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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.

Want to share this post? Here are ready made tweets!
Click to Tweet: Is Your Acting Teacher Making You Sick? Part 3 from @marciliroff bit.ly/1uKsrOX
Click to Tweet: Why do #actors stay in classes that are abusive from CD @marciliroff bit.ly/1uKsrOX Is Your Acting Teacher Making You Sick? Part 3

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.

Want to share this post? Here are ready made tweets!
Click to Tweet: ‘Is Your Acting Class Abusive?’ @marciliroff shines a light on this nasty phenom http://bit.ly/1hMDUwV
Click to Tweet: Why are #actors paying large sums of money to be abused by their acting teacher? @marciliroff exposé http://bit.ly/1hMDUwV

Is Your Acting Teacher Making You Sick?

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By Marci Liroff

Scam alert! Are you feeling abused and beat up when you leave your acting class? Could you ever imagine it’s coming from the very person who should be your mentor and your guide – your acting teacher or coach?

There are plenty of amazing teachers across the globe, yet I’m hearing horror stories of instructors who sound more like cult leaders.

Would it strike you as odd if a teacher asked you to rub his feet while you were delivering your monologue? A well-known teacher uses this method to get his students “out of their head” while they’re doing a scene. What works for one person won’t necessarily work for the next—which is why I think finding the right acting teacher and coach is often like finding the right shrink. You’ll only let some inside that very secret, dark place inside you. But once inside, I’d hope that along with calling you on your bad habits, your teacher-coach would lift you up, not demean and debase you. There are plenty of ways to do this same exercise without being unprofessional. This same teacher refers to her students as “Nazi,” “Basketball Player,” and even one 16-year-old as “Porn Star” rather than learn their names. To me, this crosses the line of impropriety.

Actor and licensed marriage and family therapist Julie Carmen remembers one New York acting teacher’s gross direction for a scene mate to spit in her face. “The point was to teach me to respond spontaneously and to not censor my anger, but even at age 18 it just destroyed my trust in that teacher,” she says.

“I felt manipulated and nauseous. Why was the teacher unable to teach spontaneity in a more respectful way? Why would my acting partner take the advice of that teacher? Why do we hand over our power to these people?”

I spoke to acting teacher and coach Jeffrey Marcus about this methodology. “In the past people learned by being bullied, from the military to Bikram Yoga, but it died out with disco,” Marcus says. “Who would want to be shamed and trampled upon, when all studies show that people bloom when given the room, time, and support to flower?  Even though Stella Adler was a tough teacher, I doubt that she shamed her most famous pupil—Marlon Brando.”

Adds Carmen, “I studied with Sanford Meisner, Uta Hagen, Bobby Lewis, José Quintero, and, recently, Patsy Rodenburg. They were extraordinarily perceptive, but their humility and love of teaching guided their approach. The intention was to push us toward deeper work at our own pace. One important phrase they taught was that ‘Actors wear our hearts on our sleeves but need the skin of an alligator.’ Therefore we manage the contradiction of being private in public, highly sensitized with the survival skill to detach.”

Actor and acting teacher Jack Plotnick weighed in on the outrageous foot-rub story. “Actors have a fear-based and result-oriented voice in their head while they act, called their ego,” he says. “Exercises like these can get actors to stop focusing on these result-oriented thoughts, but the issue with exercises like these is that the actor leaves with no tool with which to recreate the experience; no ability to quiet that fear-based ego voice. Either way, any class that does not empower actors to trust their own instincts and abilities is destructive and should be avoided.”

Check out Part 2 of this exposé June 12, when I answer the question, ”Why would actors continue to pay great sums of money to these kinds of teachers?”

What about you? What are some of your horror stories?

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.

Want to share this post? Here are ready made tweets!
Click to tweet: “Is Your Acting Teacher Making You Sick”? via casting director @marciliroff http://bit.ly/1mvFtfZ
Click to Tweet: Are you feeling abused and beat up when you leave your acting class? via casting director @marciliroff http://bit.ly/1mvFtfZ