­ment­ing the seman­tics of how to con­vey the thoughts I have.

Some of my favourite long time grad­u­ate stu­dents are the ones who have chal­lenged me along the way, forc­ing me to find answers to new questions…and occa­sion­ally mak­ing me see my mis­take and re-​setting my teach­ing methods.

I am always learn­ing, and like the actor who is on their learn­ing curve, becom­ing expo­nen­tially more of a mas­ter, but never quite reach­ing perfection…I am always striv­ing to work my way towards my own far away poten­tial as a teacher. I am cer­tain that I’ll be a frail, with­ered, but joy­ful old man on his last breaths…and in my dying moments I’ll still be think­ing about new ways to con­vey the moment to my class.

In this way, I am not an “all know­ing supe­rior” to my actors. Not at all. I am the leader per­haps, but among equals.

a teacher is a peer (not a parent)

A teacher is not an author­ity fig­ure who wields power, who scolds, berates, and “breaks” actors. An act­ing teacher is a men­tor and guide to the craft. Oh…by the way…

a teacher treats all equally (doesn’t play favourites)

And…

a teacher encour­ages col­lab­o­ra­tion (not competition)

And while we’re at it…

a teacher cre­ates a sense of com­mu­nity (not cliques)

All actors are on a learn­ing curve. Imag­ine a big arc that starts from the lower cor­ner of a page and arcs up in a parabola towards the top right cor­ner, becom­ing a par­al­lel line with the top of the page, but never quite reach­ing that final cor­ner. That upper­most cor­ner is per­fec­tion. None of us will ever each it. Not even Meryl Streep. (Although, she is close!)

The bot­tom left hand cor­ner is the first time an actor ever acted. Now most who are train­ing to be pro­fes­sional actors are up some­where mid-​way on their learn­ing curve. Every actor has their own spe­cific indi­vid­ual learn­ing curve…(that’s why actors should never, ever, ever com­pare notes).

a teacher assesses the individual’s needs

A teacher’s job is to visu­al­ize the actor’s learn­ing curve, pin­point where they are on their per­sonal arc, and move them fur­ther ahead.

There are two schools of thought on how to get an actor up their learn­ing curve. The Old school of thought (Meis­ner, Adler, Stras­berg, etc.) was this: to get an actor to learn, you pushed them up the arc. Through greed or fear, you smashed an actor up their learn­ing curve, lit­er­ally break­ing them so they go up.

Unfor­tu­nately, the old school of teach­ing was about break­ing peo­ple. The prob­lem with this method­ol­ogy, apart from issues of kind­ness and, well, ethics…is that when you push an actor up their arc, they went their because of the teacher. And the teacher’s fear or greed incen­tives (Meis­ner actu­ally uses those words in his book).

When you remove the teacher – when you remove the incen­tive – the actor will slide back down their arc, back into old habits and ear­lier ways.

a teacher doesn’t break an actor, they break an actor’s blocks

So, again, this type of teach­ing (besides being open to turn­ing into abuse…which hap­pens
far too often) turns actors into addicts for their teach­ers, as opposed to grad­u­ates.

Instead, what a teacher must do, is inspire an actor up their arc…by stand­ing ahead of them on the learn­ing curve and say­ing “Come on up!” Through com­pas­sion and healthy process, a teacher pulls an actor up their arc.

a teacher inspires peo­ple up to their high­est potential

In so doing, when you remove the teacher, the actor stays in place…because it was they
them­selves that got them­selves up their own learn­ing curve.

In this way, a teacher should never, ever demean, dimin­ish, or hurt an actor. Like chil­dren, all peo­ple learn best through inspi­ra­tion. Through patience. Through com­pas­sion­ate reward.

a teacher always teaches from the positive

I often say to actors that the best note they can get from me is: “Yes!” That’s because I set out a man­date for them to get up their learn­ing curve, and they achieved it.

The only times a teacher should ever raise their voice…or become aggres­sive with a student…(besides respond­ing to a per­sonal attack on another, which is rea­son for ejec­tion from class)…is when that stu­dent wil­fully chooses to hurt them­selves by repeat­edly falling down their arc. That is artis­tic and per­sonal self-​sabotage. It’s self-​annihilating, indis­ci­plined and unacceptable.

So, yes, at the rare time, tough love is nec­es­sary. But it’s still love, because…

a teacher teaches from compassion

That said…this next point is extremely important…

a teacher is your teacher, not your friend

A teacher needs to main­tain their objec­tiv­ity so they can give hon­est, some­times hard feed­back that the actor can hear. They also need to ensure that their opin­ions aren’t being prej­u­diced or biased in any way.

The bound­ary line between teacher and stu­dent is sacred. It’s what keeps the rela­tion­ship safe and the abil­ity to give and take notes clean. This is why, despite the fact that I love all my actors and have huge homes for them inside my heart, I don’t go out with them or invite them to my house or get per­sonal out­side of class.

Which brings me to the thorni­est issue of all…

a teacher never, ever gets per­son­ally involved with students

Like in any pro­fes­sion, there are teach­ers who abuse their author­ity and the inequal­ity of the student/​teacher rela­tion­ship. Let me be dead clear:

Any teacher who uses their posi­tion to solicit sex­ual rela­tions with a stu­dent, is not a teacher. They are a charlatan.

This kind of behav­iour does exactly the oppo­site of what great teach­ing is intended to do: it demeans indi­vid­u­als, removes con­fi­dence, plays on inse­cu­rity, and sets psy­cho­log­i­cal bar­ri­ers that will endure for years to come. Too many young, impres­sion­able, earnest, and des­per­ate young actors have had their inno­cence vio­lated in this way. Most leave the craft because of it. It is inexcusable.

The job of an act­ing teacher is essen­tially to help peo­ple to be the best actors that they can be…by help­ing them to be the best them they can be.

All peo­ple are beau­ti­ful, who­ever and what­ever they are…and the teach­ers job is to give per­mis­sion to them to be who they are to the fullest. To teach them to love their own flaws, faulty pasts, and insecurities…to teach them to love their idio­syn­crasies and personalities…to teach them the power of being.

An act­ing teacher doesn’t teach con­for­mity, they teach individuality.

a teacher helps a per­son be that person

Some of the best teach­ing is to “teach by exam­ple”. In other words, the teacher needs to be com­fort­able with them self. Open. Hon­est. Vul­ner­a­ble. And fal­li­ble. Stu­dents need to see their teacher fail, recover, and move on.

Teach­ers aren’t per­fect. They strive for their best.

a teacher is a pos­i­tive role model

With a zest for life, a teacher must have an explorer’s thirst, a detective’s inquis­i­tive­ness, and a scientist’s thor­ough­ness. The teacher needs to inspire, say­ing, “Come this way, come this way! Check this out!” But, never treat­ing actors as infe­ri­ors. Always say­ing: “I’m try­ing to fig­ure this thing out, now come and see if you agree with me.”

That’s what teach­ers do. We do that in order to make great actors. And great peo­ple. And a great com­mu­nity of peo­ple. So we can develop great skills. To make great art.

To make this a bet­ter world.

And that’s good act­ing.
Matthew Har­ri­son