I Signed Up for Acting Class and Stopped Performing
By my second class ever, I cried for 3 straight minutes in front of everyone.
The scene I was assigned was at a bus stop in a city where I, an unemployed older sister of little means, run into my drug-addicted and suicidal younger brother who was played by my scene partner, E.
He’s asking for money and I’m fed up. Here’s a clip:
Our teacher, David, expects us to have our lines memorized by our next class. I’d never done anything acting related before so I was excited. My intention with acting was to improve my public speaking, particularly my skill to transfer emotion in my speeches and presentations.
I thought I’d take class and learn a thing or two about expression, subtext, and body language.
After my first scene rehearsal, David brought up siblings.
Asked me if I had any.
Asked if they were normal.
In my real life, my sister and I had a sad falling out years ago so I started to think about that and about her and tears welled up.
I tried to fight it. I didn’t want to cry. Then David goes,
“when I brought up your sister just now, your entire face changed.”
I’ve been made, I thought.
Weird to me why that was the first reaction.
Like my joyful facade was no more.
As if I wanted my acting classmates to know that my life was held together nicely. I wasn’t even friends with anyone.
Yet I cared what they thought.
My walls collapsed.
As David watched me start to cry, he had E and I run the scene again. Feeling the sadness and anger about my sister while running lines that I freshly memorized felt bumpy.
Because in those emotions, what I really wanted to say was personal to her.
I wanted to fucking scream
I of course had to stick to the lines.
When we were done, I was overwhelmed. I couldn't stop feeling old painful memories.
After class was over, I went to the restroom to collect myself as best I could. Women from my class saw me in there and for the first time in my life, I received praise for crying.
They said things like “that was incredible” and “it was the highlight of class tonight.”
I cried my entire way through high school because of how stressful my home life was and the fights I got into. I cried in the bathroom, in the stairwell, outside, on campus, in class, in the guidance counselors. Friends comforted me but no one ever PRAISED me for crying.
Later that week, E and I rehearsed our lines again on FaceTime and prepared for our final time doing this scene.
On that particular FaceTime call, E said the kindest thing, “I just want you to know that you don’t have to do that again. I read that actors can cry because they dig up painful memories and don’t feel like you need to go there again.”
I could’ve cried on that call I was so touched.
There’s No Such Thing as an Empowered Female Lead
David had the audacity to say this to me. When he asked me what kinds of characters I was interested in playing, I said in full confidence “an empowering female lead.”
“Those don’t exist,” he said. “What a boring movie it’d be if they did.”
I didn’t believe him. I thought about the roles of Astrid Leong, Erin Brockovich, Allie Hamilton, Blair Waldorf.
Of course, if you sit and really think each one had struggles and that’s why we relate to them. Astrid with her cheating husband and complicated dynamic in marriage. Erin, single mom and without money. Allie, heartbroken left to despair. Blair, strong need to be respected and adored by her parents more so her teammates, while also being powerful.
I always looked at characters like them like they had it all.
However, when I looked closely, I realized they’re having the same human experience as all of us.
And this realization made acting more accessible to me mentally.
I am familiar with struggle and jealousy and wanting to be accepted and feeling loved and being pursued and manipulated too. I have always lived life in the emotional arena whether I knew I was in it or not.
I loved acting class so much, I started going to private tutoring
In the first few 1:1 sessions, David would pass me a monologue and I’d coldread it. I can’t even explain how exciting this was.
One day I was given a script that was about a girl who is describing her sister with a disability from falling out of the tree and how it impacted her family.
As I read this half page monologue, David would help me.
Me: …many places were in accessible but it made our family a tight uni–”
David: family, bring it up
Me: famiLY
David (in a lightness): family
Me: family
David: No. You keep dropping it. Family.
Me (trying): family
David: it’s her family, it’s a happy thing–
Me (pretty much shouting): well that’s not how I think about my family
David: oh
Me:
David (knowing he’d struck a chord): from the top
I cried and reread the monologue for the 3rd time and towards the end where the character hits the truth about her sister with a disability being suicidal, a moment before I read that, David says to me:
“now go someplace dark”
And without having to think, like muscle memory, my heart knew to replay the time when I was 5 and my mom dropped us off in New Jersey and walked out and I waited and waited and waited.
I was shocked I said that about family. I didn’t even know that I thought about family that way myself.
Snot, tears, trembles, I finished the scene.
“Good job,” he said.
We did a couple more private tutorings and I tapped back into a couple other dark deep memories I had. I started to miss the spotlight and the captivated audience that was my class so I eventually wrapped up tutoring since I was also traveling for the summer.
I left acting class feeling enriched. I had an open soul, a softened heart but also a lot of trauma I had dug up and spilled everywhere. My scene partner E was right. The way actors tap into crying is by revisiting dark moments of their own.
I was raw for months, borderline depressed. I had all this previously hidden and now exposed baggage and nowhere to put it.
But I also couldn't unfeel what I'd felt.
And I didn't want to.
For years I had performed composure so well that I believed it. Acting class didn't teach me how to cry on command yet but it showed me I'd been acting long before I ever signed up
My Acting Teacher’s Golden Nuggets About Life
Consider this a bonus section to this article. In class, David would spontaneously drop acting nuggets that I strongly felt also applied to life. Each time he’d say one, I’d take out my phone and write them down.
Here are some of them:
“How do you expect to be a painter? You’ve got to get a mess on the walls. If you just paint carefully, well, then that’s just a hobby.”
He was explaining how reading scripts in different scenarios, trying new things requires your willingness to get messy and rip things apart instead of staying contained. I was encouraged to let go of my composure more. “Be ugly,” he’d say.
What separates a hobby from a passion is how extreme and serious you take it. When you are operating in those edges, things are bound to get messy, expectations are unknown and that’s what’s fun about it all. But you’ve got to put it all out there.“The more you suffer on the stage, the less you feel frustrated.”
Off the back of being a painter, some of us would play our scenes and keep things pleasant. David wanted us to bleed. He teaches class several times a week and yet in ours, every night, you could tell that he was hungry for someone to pour out. To suffer. Because he knew that if we did, we’d a) receive more thorough feedback giving him and the class more to work with and b) have an experience that would’ve taught us more about ourselves and therefore, about acting. He wanted us to leave our rehearsals having left it all out there. Trying new things. Not playing things safe. I’d want the same thing for my children when it comes to life.“The only performance you have to do is the audition. After that, you’re creating.”
He dropped this gold nugget about how we approach acting as a job. After we landed the role, we are officially creating the art together with everyone else on the set. Staying open minded and knowing that the movie or the play is being co-created now and not performed.
I thought this applied to how startups hire. When they bring their first Director of Marketing, you might interview and share your best playbooks and approaches to growth but when you actually join the company, you are, in a way, starting from scratch with that organization, industry, and timing in the market.“You’re not here to learn acting, you’re here to experience you at full force.”
My favorite one of his lines. He dropped this one in my first class and I was hooked. I love exploring everything about my innerworld and drawing it out.“This would not be written if the writer didn’t suffer.”
He said this to me after I read the monologue in our first tutoring session.
I always knew pain was required for great art.
No one likes to suffer. I certainly don’t. But hearing it reframed about how an artist needed to suffer in order to produce beautiful, relatable, human art that was ironically empowering to all our experiences.
I took my classes at Actor Class taught by David Epstein and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.