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A little bulb went off in my head. Actors today are trained toward playing character, and we do, in fact, often neglect the scene. There’s little hiding from this.

This is especially true in film and television, where more attention is paid to character elements like wardrobe, stylings, mannerisms, look, haircuts, habits and catchy one-liners, than if a scene is any good in its entirety. Whether something is advanced in the emotional make-up of the character, or whether we learn something beyond simple story points has been rendered nearly irrelevant. It’s a race between plot and character, scene be damned.

The scene, as it were, is nearly dead, rendering our most basic criticism of them as to whether they’re too long or too short. “Too long” means we got the plot point and would like the narrative to move on, “too short” means there wasn’t enough time to get our needed dose of character.

I have an audition coming up, and as I sat in class I ran my lines in my head, searching for whether I’d done any work on the scene. I had not. Several choices about vocal pitch, clothing and a nervous twitchiness had been established, but there was little in my preparation that answered the question, “So, what is this about? What’s going on? What are the points A and B here?” I had no idea, and here I was, a professional actor, studying with a celebrated teacher, suddenly clueless about the basics of my own craft.

But I felt as though I’d been mercifully spared another round of an anguished audition later. I could go back and do my work, properly. If I do the job, the rest follows, and it’s the attention to scene that will separate a mediocre read from a good one. Whether anybody in the room knows what’s going on doesn’t matter. Something will be felt, the way good stitching holds a bad together even as we desire only to feel the smoothness of the leather.

And at any rate, nearly all the classes out there are still being advertised as “scene study,” are they not?

As a relative latecomer to the business, I rationalized that I didn’t have time to waste getting started professionally, but as the years pile on, it would have been fine.  (Yes, youth is wasted on the young.)  Even as it turns out that I’m doing better than most who do have degrees, it doesn’t change the basic idea here.

Well, the past is gone, and there’s little I can do.  But we should all always be studying.  The classroom has reawakened my instrument.  Whether any of this has transformed my skills is not for me to say, but I can attest to a booming confidence, and an eagerness to keep learning that had gone missing.  It has also left me a bit burnt out from trying to do too much, but one step at a time… I’ll find the balance.

The industry in New York and Los Angeles offers no shortage of places to study.  A little research will reveal some good places to get back to the ABC’s of the craft.  Do it.

Trust me on this one.

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.

The other day I was speaking with a well-known actor/writer/director I know.  He told me he’d been fired from his latest gig and that he, too, experienced a similar unceremonious handling of the affair.  He went to rehearsal, went back to his hotel, and found a message waiting for him.  Don’t come back.  Perhaps this is the way it’s done.  For an industry that craves pageantry, it’s a little discordant, but if we start in with the contradictions we’ll be here all day…

The impulse upon hearing you’ve been dumped, of course, is to believe that you somehow failed.  If you had done something differently, or had cozied up to the right people, maybe the axe would have been spared.  But there’s no explaining whimsy, and unless you’ve done something egregious, there is little logic at play.  Somebody, somehow, for whatever reason, didn’t think things were going well and decided to make a change, and you seemed like the best option.

I would like to see a study as to whether things improve after these firings.  It’s unquantifiable, I know, but still, somebody might be able to take an objective eye to the situation.  My guess is it’s a case of the more things change… But what do I know?

I’ll keep checking my messages.

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.

Granted, I work in film and television, where you can whisper your way through any performance, and I’m rarely called upon to make the guy at the end of the block hear me, but still… fundamentals are fundamentals, and I felt a fool.  So, months later, I have taken it upon myself to study voice.

And it is a marvelous experience.

No, I have not simply fallen in love with my mellifluous tones, but rather I’ve discovered something remarkable, and shockingly basic: there’s a whole new world for me to use in performance.  It’s as if I suddenly turned around and realized that the room I’m standing in is twice as big as I’d thought.  And very well decorated.

Who knew?  Actually, many people.  And many of them had told me this very thing for years.  Train your voice, and you will become a better actor.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I replied.  A good haircut and some teeth whitening trays are what’s really needed.  Just look around.

Well, that may be true for some, and true for a part of this industry, but it’s not where I want to live.  Or how I want to live.  I want a voice that can hit the back of the biggest halls, night after night.  Even if I never have to speak above a hush.

The journey continues.  For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.

This week I was reminded of something I’d long thought of as silly when it comes to classes, and I couldn’t help but think of it as another chance to put my feelings about interpretive choice to the test.  Acting studios keep a mishmash of props around.  They’re typically in closets, or hidden behind a tattered curtain in the back of the room.  And actors presenting scenes haul them out to set the stage for their work.  A bench here, a ratty chair there, a wobbly desk over there, maybe some well-worn fake flowers beside a rotary phone and voila! you’ve got what is meant to be a country estate in the south of France.  Or a Brooklyn apartment circa 1962.  It’s all the same, really, and it always looks like a pawn shop.

I have always preferred not to dress my set in class.  Two chairs and a table is fine by me.  Ideally, it’s about the work being done by the performers, not whether they managed to use every last piece of wood found in a nearby alleyway.  If a teacher is critiquing your lack of set design, I would suggest moving on.  Anyway, I digress…

Now, the “full monty” set strikes could be one of two things.  It’s either very sad and pathetic – how can these poor, desperate actors not realize how absurd they look amongst GoodWill rejects – or it’s a testament to incredible powers of imagination – how amazing is it that these actors can believe that this is a real place, and get us to do the same.

I’m still mulling this one over.  I’ll get back to you in a couple of weeks after I present my first scene in more years than I care to count.  Besides, if you believe Shakespeare’s claim that “all the world’s a stage,” is any room, with its collection of things, really all that different?  I spent years with a study that looked increasingly like a garage sale… perhaps we are “merely players.”

But are we not also our own authors?  I see I still have much to learn…

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.