What is Practical Aesthetics?
"Invent nothing, deny nothing. Accept EVERYTHING and get ON with it."
Practical Aesthetics is an acting technique created in 1983 by David Mamet and William H. Macy. It is encapsulated in "A Practical Handbook for the Actor" and in Mamet's "True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor", and rests on three principles:
1. The audience goes to the theatre to hear the truth.
This means that the primary job of the actor is to tell the truth. As Macy puts it, "A small truth is better than a big lie" (or, with Mamet's rhetorical flourish, "A well-drawn dog is better than a badly-drawn lion.") If the job of the actor is to tell the truth, then the best technique will be one which relies solely on the truth. This means acknowledging that you are an actor, on stage with another actor, in front of an audience. No fourth wall, no imaginary coffee, no pretending anything. Only the truth.
2. There are things that are within your power to control, and there are things that are not within your power.
Focusing your attention on those things which are within your power increases your chances of being successful. As actors, there are dozens of things that are not within our power: the audience, the director, the script, the performance of a scene partner. Any technique which requires your scene partner to "give" you something is less useful than a technique which relies only on what you control. Practical Aesthetics puts your technique firmly and completely in your own hands, so that even if you have a bad director, a bad script, or a bad scene partner, you can still do your job well.
3. Stories are told through what the characters do, not what they feel.
As Macy puts it, "Nobody ever wrote a scene about being sad." Since we tell stories through action rather than emotion, if the actor finds the right action for the scene and pursues that goal as though it's the most important thing in the world, the audience will understand the story.And that is the beginning and the end of your job as an actor: to tell the story so that the audience gets it.
No jargon, no new concepts to understand, nothing to complicate matters. The best performances are always the simplest ones. Real life isn't all that complicated - why should your acting be? You're going to have your hands full dealing with your scene partner, so pack light and travel quickly.
How do we do this? How do we turn this theoretical advice into practical advice for the actor? To learn that, you'll have to take a class...
(If you've got questions, or want to register, drop me an email.)
Student Comments:
"I haven't had this much fun acting in a long time."
- Robert
"Adam has great instincts; he has a lot of passion for acting and is a real joy to study with."
- Dan
"I really enjoyed your feedback and the time you took to analyze the scene with us. I've been in clases where the feedback was maybe five minutes and I was still unclear on what to work on for the future and what I did well. Not here."
- Kathy
"This was the best acting class I've taken. Adam has the ability to create a structure that challenges you to go deeper while upholding essential acting principles that you can use time and time again."
- Dominik Loncar, Artistic Director, InspiraTO Festival
"Taking Adam's class really helped me increase the awareness of my surroundings, turning my focus outwards toward the other actor as opposed to 'in my head' acting."
- Harrison