There is nothing you can act that is richer than what you are.
Great work is not about the actor becoming the character or ‘being someone else,’ – it’s about the actor knowing that the character will be whatever the actor brings to it from themselves. The more actors can open up and be available to themselves, the more of the character they will find within themselves, and the more genuine surprises they will have for the audience. This process of helping actors to open up the richness within them is a delicate one. It must be handled by a teacher with extreme sensitivity toward each individual actor. This is of paramount importance.
During my 40 years of teaching, I have encountered all too many actors destroyed by the ego of college/university teachers or a professional mentor. There are far too many teachers that feel they have to strip actors of their ego and rebuild them. Or worse, play upon the actor’s neuroses, and subsequently perhaps their own neurotic needs, by encouraging an actor to work in an area they are not equipped psychologically or emotionally to handle. As teachers, we are not trained therapists, or surrogate parents, and have no right to pretend to be. It is dangerous to establish and encourage these kinds of role relationships in the classroom. Exploring the craft of acting can be encouraged as a healthy and even “sane obsession”, not a process of digging into neuroses as a tool of creativity. Terry Schreiber