True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor

by David Mamet

  Now you, like everyone else, daydream. You dream of fame and fortune, of triumphal accomplishments and terrible misfortunes; you have, in short, an active, imaginative mind. You don’t have a very well developed power of what you have learned to call “concentration,” and the good news is that you don’t need it. For acting has nothing whatever to do with concentration. Perhaps you have read and studied and pondered Stanislavsky’s “circle of concentration,” in which you were asked to now enlarge, now constrain, your concentration, now to the room, now to the tabletop, now to your wristwatch, and so on.

  I know you have also done such exercises as the “mirror game” and have practiced concentrating on a past incident, feeling, or emotion, all with greater or lesser success.

  But success and failure in the above are equally irrelevant. Acting has nothing to do with the ability to concentrate. It has to do with the ability to imagine. For concentration, like emotion, like belief, cannot be forced. It cannot be controlled.

  Try this exercise: concentrate on your wristwatch.

  How did you do? Your ability to force your concentration lasted the briefest fraction of a second, after which you thought, “How long can I keep this up?” or, alternatively, “How interesting this all is, look how the hands go around!” which was, let us confess, hypocrisy—there was nothing interesting about it at all; you forced yourself to “concentrate,” and the result was falsity and self-loathing, as it, inevitably, must have been. For concentration cannot be forced.

  Your concentration is like water. It will always seek its own level—it will always flow to the most interesting thing around. The baby will take the cardboard box over the present it contained, and as Freud said, a man with a toothache can’t be in love. A new pack of cigarettes might be important if one has not had one for a month, but interest in it might pale before a first intimate encounter with a new partner, interest in which would fade next to the death of a parent, which would be of importance secondary to escape from a burning building.

  Interest or investment in one’s own powers of concentration is, finally, just another rendition of self-absorption and, as such, is a complete bore. The more you are concerned with yourself, the less you are worthy of note.

  The more a person’s concentration is outward, the more naturally interesting that person becomes. As Brecht said: Nothing in life is as interesting as a man trying to get a knot out of his shoelace.

  The person with attention directed outward becomes various and provocative. The person endeavoring to become various and provocative is stolid and unmoving. We’ve all seen the “vivacious” person at the party. What could be a bigger bore? It’s not your responsibility to do things in an interesting manner—to become interesting. You are interesting. It’s your responsibility to become outward-directed. Why not direct yourself toward the actions of the play? If they are concrete, provocative, and fun, it will be no task at all to do them; and to do them is more interesting than to concentrate on them.

  Concentration cannot be forced. It is a survival mechanism and an adaptive mechanism, and it will not stand down and stop making its own connections simply because we’d like it to. Acting, finally, has nothing whatever to do with the ability to concentrate. The ability to concentrate flows naturally from the ability to choose something interesting. Choose something legitimately interesting to do and concentration is not a problem. Choose something less than interesting and concentration is impossible.

  The teenager who wants the car, the child who wants to stay up an extra half hour, the young person who wants to have sex with his or her date, the gambler at the racetrack—these individuals have no problem concentrating. Elect something to do which is physical and fun to do, and concentration ceases to be an issue.

  If it’s not physical, it can’t be done (one can wait, but one cannot “improve the morals of a minor”); if it’s not fun, it won’t be done. (One can “suggest methods of self-improvement,” but one wouldn’t want to do it; on the other hand, the same objective might be restated actively, and we’d find it easy to “tell off a fool.”)

  Choose those actions, choose those plays, which make concentration beside the point. Believe me, if concentration is an issue for you, it will be one for the audience. When you choose the play you are burning to do, you will, likely, choose those actions and objectives within the play which are similarly fun. You not only have a right to choose actions which are fun, you have a responsibility—that’s your job as an actor.

  Here is a bit of heresy: Our theatre is clogged with plays about Important Issues; playwrights and directors harangue us with right-thinking views on many topics of the day. But these are, finally, harangues, they aren’t drama, and they aren’t fun to do. The audience and the actor nod in acquiescence, and go to their seats or go onstage happy to be a right-thinking individual, but it is a corruption of the theatrical exchange.

  The audience should go out front and you should go onstage as if to a hot date, not as if to give blood. No one wants to pay good money and irreplaceable time to watch you be responsible. They want to watch you be exciting. And you can’t be exciting if you’re not excited; and you can’t be excited if you’re thinking about nothing more compelling than your boring old concentration, self-performance, and good ideas.

  A friend once had dinner with Margaret Thatcher and reported, “You know, I couldn’t believe it myself, but there’s something sexy about her.” And I’m sure there was. She was gadding about, at the top of her game, having her own way, plotting, scheming, commanding. What did he find sexy? Power.

  Exercise your own power in your choice. Make a compelling choice and it’s no trick to commit yourself to it. “Concentration” is not an issue.

  TALENT

  A concern with one’s talent is like a concern with one’s height—it is an attempt to appropriate prerogatives which the gods have already exercised.

  I am not sure I know what talent is. I have seen moments, and performances, of genius in folks I had dismissed for years as hacks. I’ve watched students of my own and of others persevere year after year when everyone but themselves knew their efforts were a pitiful waste, and have seen these people blossom into superb actors. And, time and again, I saw the Star of the Class, the Observed of all Observers, move into the greater world and lack the capacity to continue.

  I don’t know what talent is, and, frankly, I don’t care. I do not think it is the actor’s job to be interesting. I think that is the job of the script. I think it is the actor’s job to be truthful and brave—both qualities which can be developed and exercised through the will.

  An actor’s concern with talent is like a gambler’s concern with luck. Luck, if there is such a thing, is either going to favor everyone equally or going to exhibit a preference for the prepared. When I was young, I had a teacher who said that everyone, in the course of a twenty-year career, was going to get the same breaks—some at the beginning, some at the end. I second and endorse his observation as true. “Luck,” in one’s business dealings, and “talent,” its equivalent onstage, seem to reward those with an active and practicable philosophy.

  The Pretty Girl or Boy will grow old, the “sensitive sophomore” will have to grow up or pay the consequences, the wheel will turn, and hard work and perseverance will be rewarded. But a concern with talent is a low-level prayer to be rewarded for what you now are.

  If you work to improve those things about yourself which you may control, you will find you have rewarded yourself for what you have become. Work on your voice so that you may speak clearly and distinctly although wrought-up, frightened, unsure, overcome (the audience paid to hear the play); work on your body to make it strong and supple, so that emotion and anxiety do not contort it unpleasantly; learn to read a script to ferret out the action—to read it not as the audience does, or as an English professor does, but as one whose job is to bring it to the audience. (It’s not your job to explain it but to perform it.) Learn to ask: What does the character in the scri
pt want? What does he or she do to get it? What is that like in my experience?

  Pursuit of these disciplines will make you strong and give you self-respect—you will have worked for them and no one can take that from you. Pleasure in your “talent” can (and will) be taken from you by the merest inattention of the person on whom you have deigned to exercise it.

  A common sign in a boxing gym: BOXERS ARE ORDINARY MEN WITH EXTRAORDINARY DETERMINATION. I would rather be able to consider myself in that way than to consider myself one of the “talented”; and—if I may—I think you would, too.

  HABIT

  We tend to repeat those things we have repeated. It’s not especially laziness; it’s just the way we are constructed. It is the way our mind works. How can we use this propensity to our advantage? By habitually performing the tasks of our craft in the same way.

  In the theatre, as in other endeavors, correctness in the small is the key to correctness in the large. Show up fifteen minutes early. Know your lines cold. Choose a good, fun, physical objective. Bring to rehearsal and to performance those things you will need and leave the rest behind.

  You can also cultivate the habit of wiping your feet at the door. We all know we should do this when we enter the theatre door, but we should also do this when we leave.

  Leave the concerns of the street on the street. And when you leave the theatre, leave that performance behind you. It’s over—if there is something you want to do differently next time, do it.

  Put things in their proper place. Rehearsal is the time for work. Home is the time for reflection. The stage is the time for action. Compartmentalize and cultivate that habit and you will find your performances incline to take on the tinge of action.

  Be generous to others. Everyone tries to do the best he or she can. Take the beam from your own eye. There is certainly something you can correct or improve in yourself today—over which you have control. That habit will make you strong. Yearning to correct or amend something in someone else will make you petty.

  Cultivate the habit of only having aversion for those things you can avoid (those things in yourself) and only desiring those things you can give yourself. Improve yourself.

  An actor is, primarily, a philosopher. A philosopher of acting. And the audience understands him as such.

  People, though they may not know it, come to the theatre to hear the truth and celebrate it with each other. Though they are continually disappointed, the urge is so inbred and primal they still come. Your task is to tell the truth. It’s a high calling. Cultivate the habit of pride in your accomplishments, large and small. To prepare a scene, to be punctual, to refrain from criticism, to learn your lines cold—these are all accomplishments, and while you pursue them, you are learning a trade, a most valuable trade.

  You bring onstage the same thing you bring into a room: the person you are. Your strength, your weakness, your capacity for action. Dealing with things as they are strengthens your point of view. A most valuable possession for an actor.

  Cultivate a love of skill. Learn theatrical skills. They will give you continual pleasure, self-confidence, and link you to fifty thousand years of the history of our profession.

  Singing, voice, dance, juggling, tap, magic, tumbling. Practice in them will perfectly define for you the difference between possession and nonpossession of a skill. If you do these things, you will begin to cultivate the habit of humility, which means peace. A person who has done her job that day has fulfilled her responsibilities and pleased God. That person can sleep well.

  Cultivate the habit of mutuality. Create with your peers, and you are building a true theatre. When you desire and strive to rise from the ranks rather than with the ranks, you are creating divisiveness and loneliness in yourself, in the theatre, and in the world. All things come in their time.

  Cultivate the habit of truth in yourself.

  In choosing the stage, you offer yourself constantly to the opinion of others. Mediocre minds must, of necessity, have mediocre ideas of what constitutes greatness. Consider the source.

  Be your own best friend and the ally of your peers, and you may, in fact, become that person, that friend, that preceptor, that benefactor you have always wished to encounter.

  That is not a character onstage. It is you onstage. Everything you are. Nothing can be hidden. Finally, nothing can be hidden in any aspect of your life. When we say Lincoln had character, we do not mean the way he held a cigarette. When you say your grandmother had character, we do not mean the way she used a hanky. If you have character, your work will have character. It will have your character. The character to do your exercises every day over the years creates the strength of character to form your own theatre rather than go to Hollywood; to act the truth of the moment when the audience would rather not hear it; to stand up for the play, the theatre, the life you would like to lead. There is nothing more pragmatic than idealism.

  THE DESIGNATED HITTER

  Disneyland is a rather restrictive work environment. The behavior of its employees is strictly prescribed and monitored. Individuality and improvisation are not, in the main, encouraged. But there is a counterexample.

  I visited Disneyland in 1955, and again in 1995, and on both visits witnessed this deviation: the men who “ran” the boats on the Jungle ride delivered a patter, which, while mild in the extreme, contained a touch of welcome institutional self-mockery. Further, the boat drivers were the wee-est bit free to improvise—to depart from the prepared script in a vein mildly mocking of the institution. It was there at the park’s opening in 1995, and use and forty years’ custom had ingrained it—a droit de fou, or fool’s license, to mock the dictatorial stolidity of the Establishment.

  Similarly, the concierge at many London hotels enjoys a position to some degree licensed to banter, to gossip, perhaps to camp—in short, to familiarize with the patrons, and so mitigate an unpleasant aspect of all that institutional propriety. And there are other examples of a position part of the duties of which are to mock, or at least mitigate, the dignity of the institution: the high school shop teacher and the television weather man are two. The hospital nurse, her visit coming on the heels of that of the hospital doctor, is another. And it’s noteworthy, I think, that the quality of their performance in these socially designated roles, is unimportant. It is the existence of the roles which delights us—that and the willingness of the actors to fulfill them. We do not require brilliance in the performance, merely willingness.

  Similarly, there is a spontaneously occurring position in the acting profession. It is that of the Great Actor. This is, in effect, an honorary position, awarded from a cultural need for the place to be filled, and not according to the merit of the individual. Indeed there is little or no merit required from the person so designated, save the willingness (whether in awe or vanity) to go along with the gag.

  Truly great performances cause us to question, to pause, to ponder, to reexamine. They do not conduce to the immediate ejaculation “bravo”; and so the Great Actor is, of necessity, seldom a very good actor. We praise his or her performances as we would praise our own possessions if we could do so with impunity. That is the gift of the Great Actor, and the reason he is so well rewarded—he allows us to act vainly and call it gracious appreciation. It is an example of our cultural insecurity. The praise means “Yes, and by God, he’s mine. I’ve got one, too.”

  We delight to slather appreciation on this placeholder for the minor inconvenience it causes us. It allows us to feel we have paid for the right to consider ourselves aesthetic. Our praises are as the sneezes of the fellow with a summer cold who enjoys informing us that it was caused by the air conditioner in his new car. We praise the Great Actor for all the world as if we were lauding the fiscal brilliance of the treasurer of the United States. And, like that honorary post, that of the Great Actor seems perpetually filled—one dies and another appears as if by parthenogenesis. We must require him. And we do. His presence reassures us that we need not be moved by art.


  Victorian physicians cautioned women to avoid at all cost that phenomenon they called “spasmodic transports” (orgasm), as nothing could be worse for the health. In our rote adulation of the Great Actor we instruct and remind ourselves to shun the spontaneous, the antisocial, the innovative, the organic. It is an inversion of the droit de fou.

  Well, propriety is fine in its place. But its place is not in the theatre. The theatre belongs not to the great but to the brash. And it is our job as theatre people to point out—both in comedy and in tragedy—the folly of the whole thing. We are not there to celebrate the status quo, or our capacity to celebrate—that is the job of the cocktail party, the banquet, and the political convention. Our job is and should be that of professional detractor.

  The profession of the Great Actor, on the other hand, is that of Dig-No-Ty. The Great Actor is the human equivalent of the Cow Pageant at some worthy livestock fair—his job is to attempt to add the imprimatur of artistic immediacy to the essentially self-serving. The position might seem to be a bargain, but nobody ever enjoyed that pageant; they only pretended to because of its cost.

  PERFORMANCE

  AND CHARACTER

  The preoccupation of today’s actor with character is simply a modern rendition of an age-old preoccupation with performance, which is to say, with oneself. It is, in every age, the old lookout of the ham actor.

  To ask constantly of oneself “How’m I doing?” is no more laudable or productive than to ask it of the audience. When we do so, we pander to a supposed magical, mythical “perfection” and, in so doing, abdicate our responsibility to tell the story simply. Such is not acting. It is, again, self-advertisement and posturing, and is best left to those who think that an imaginary future good justifies lying.

  Whether or not lying in general is a justifiable offense is a question for moral philosophers. Onstage it is never justified. Better to miss a laugh, an “emotional oasis,” a moment, a beat, than to add an iota to the “performance” in order to make sure the audience “understands.” They came to see a play, not your reasoned “emotional” schematic of what your idea of a character might feel like in circumstances outlined by the play.