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What You Need to Know Before Considering an Acting Coach

Illustration courtesy of Nick Bertozzi

If you’re in the Los Angeles area in April, my Spring Audition Bootcamp classes have just been announced.
April 10, 17 & 24, 2018. Please click here to read the description and apply. If you apply and are confirmed before March 26, get 10% off!
I look forward to working with you.

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I get this email about 20 times a week: “Hi, Ms. Liroff. My wish is to be an actor. I’ve always wanted to do it but I don’t know how to get started. I have no experience at all, but my dream is so big, I can’t let that stand in my way. I’ve read all your articles and I think you’re the perfect coach for me. When can we get started?”

While I would never squash anyone’s dream, this is a perfect example of putting the cart before the horse.

You’ve got to learn the fundamentals of acting before you start working with an acting coach.

For instance, a gymnast trains extensively and then gets a coach. You need to be in weekly classes. When you’re in classes, you’ll be able to get up and work every week in front of a room full of people. Not only will you learn from your teacher, you’ll get to witness some great (and not-so-great!) actors and learn from their victories and defeats.

When I’m working with an actor, I can immediately see if they’ve had no training because they do not even know how to stand. They don’t know what to do with their hands, they’re not in touch with their body. Movement classes will help you connect with your instrument.

I’m seeing too many actors who do not know how to use their voice effectively. They’re not breathing correctly, which leaves them without power. They aren’t enunciating properly, which makes gorgeous dialogue turn to mush. Voice classes will give you insight on how to use your instrument properly.

Once you’ve got your foundation set with acting classes, it’s important to understand how to work with the camera. There’s a very specific skill set that you need to master before you’re going out for auditions.

Some of the issues you need to know are:

In TV and film, always connect with your reader. If there are other people in the scene, you can place them just to the right of the camera, not off to the far left.

Being off-book is now a given. There is no point coming in and reading your sides; we call people who do that “reciters.” If you don’t know the material inside and out, you will not be able to take direction and connect with your reader.

I get emails from parents saying they want to get their kids into acting, and then ask me to coach them. They don’t know if their child even likes acting. Get your kid into classes first and see how she responds. My friends with kids who think they want to be actors say no year after year until they feel the child really means it and is truly ready.

Your acting coach helps tweak and shape your work and gives you confidence and another set of eyes on your performance. But you must have a performance to begin with! Coaches are not meant to be acting teachers—that’s what acting classes are for.

Make sure to check out my new online course “How To Audition For Film and Television: Audition Bootcamp”. You can view it on your laptop or your mobile device and your subscription gives you lifetime viewing privileges for this course. I’ll be adding lectures throughout the year.

Warning: I grant permission to share my blog as written with no additions or deletions. Posting my blog is in no way an endorsement of another site unless you obtain my written consent.)

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Is Your Acting Teacher Making You Sick? – Part 3

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By Marci Liroff

In my May 29 and June 12 columns, I spoke to some acting teachers and coaches about some of the horror stories I’ve been hearing from actors about their classes. But what happens to these actors when they finally come to the realization that those classes are hurting them? How would other teachers describe these walking wounded?

Acting coach Jeffrey Marcus responded, “For me, the walking wounded are the people who come to me depleted of all their self-esteem and confidence from, sometimes, a word said or a hope or dream dashed by their last teacher. Actors are sensitive. When they put their trust in a teacher, pay them their hard-earned dollars, pour their heart and soul into the work, and then get trashed because the teacher taught a famous actor who became a star…they must know.”

“There is a teacher in town…and I can always tell from the dead look in their ex-students’ eyes where they just studied when they come to me.”
Jeffrey Marcus

With so much bad behavior running rampant among teachers, what kinds of relationships are healthy? Marcus gave a thoughtful reply, saying, “It is my job to be of service. I am there to challenge, support, encourage, enlighten, and expand limitations. I am there to send them out with more joy and confidence with which to face the travails of the industry. Hollywood is tough. Class should be a safe haven from which to drink from the well and get replenished for the week ahead.”

“Acting can be a brutally difficult craft,” actor and licensed marriage and family therapist Julie Carmen told me. “Coddling students can set them up for a crash when the business rejects them, but abusing, humiliating, ridiculing, and insulting an acting student is totally unethical, dangerous, and counterproductive. Ideally, actors grow when they join companies, attend class daily, and do their inner work to discover the range of their personal palette. The most valuable trait is courage. Nurturing, attunement, and secure relationships breed courage.”

As for his part, actor and teacher Jack Plotnick thinks teachers and therapists aren’t that different. “I believe that an acting teacher should have the same relationship that therapists have with their clients,” he says. “I try to create a safe space where they never feel judged. I make sure that no one but me comments on their performance. I am always sharing with them that it doesn’t matter what I think about their performance. What matters is what they think. Acting runs on ‘empathy,’ which means that an audience can only experience what you experience. That’s why I tell actors they must be selfish and only interested in their own experience in the scene. Because any part of them that is trying to impress the teacher or deliver a good product is a part of them that is not having a rich emotional experience, thereby giving the audience a rich emotional experience.”

What about you? Have you ever experienced what you’d call inappropriate or cult leader behavior from your acting teacher? Why did you stay in the class?

Make sure to check out my new online course “How To Audition For Film and Television: Audition Bootcamp”. You can view it on your laptop or your mobile device and your subscription gives you lifetime viewing privileges for this course. I’ll be adding lectures throughout the year.

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Click to Tweet: Is Your Acting Teacher Making You Sick? Part 3 from @marciliroff bit.ly/1uKsrOX
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Is Your Acting Class Abusive?

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By Marci Liroff

In my last blog “Is Your Acting Teacher Making You Sick?”, I wrote about the cult of acting teachers and how actors can sometimes be swept up in their bad behavior. I’m gathering these stories to shine a light on this culpable behavior and to clarify what is healthy and what is abuse. I know this goes on in every industry, but it’s particularly heartbreaking when it’s in a situation like an acting class, which should be a safe place to learn and make mistakes. Actor and acting coach Jack Plotnick has another story.

“One actor did a scene and the teacher said the girl could not train with her until she got some therapy from the teacher’s sister, who is a therapist!” he says. “She said that the teacher keeps the students coming by instilling the idea in them that they are not ready and are not good enough yet. She felt that this played into her subconscious gluttony for punishment, which I think a lot of actors have because they are unconsciously punishing themselves for being artists in a world that does not respect artists and instead worships business.”

Plotnick has also heard of a gay actor being told that if he wanted to work he would need to drop all of his gay friends and only hang out with straight men. And according to Plotnick, one teacher “allows her students to comment on other students’ work, and even leaves them alone to run the scene in front of their peers and lets their peers give them feedback. These actors are paying out the  nose and she isn’t even at the class! As soon as I began coaching actors I started hearing horror stories of the bad training and abuse that can happen in acting classes. And the sad thing is that most of the worst stories came from the  students of the most prominent teachers.”

I’m mystified by this.

Why would actors continue to attend classes with—and pay great sums of money to—these kinds of teachers?

Plotnick had a thought-provoking take on this.

“The issue is that actors usually leave an abusive or unhelpful class feeling like the problem is them and not the teacher,” he says. ”Actors want to feel that they are ‘working’ at their craft. Perhaps they want to prove to their family that they are not ‘lazy’ or ‘irresponsible,’ or perhaps they have bought into the belief that classes lead to bookings. I believe in working at my craft as well, but for me, that always meant to be acting as much and as often as I could. And since I love acting, it never felt like work. And the best part is that whenever I would put up a play or a sketch show, some wonderful job would be delivered to me. I became a magnet for the work instead of chasing after it.”

Acting teacher and coach Jeffrey Marcus had an interesting response. “The only reasons I can think of are that some people want to recreate the abusive relationships that they had with their mentors-parents. The ‘no pain, no gain’ mentality: If it ain’t hurtin’, it isn’t making you grow. It’s very sad to me. In this town, the buzz is everything. When a teacher gets hot, they start believing their press, too. What started out as a calling to assist becomes an ego-driven vehicle to build up their own crumbling self-esteem. Any teacher who uses their power to seduce their students, whether sexually or to create a social network, is out of integrity.”

Check out Part 3 of this exposé June 26, when I talk about the healthy relationship you should seek from your acting teacher.

What about you? Why do you stay in class if it isn’t helping you?

Make sure to check out my new online course “How To Audition For Film and Television: Audition Bootcamp”. You can view it on your laptop or your mobile device and your subscription gives you lifetime viewing privileges for this course. I’ll be adding lectures throughout the year.

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