TAOF mission

First and foremost The Actor on Film is an acting class, period. A class that challenges the actor, whether from the stage or screen, from the most experienced to the lesser experienced, to go where he or she has rarely, if ever, gone before…far beyond his “comfort zone”.  

What is that comfort zone?  It is the subversive (yes, subversive) place the actor goes to so as to always be in control, to always know what’s going to happen in a scene or in a particular moment. It is a place that is preplanned, self-directed, in his or her head, cautious and most times very rigid. The place where decisions are made right from the first reading of a script, instant choices that are rarely deviated from, from that first reading to the final performance.  

Why is this bad? The comfort zone limits the actor to a few, mostly uninteresting, predictable choices that makes for boring, non-spontaneous and uninspired acting. More importantly, it doesn’t leave any room for the infinite number of possibilities available to the actor in a given scene or moment.  

For an actor to be the best he can be, to strive to always grow as an artist, he needs to take risks, enormous risks, to allow for his or her uniqueness as a human being to come through the work so that the casting director, the director (never forget the editor) and ultimately the audience will be transported into the unique world of that actor, to not know exactly what is going to happen next. Predictability is death for an actor. This is how and why most actors are a dime a dozen. Is this the type actor you want to be?  

Why then, is this class called the actor “on film”? The intimacy of film requires that extra risk, that vulnerability, that courage to reveal oneself to the world. Film acting is a continuous rehearsal, a continual spontaneous exploration of a character in a scene ALL WHILE THE CAMERA IS ROLLING!  

What we do then at TAOF is to push and challenge the actor, through scene work, exercises, discussion and occasional visits from other master artists to learn to be courageous, to risk falling on his or her ass yet to get up again and go for it…to realize that there are worse things in life than falling on your ass.

We teach the actor that most times what he or she thought a scene was, how it should be played with all those pre-planned choices is not necessarily the scene at all! We maintain that an actor doesn’t know how the scene is played until they actually get in the arena, face the other actor and within the circumstances and needs of the scene give up control and let things fly. The scene will then reveal itself and almost always in more interesting ways than he or she could ever have imagined.  

A writer who doesn’t write isn’t a writer, a painter who doesn’t paint isn’t a painter and an actor who doesn’t act isn’t really an actor. Acting is like any muscle. It needs to be exercised to stay toned and strong. Therefore, the work we do at TAOF is the ongoing exercise of the vulnerability muscle, the courage muscle, the risk taking muscle and the spontaneity muscle.  

Remember, probably 80-90% of the work any actor will ever do will be on film, television and commercials. Shouldn’t you be ready?