You Can’t Be an Actor and a Gentleman.

“It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else’s eyes.”

–Sally Field

You may recall a while back when I wrote about my “Crisis of Confidence” as I’ve referred to it in Great Acting: Catching Lightning in a Bottle and The Actor Who Succeeded by Failure. It been a strange mode I’ve existed in as an actor for the last two months or so. I find myself not being happy with my work and not really understanding why. I know the cause is my lack of boldness, my lack of courage, but these are recently acquired shortages and I’m not sure what brought them on. Well, today the spell might’ve been broken . . . and it turns out I knew the answer all along.

I’ve said in the past that you cannot be a gentleman and an actor at the same time. I can’t remember when exactly I said that, but I think it was in Podcast number two. It was a lesson I learned a few years back that I resisted with all my might at the time. I liked being a gentleman. I’m a very amiable guy and I like doing nice things and being genuinely kind to people. I heard that I couldn’t be a gentleman and an actor and balked. “No!” I said. “Sure you can. You’re not just one or the other!” With every fiber of my being I strained against the idea. It just wasn’t right, it wasn’t true. It took me a little while to figure out that it was true. You can be one or the other, but never both at once.

I’m sure there are some readers out there who are balking the same way I did, but let me explain. Onstage, we are required to do things that we don’t necessarily want to do in our day to day lives. If you’ve playing Oedipus, you’ve got to “experience” some things that I hope you don’t experience in your everyday world. If you’re playing Eben Cabot you’ve got to go through some events that are so strange and tragic that sometimes we, as actors, don’t even want to attempt to comprehend them. It’s this distinction between onstage and offstage that also distinguishes the gentleman from the actor.

When you leave rehearsal for the night and head home, feel free to be as kind and thoughtful as you wish to be; be as gentlemanly as you can muster. When you’re onstage that default of courtesy must take a backseat to the adaptability of the moment. Playing Jessie Cates means that you have to explore the motives and meanings behind her ultimate suicide. Playing Oleanna’s Carol means that you have to come to grips with sexual harassment and ruining another person’s life. We’re actors and often times we’re called on to do and think dark and uncomfortable things and confusing ourselves with our characters can cause an emotional bifurcation of sorts.

Offstage we can be gentlemen and ladies, but onstage we must be whatever we are told to be. We must be adaptable to the life of the fictional circumstances that are given to us.

It’s this fact that has gone a long way in ridding me of my new-found timidity. During rehearsal just today the director pulled me aside. “I’m going to take you to task a little bit,” Thomas said. “And I’m going to do it in your own words. You want to be a gentleman in this scene and you can’t be.”

And there it was. My own words coming back to remind me of what I already knew, but had somehow forgotten

And suddenly I realized that he was right. I had let my desire to ruffle no feathers get in the way of my ruffling some feathers. I felt a little lighter as the rehearsal picked back up and suddenly everything started working better than it had been. It wasn’t perfect, it was just better. This may be just the first step in my ridding me of this “Crisis of Confidence” but it has taught me two valuable lessons: 1. The answers I need are the lessons that I have simply forgotten; I know them, now I just have to remember them. 2. You really can’t be an actor and a gentleman.

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