105 Bonus - Truthful Artistry in an Age of Superficiality

We live in a time where modern culture increasingly rewards performance over truth. An age where branding, appearance, and clever curation often substitute for real artistry. Visibility has begun to replace depth.

In this Bonus Episode before the launch of Season Six, Charlie reflects on why art and truthful artistry still matter. A conversation about discipline, artistic rigor, high standards, vulnerability, and the responsibility of the artist to illuminate the truth of the human condition rather than chase shortcuts to visibility and viral content.

Hosted by Charlie Sandlan — Artistic Director and Master Teacher of the Maggie Flanigan Studio in New York City.

Follow Creating Behavior on Instagram @creatingbehavior and the Maggie Flanigan Studio @maggieflaniganstudio.

Theme music by Lawrence Trailer.

For private coaching, voicemail submissions, and more, visit:
creatingbehaviorpodcast.com
maggieflaniganstudio.com

Transcript

Charlie (00:00):

So I'm wondering how many of you can relate to this. You've got your Instagram account, your Facebook page, your LinkedIn profile and you can get caught up not just in doomscrolling, but in content creation, in worrying about viral clicks and being seen and the quick fixes and the shortcuts that can improve your visibility. And this is what I think needs to be of concern to you and me as artists is that visibility has now been mistaken for depth. And most of modern culture now rewards performance and superficiality over truth. And I don't think that's something that you and I or any serious artist wants to get sucked down into, into that morass of mediocrity and superficiality. So this is a little bonus episode, my friends. Season six is going to drop in a couple of weeks, but today I'm going to talk about truthful artistry in an age of superficiality. It's good to be back in front of this mic, so put the foam back in your pocket. Creating Behavior starts now.

Singing (01:30):

It's not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough. Keep on chasing my dream.

Charlie (01:48):

Well, hello my fellow daydreamers. It is good to be talking to you again. It's good to be back in front of this mic. I am speaking to you from Studio A at the Maggie Flanigan Studio in New York City, my 2-year conservatory program where I have spent the last 20 years, 20 years training actors. Well, since last we spoke on the personal side, real quick, everything's great. Trish and I, still married and that's a good thing. We're getting along well. I cannot complain and the studio's thriving. I love my students. It's been a great school year, intense ups and downs, everything that goes with the creative process and the struggles and the failures and the successes. So we're wrapping up the 2025-2026 school year and things are great. And so I just thought this was a perfect time to start to record again because I have some things to say and it takes time to figure out what you want to talk about.

(02:55):

So season six is definitely dropping in a couple of weeks. I am recording these episodes and I thought, well, listen, let's drop a little bonus episode, just a little something to wet the whistle. I think that's an old man saying. I keep finding myself saying more and more old man things, which is troubling. So wet the whistle sounds ridiculous to me, but it came to me and I said it. So we're going to wet the whistle here with this bonus episode: Truthful Artistry in the Age of Superficiality. And I just thought it was a really great topic to start with because we live in a time where social media is dominating everything that we do.

(03:44):

AI is infiltrating everything that we do and what that has been doing, I think, and I certainly see it with my students which means it's happening to you, is that we just as a culture and the things that we consume just have become more and more superficial, surface level crap. Social media is all about viral clicks. It's all about content creation. It's about fame. It's about celebrity. Anybody now can just create content, can shoot something, post something. And the majority of it is absolute garbage and half of it's not even grounded in anything that's authentic, anything that's true. And I think for those of us that want to live an artistic life, that see ourselves as artists, it's demoralizing a little bit and also it just corrupts our own process and it starts to devalue what it is that we do for a living, which is to illuminate the human condition in all of its aspects.

(04:53):

And I think it kind of fosters emotional dishonesty amongst us, rage baiting, putting stuff out that is just there to provoke you into some form of anger, to insult you, to piss you off. It's not really an excavation of the human condition. And it all becomes about image. How do you manage your image? And that's what people are worried about now. And when you go online and you go onto LinkedIn or you go and scroll through the shit that people are putting out that is pedaling to actors, all of the shortcuts, all of the things that you need to be able to do in order to book work, to become famous, tips, industry hacks, never do I see anybody talking about the importance of training yourself as an artist, of putting the time in, putting in the years of hard work on your voice, on your body, on your temperament, on your imagination, so that you can really step into the shoes of another human being. I just don't think that most actors even think this way anymore and it depresses me.

(06:08):

And so I thought, well, this is what I want to talk about today. We're caught up in this performance identity, this image that we put out that actors pedal and it's got nothing to do with the human condition. And so our attention spans start to collapse. What do we have? Maybe 10, 15 seconds before you are onto something else? More and more people are having difficulty even just sitting down and reading a book and most people don't even want to do that anymore. Not to mention just the simple act of creating an email, creating anything where you have to sit down and think about what it is you want to say. We just go to AI, go to ChatGPT. And I had this happening with my students. They have to read books for the school year. I give them a reading list because I want to instill in them some sort of literary path for themselves to educate themselves.

(07:15):

So they have to read like six books over the nine months of school here and they have to write something about it, something personal. And I will tell you over the last couple of years, all I get are AI generated fucking papers, 500 words, and half these students don't even read what they've put into AI. They just print it out and hand it in. And so I've gotten really good at being able to detect AI generated stuff. And so now I have to have my students go into the office, sit down without any material except a pen and a piece of paper and write for 15 minutes in order to get them to think for themselves and this is where we're at.

(08:00):

And so I think that actors, artists, but particularly actors, because this is what we're talking about here, are beginning to start to lose their inner life, their inner creative life, the engine that drives their ability to create art. And I think that's really dangerous. If you do not want to be superficial as an actor, if you do not want to be scratching the surface, then you need to be grounded in serious craft and serious technique. You need to have emotional accessibility. You need to be able to mine yourself very, very deeply.

(08:43):

The truth of the human condition lives in behavior. That's it. And you can either create that behavior or you can't. And what moves an audience, what creates and sets up in an audience an experience is watching human beings living through something experientially and AI and Instagram and Facebook and TikTok videos are not going to do that for you. Learning how to shoot a vertical, learning how to edit and put something together that's 60 seconds long. It's all bullshit, half of it. Great acting comes from the humanity of the artists that are creating that behavior. That does not come from performance hacks.

(09:40):

And I think it's rooted and you can just reflect on your own life about this. I think it has to do with the fear of being seen, of really being seen because that's what vulnerability is. That's what real art is going to require of you. That's what the best acting is going to require of you. It is the ability to be seen by another human being as open and as free as you have ever been in your life. And that is scary. That's scary as fuck. To give up all of those barriers, to give up and drop all of the walls that you've erected over your life, to keep you protected, to keep you safe, to keep you just getting through life.

(10:30):

The best acting, truthful acting, truthful artistry is in the actor's ability to be able to drop all of the walls and that requires courage. So when we are scrolling, doomscrolling and trying to figure out the best ways to get a viral video going, very rarely is that rooted in any kind of artistic process, but the best acting that you will ever do is going to be grounded in your humanity and you better be working on yourself and excavating yourself in a way that is beyond the fashion of the time because real art is not mediocre. You cannot bring Midwestern values to art. Art's about the truth that if you don't have a process, if you don't have a way of working, if you do not have an instrument that has been developed, it doesn't matter what kind of quick fixes and shortcuts that you can cobble together to try to make something. It lacks depth. It keeps the viewer from considering their own humanity because there's nothing going on.

(11:48):

So a real artist, a truthful artist, has to be willing to step into exposure, which means that you have to prize the authenticity of who you are over the approval of viral clicks and likes. And we all fall prey to this. I'm not sitting here saying that I don't give a fuck about how many people like my posts, of course, but I am putting content into the world and I know I'm doing this. I am putting content into the world that I am deeply connected to, that I am passionate about and that means something to me. And that's where you've got to start. And I don't care if you're developing a script, if you're writing a short film, it better be grounded in something that has to do with the human experience, which means you have to risk failure. You have to risk criticism. You have to risk being misunderstood and disliked and dismissed and all of that is scary because we don't want to experience those things, but this is artistry, truthful artistry.

(12:59):

And I've spoken about this many times. Artistry is the care with which you work. It is attention to detail. It is process. It is craft and it is technique and you either have that or you don't. And if you don't have that, you're a hack. And so that's the question, what path, what road are you going down right now? And it is very, very easy to start your artistic career rooted in artistry and craft and process. You train, you go to school, you put the time in and then, okay, year go by, two years go by, three years go by. Next thing you know, if you're still in the game, you're five, six, eight, nine years into it and all of that can start to erode and you can fall back on superficiality and tricks and shortcuts and you can cut yourself off from the artist in you. So you need discipline discipline and artistic integrity and a lot of what is being put out into the world lacks those two things.

(14:07):

Artistic integrity probably being the most important because once you have discipline, once you have a work ethic, a set of standards that are attached to that discipline as well, then okay, you've got freedom as an actor. You got freedom as an artist to work within this ethos, this work ethic that you have about the kind of art that you want to create because talent is not enough. I've said this many, many times as well. Talent is cheaper than table salt. There are a lot of really talented people that do not succeed in life because they lack discipline, they lack work ethic, they lack artistry, they lack attention to detail and there are a lot of really untalented people that work all the time. Why? Because they bust their ass.

(15:01):

So serious artistry, truthful artistry is going to require real rigor from you and I love that word, rigor, rigorous. You've got to set a standard for yourself. You've got to have a vision of the kind of actor and the kind of artist you actually want to be. And I think personally that better be rooted in this desire to be an artist and not shy away from calling yourself that.

(15:28):

So what does it mean to have rigor in your artistry, to be rigorous in what you're doing? And okay, you're all sitting here listening to this. Just assess your life right now. Assess your creative life, whatever that is. You might not be actors listening to this. You could be doing anything with your life right now, but you're listening to me right now because you have an artistic sensibility and you've got something in your life that you want to do creatively or you have been doing. How are you approaching it right now? What are you putting into the world? Are you working hard? I mean, can you just sit back and assess that? I have to do that all the time where I have to say to myself, "Are you practicing what you preach? You haven't been doing dick here for a while." And as these months rolled by, even with this podcast, I'm like, I got to figure out what it is I need and want to say because it's been too long and it was freaking me out.

(16:34):

And of course, I started thinking, "Oh, I'm just lazy. I don't want to do it anymore. I've got nothing else to say." And you've got this inner critic that will just start to erode your confidence. It erodes your ideas. Very easy to come up with something and immediately go, "Ah, that's stupid. I'm not going to do that. Why am I going to bother? No one's going to want to listen to that or hear that." Even this episode right here talking about truthful artistry in the age of superficiality, I come up with that title and I'm like, "Ah, that sounds stupid," but no, fuck it. It really isn't.

(17:09):

So the rigor I think involves one, your ability to navigate and come to terms with your inner critic, that voice that wants to sabotage you. It comes with the discipline of every day being clear-eyed on the one or two things I want to accomplish today and I have a vision of where this is going to take me. I see the finished product in my mind's eye. I know what I want this to be and I don't care if that's an audition that's coming up, you're working on a play, you're developing a script, you are going to a class every week because you need to sharpen some aspect of your instrument, but you show up, you show up on time, you have discipline. It's no different than saying, "I need to lose 20 pounds," and getting up every morning at 7:00 AM so you can get to your 7:30 spin class. I mean, you just set that inside yourself and then I will tell you that becomes habit.

(18:22):

So truthful artistry has to be built on good habits. So ask yourself right now, do I have good habits? You got to feed the instrument. You want depth in your work, you want to really be inspired and come up with ideas for what it is you want to create, then you better be feeding your inner life. Do you read? And it could be an audiobook. I mean, listen, I know everybody has their way of consuming written material now, but are you consuming literature, nonfiction, fiction? Both? You got to be inspired. Sometimes I will, I'll get caught up in reading so much nonfiction because that's my favorite kind of lane to traffic in, nonfiction, that I have to consciously break out of that and go, "I need a novel. I need a story. I need to be just taken on a journey," and I'll read some fiction.

(19:22):

So what are you reading? Do you build that into your life? Do you try to read a book a month? Are you curious about things? Do you lead with curiosity? You need curiosity if you want to be an actor. If you want to be an artist, you've got to be curious about the world, about human behavior, about relationships, about psychology.

(19:48):

Are you guys giving yourself solitude? And I'll tell you, I get very little solitude nowadays. Trish is working with me at the studio. She's doing a lot of office stuff, so we spend a lot of our days together. We are home together. We do most of our social outings together. I have very little time to myself and so I have to consciously try to carve out a day here, a morning here, an afternoon where I can just be alone with my thoughts. You need solitude. You've got to allow your mind to wander and you can't do that. And solitude, I'm not talking about walking down the street with music in your ear or the TV on. I'm talking about real solitude where it's just you and your thoughts unplugged. And if you're not building that into your life, it's really hard to deepen your work because it's in the solitude that ideas come. It's in the solitude that inspiration can worm its way to the surface. It's in solitude that your imagination can begin to function at a high level.

(21:09):

Ideas come to you, snatch it, return to it, contemplate it, flesh it out. What can it lead me to creatively? Are you observing the world? Are you taking in people? Are you really listening? Are you present or are you looking at your phone while you're having dinner with somebody? Are you in class sneaking your fucking phone? I'll tell you, it is beating me down to the point where I don't even know what to do anymore. I cannot get my students to consistently leave their phones out of the fucking classroom. Are you kidding me? They're in class for three hours. They can't go an hour and a half without sneaking, sliding their phone. So now I'm at a point where I'll just kick you out if I hear a vibration, if I hear anything like that, a ding. It drives me crazy. A, I think it's just so inartistic and it just proves my point that we're just so addicted to our devices that we can't even engage in serious artistic pursuit.

(22:20):

My students are paying $100 a class to be in a room with me and they're checking their emails, they're texting, they're doing ... And they try to hide it from me, but I'm not stupid. And then I just get to a point, it's like, "Well, it's your life. This is how you're operating. Okay. We'll see what kind of work you're going to create, what kind of career you're going to have." So it's important to intervene with these things. Observe the world, be fully present, feed yourself artistically. Read a play every week. Watch one movie every week.

(22:58):

I mean, are you doing it? These are creative habits. This is discipline. This goes back to what I'm saying. Discipline. Are you disciplined? You can say to yourself, "I'm going to read 52 plays this year. I'm going to watch 100 movies this year." That's two movies a week, one play a week. You can't find the time in your schedule and in your life to do that? Please. Yes, you can. If you really assess over the 168 hours of the week that you have, you can't find 5 or 6 hours to watch two movies and read a play. Don't kid yourself.

(23:36):

And travel. Travel, I don't care if you're just taking a train upstate to walk along the Hudson on a Saturday morning. Return yourself to nature. Be inspired by the beauty of the world because there is still beauty out there to be taken in. Not everything is doom and gloom, which brings me to this point that art matters. Acting matters. And if you want artistry that's truthful, work that's grounded and compelling and interesting, then navigate your soul because that's what we want from you. Art, all art, I don't care what it is, it illuminates the human condition. So you better have empathy. Keep working to be able to empathize with other human beings. Every time you read something, see something, watching the news, reading an article. There's a lot of really incredible stuff that's happening in this world. Wonderful stuff and really disgusting, awful, and you've got to be able to empathize with all of it.

(24:53):

So don't lose that. Don't lose your human connection to people, especially if you want to live an artistic life. If you want to be a truthful actor, don't lose your human connection. Resist the temptation to become emotionally numb, to have that inner eye roll, that shoulder shrug that says, "Eh, what difference does it make? Who cares?" And I fall prey to that all the time. If you want to be an artist and you are an artist and you are an actor, then you have a responsibility. You have a responsibility to yourself, to the work, to the audience. And if it's not planted with the seed of serious training in whatever art form it is you're pursuing, you're not serious.

(25:42):

And that's really all I wanted to talk to you about today is to challenge you right now in your life to return to truthful artistry in the work that you're doing. To see, acknowledge, intervene with the shit that we're doing that keeps us superficial, that keeps us playing in the kiddie pool. We don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. And I'm sure that you listen to me because you don't want to do that either. Bring yourself fully to life. Take a bite out of it every day. Acquire experience. That's what you need. You need to keep ingesting experience. Don't hide from the world. Don't hide yourself from the world. Don't hide your dreams, your ideas. Foster them, nurture them, work with them, develop them, create something that you can put into the world that you can stand by. That's content. That's something that you can be proud of. Not some stupid 30-second Instagram post that's been edited well and it's got some cool hip, contemporary song attached to it or some stupid dance that everyone is obsessed with. I mean, really, what are we talking about?

(27:15):

So as I wrap up this bonus episode, remember that acting is about the truth, that if you want to be a real serious artist, then you have to get below the superficiality of the time. Be real with yourself. Work to put the most vulnerable part of yourself on that stage, on that self-tape, in the rehearsal room. Develop those standards. Develop discipline. Reconnect yourself to the actor and the artist that you wanted to be when you first started in this business. Prize that, nurture that, and don't sacrifice that for anybody. It is very easy to start to kind of compromise your own standards because you're around people that maybe don't value them. And so it's easier to kind of just go along if you lower yours and people do this all the time. You want to be the type of artist that doesn't lower their standards for anybody. And if they don't like it, they don't like it. And I can tell you that's something that Maggie Flanigan instilled in me because she had a high standard and she didn't lower it for anybody. She didn't lower her bar.

(28:44):

And so don't do that. Don't lower your bar. Make sure it's set high. And if it's set high and you lead by example, other people will raise their bar and the people you collaborate with, the people you work with will step up to you as opposed to you lowering yourself to them. And so with that, I'm going to say goodbye to you, but I do want to leave you with a quote from Nathan Lane. Nathan Lane is currently on Broadway. He is playing Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, opposite Laurie Metcalf. He is one of the great actors, artists of his time, multiple Tony Award-winning nominations, over two dozen Broadway plays over the course of his career. And this guy has standards and discipline and artistry. And this is just a quote from Nathan Lane.

(29:42):

"I'm very big on preparation and research and reading everything that's been written and then you have to let go of it. I have to banish all the ghosts of past productions and just try to go on the journey of the last 24 hours of this man's life. That's how you create your own Willy Loman."

Singing (30:06):

... Keep on chasing the dream ...

Charlie (30:10):

Well, my fellow daydreamers, thank you for sticking around and keeping that phone in your pocket. Season six of Creating Behavior is going to drop in a few weeks, so be ready for that. If you got a few seconds and you can go to iTunes, please fill out a written review, post it, that would be fantastic. If you would like to ask me a question, if you would like to converse with me, go to https://www.creatingbehaviorpodast.com, go to the contact page and hit that red button. I use SpeakPipe. Just record a question, email it to me and I will answer it. If you would like to study with me at my New York City conservatory, the Maggie Flanigan Studio, go to http://www.maggieflaniganstudio.com and apply. You can follow me on Instagram @maggieflaniganstudio, @creatingbehavior. Lawrence Trailor, thank you for this song, my man. My friends, stay resilient, play full out with yourself and don't ever settle for your second best. My name is Charlie Sandlan. Peace.

Singing (31:03):

It's not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough.