106 Return to Craft

What happens when the craft and technique you once worked so hard to develop begin to dull? In the Season Six premiere, Charlie explores what it means to return to process, discipline, imagination, vulnerability, and truthful artistry. He also announces Return to Craft  https://www.returntocraft.com  - a new program created for trained actors who feel distanced from the artist they once were, and still hope to become. Hosted by Charlie Sandlan, the Artistic Director and Master Teacher of the Maggie Flanigan Studio in New York City https://www.maggieflaniganstudio.com Follow Charlie on Instagram @creatingbehavior and @maggieflaniganstudio. Theme music by Lawrence Trailer. 

Transcript

Charlie Sandlan (00:03):

So I want you to remember what it was like when you got out of school, when you were finished training as an actor. Maybe that was college, a two-year conservatory like the Maggie Flanigan Studio here in New York City. Maybe you got your MFA, and you had your whole career, your whole life ahead of you, your dreams, your aspirations and all of that detailed work, the artist in you. And then a year goes by, five years go by, 10, 20 years go by. Maybe you stopped acting for five, six, seven years to raise a family, have kids. Or maybe you have been working, and the work's not as fulfilling and inspiring as it was when you were in school, and you start to rely on tricks, shortcuts, your charm, your personality, and all of that craft and all that technique starts to dull. You start to feel distanced from the actor and the artist you once were. And you know something is off, but you just don't know how to get it back.

(01:03):

This is what we're going to talk about today, my friends. Return to craft. What does that phrase mean to you, to me? And what are you actually returning to? Episode 106 here in Studio A from the Maggie Flanigan Studio, so put the phone back in your pocket. Creating Behavior starts now.

MUSIC (01:29):

Ooh, aah, ooh, it's not enough.

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Ooh, it's not enough.

(01:32):

It's not enough.

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Keep on chasing the dream.

Charlie Sandlan (01:49):

Well, hello, my fellow daydreamers. As promised, here we are, season six, episode 106. It's good to be back here for a full season. I feel invigorated. I'm ready to go even though like actually physically and mentally I'm a little exhausted because we've just finished our school year. So I have a little bit of a break to recoup, and I thought this was the perfect time to start to talk about some things I want to talk about.

(02:25):

So, return to craft, like what does that phrase even mean? And like what do you, what are you, what are we returning to? And when I was young, when I was in my 20s, before I went to grad school, and I've spoken about this before, I really had no idea what that meant. I knew that I was an actor. I knew that acting had a process. I had my BA in theater, so I had this generalized bullshit theater appreciation degree. But I really couldn't articulate to anyone what it meant to have craft. I could talk about an objective. I could talk about, "Oh, yeah, you need to be doing actions and tactics and stuff, and you need to have an objective," and that was about the extent of it. I was relying on my instincts and my talent.

(03:26):

That's not craft. And if I could pin down one thing that Maggie Flanigan gave me is this sense of what craft really means. And it has to be tethered to artistry. Okay? You cannot have a serious craft as an artist without it being tethered to artistry. And I've spoken about this. Artistry really is attention to detail. It is the care with which you work. It's actually giving a shit about what the fuck you're doing and being very meticulous in how you go about your business.

(04:08):

So craft is not tricks. Craft is not shortcuts. Craft is not working for results. Craft is not just being natural, which is what a lot of people think acting is. Well, you just got to talk. Conversational reality is not acting. It is technique and process that actually is going to give you something dependable to rely on. When life is just throwing you everything it does, your anxiety, your nerves, your life tragedies, and traumas and triumphs that you have to absorb and endure and also then go to work and go on set, you have to be able to weather those. Life is not going to be convenient for you.

(04:51):

I had a student this summer, maybe four classes left, and she had a cat, and she had to put her cat down. Her cat was sick. And that is upsetting and a deep, deep loss, right? Shit, when I have to put Wally down when that time does come, it is going to be difficult. But I can promise you this. I'm still going to show up to teach the next day. I will show up on set if I need to be on set, and I will do my job. This student who was young, they quit with like four classes left.

(05:36):

Now, all I can say is, okay, I get that. Do I respect it? No. Do I understand it? Yes. But, see, these things are going to happen to you. And it is craft and technique that is going to allow you to navigate these highs and lows. Craft is the mastering of the actor's instrument, the artist instrument, your body, your voice, your temperament, your imagination, your emotional life. All has to be worked out. It has to be developed. And it is a long road, so, if you're going to return to craft, it means you had craft to begin with.

(06:21):

So I would venture to say that many of you have come through a training program. A lot of you listening to this have come to this studio or other two-year, three-year programs. You've got your MFA, your BFA, your BA. You've done a two-year conservatory program. And a year goes by, two years go by, five, 10, 15, 20 years go by, and all of those notes that you had, if you were a good note taker, this is what freaks me out when I teach and I look out and students are just sitting there and they never take a note ever. They never write anything down. I think to myself, "You're going to forget all of this. You're not really that serious, and it's just going to become jumbled up in your head.

(07:07):

And those of you that do have notes, I'm sure, no doubt, you go back to those notes. You pull them out. God, what were those fundamentals again? I know I've got to get my placement of concentration off the other person right. Right? I've got to really listen. I've got to be present. I need to be open and available. And you go through all these notes and you look at your action list that you might have made during class. Certainly, if you were here with me, you've got an action lists and you're, like, "Cut actions right," right? What were those fundamental questions again? And you have to go back and you have to keep reminding yourself.

(07:40):

And then maybe you're lucky enough to start working, right? You might start working at a really high level. You might end up on a show. You might end up being a serious regular. You're making good money. You might be going from one play to another. You might be traveling all over the country doing regional theater or wherever you are living. And, certainly, when you're on film and television, the pace is relentless, right? You're just constantly memorizing lines and you're showing up. And it is very easy over time for you to begin to just rely and to fall back on all the tricks that you know work for you, weaving in your charm, your personality, your sense of humor. And you really just are trying to get through the week. You're trying to get through the shoot. You're trying to get through the show, and your technique, your craft begins to get dull. It begins to get muddied. It begins to get convoluted in your head.

(08:39):

And that's when you go, "God, I need to get into a scene study class. I need to get back into something," and you try to reclaim all of those things that you lost. So it is, in some way, what really separates a trained actor from an untrained actor. The untrained actor cannot reliably work in a consistently vivid way. It's a crapshoot. The trained actor has some capacity and a process to be able to create behavior for a living.

(09:15):

And, many of you, you're on your path. You might just be out of school. You might be in school right now. It could have been 15, 20 years since you've been in school training, but you can look back and you can say to yourself, "This is a long fucking road. Why does serious acting take so much time?"

(09:35):

I sit in my office and I interview a prospective student, and I tell them, "Well, the program is two years long." Meisner is 128 classes, give or take, over two years. And then, if you're interested in our professional business program, that's another nine months, so you could spend anywhere from two to three years. And their eyes bulge out. I've got 25-year olds that freak out, 27, 28. They think their life has passed them by. Now, there are students, prospective students that come in here and know that they need to put the time in.

(10:07):

Just like with any other art form, you've got to be able to learn how to do it and how to do it well. And that takes time. You cannot unpack decades of the building of walls and barriers and the things that keep you hidden and small and withheld. Those just don't get unpacked overnight. Your relationship to anger, your comfortability with intimacy all of these things just don't happen overnight. But, the thing is, most actors do not see the value or have the willingness, the grit, the drive, the determination to work on all of these things. And those are your tepid, uninteresting, vapid hack actors.

(10:56):

So, with any craft, go back and think about what you had to do, the struggle, the hard work it took, the repetition over and over and over again, stacking those reps, stacking those classes .you had structure when you were training. Those of you that have done it already, you knew, every week, I had these two classes, these six hours. I have to come correct. I have to craft. I have this work that needs to be done. And there's no time for you to say, "Nah, I'm not going to do it." And, if you did and you approached the work that way, you were probably kicked out or you ended up quitting. It was built with a lot of failure, I'm sure, a lot of frustration, and then those wonderful breakthroughs that you would get, right, where you could start to see the work start to come together for you. And it would all start to make sense.

(11:48):

And when you're training and you're in school, man, it's all just so right there for you. It's so palpable, and it's tangible because you are striving for something. It's elusive on some days. It seems incredibly distant on some days. And then there are those times where you do, you have these breakthroughs, where light bulbs go off, and you start to understand something more deeply not just about yourself, but about the craft of acting, about the art form, about the human condition. And it is incredibly rewarding. And you know that, if you come to a good program, there are no shortcuts. There's no way you can bullshit your way through it especially if you have a really good teacher who has high standards.

(12:30):

And so you leave school, you get out, and you have this whole fantasy, this dream of what the next year, two years, five years, 10 years is going to be for you. And then you get out, right? And you've got to learn the business. You get thrown into the world after training. And you've got to figure out how do the business work? How do I audition really well? How do I self-tape? How do I navigate a professional career? You got to get your headshots, you got to get your resume, your website, all that stuff. Right? So you've got the business side that you have to start to really tend to and you start auditioning. Right?

(13:07):

And, usually, it's a lot of not-the-best-written stuff. You're doing student films and auditioning for commercials and collaborating with friends. Maybe you start a theater company and you're doing readings once or twice a month just so you can start to feel and to hold on to the actor in you because, once you get out of school, it all dries up. You're not working on great material anymore. You're not really digging into lead roles, major parts. You're not steeped in the kind of work that you really want to be doing as an actor. You get a lot of it in school. And then you get out, and you're getting a page here, two pages here. It's a couple of lines. That's your audition. And maybe you audition, if you're lucky, once or twice, maybe three times a year. You're trying to find an agent.

(14:00):

All of these things just consume your life. You got to work. You got to pay your bills. You got to hustle. And all of that craft that you learned just starts to get a little bit duller with every passing month and every passing year until it just becomes this vague idea in your head of how you work. And you kind of work that way, but, "I do what I need to do." And then you got to deal with the rejection. It's an eyeopener. And that's why, when I look at a group of 20 students, I tell them first day of class, "The majority of you are going to quit within five years." And that's just the case. It's too difficult. Are you kidding me? You can only struggle for so long waiting tables, bartending, hustling, trying to grind it out.

(14:51):

And I've spoken about this before. You will have a defining moment where at some point you're going to ask yourself, "Do I want to keep doing this or am I done?" And it happens to every single actor. And so years past, habits disappear. Those creative habits that you instilled in yourself when you were working on a new material, when you were in class and you had a real, specific, detailed way of working, that begins to disappear. Your instrument gets neglected.

(15:21):

I mean, really, let me ask, you guys. How many of you on a regular basis work on your physical and vocal instrument daily? How many of you work on your voice 10, 15 minutes a day maybe in the morning when you're showering, keep your physical body tuned up, in shape, making sure that you're stretched, that you're open, keeping the body pliable? How many of you have those habits? How many of you just on an intellectual basis are reading plays, watching films, reading poetry, doing these things that keep the artistic energy alive in you? It disappears.

(16:11):

And then what happens, as you start to work, you try to manufacture what you once were able to do organically. And you know it doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like it did when you were in school. You're, "God, I was so alive back then. Those scenes, those exercises, those were just incredible." And you have these fond memories of how vivid and how experiential, how surprising moments were, how, when you were working, it felt like you were just flying by the seat of your pants. And it is such a great feeling. And that's not happening anymore. And yet you know, you know better. You know instinctively this isn't right. I don't like this. I don't like how I'm feeling when I did that take. I didn't like how I felt this week on set. Oh, I don't like how I'm feeling in rehearsal. Or I'm on the 30th show of a 60-show run, and I'm just phoning it in. And it feels yucky. But you don't know how to get back.

(17:10):

And you pull out your notes and, fuck it, or you lost your notes. Oh, my God, I can't tell you how many students bemoaned to me years later how they lost their acting notebook. And they don't even have access to notes anymore. And then you're really just going on memory. That's difficult. It leads me to this question for you. How do you find your way back to craft? How do you return to craft? How do you return yourself to the artist that you once were, the artist that you still hope to be? How do you return to that? How do you resharpen a dull knife? Right? Well, it goes back to the actor as artist. And there are actors that think of themselves as artists, and actors that don't.

(18:00):

And so an actor is not somebody who's just merely trying to get hired. "I just want to act. I need a job. I want to be told that I'm good, so cast me so that I can feel validated." There's a big difference. And, I mean, there's a huge difference here between pursuing employment and pursuing artistry. If you are pursuing artistry, it has to start with curiosity about human behavior, a fascination with human behavior. It starts with imagination. It requires empathy, emotional accessibility, emotional fluidity, your ability to be able to observe people from an open place, a curious place, a fascinated place. It's reading books. It's going to the theater. It's consuming art. It's returning to nature. It's traveling. It's protecting your inner life, all in the hopes that you have the capacity still after years out of school to illuminate the human condition.

(19:15):

What does an actor owe the art form? Like what is your responsibility? If this is what you're doing with your life and you take it seriously, and you take yourself seriously, well, then what do you owe it? I have to ask myself this all the time. What's my responsibility as a teacher? What's my responsibility as the owner of a conservatory program in New York City where I have at any point 60 to 90 students who have put their trust not just in me, but my faculty into this space. They've put their money and their time and their heart. Well, what's my responsibility to that, to them, to my own artistry?

(19:57):

I've been out of school since 2001. That is the last time I have fully entrenched myself in being a student, so how have I had the ability to stay in a classroom for 20 years, my schedule just this past school year and most of the years that I've been teaching, nine-hour days? I go 10:00 to 1:00, 2:00 to 5:00, 6:00 to 9:00 four days a week, nine hours of teaching a day. I can't take a moment off. I can't take a second off. I have to be fully present. I have to be fully in the moment. I can't just sit there and daydream or thinking about the rest of my day or try to sneak a peek at my fucking phone.

(20:41):

What keeps me in the classroom, first off, is what I feel my responsibility is to my students, which is to really help them become seriously well-trained actors and artists, to put good actors into the world, not hacks, people who embrace the creative struggle, people that embrace failure and that have a passion for technique and craft.

(21:15):

And what I love, and you've got to love what you do, what I love is taking a group of people that don't know a fucking thing about acting and, in two years, turn them into serious artists, and not just serious artists, but actually better human beings because, certainly, with Meisner's work, this is human work. It helps you become a better human being. How can you not be a better person if you are, and become more present, a better listener, more empathic, more open, more vulnerable, more curious and more fascinated? When you just instinctively make the other person more important to you in any conversation you're in, you become a better human being.

(22:01):

And, also, I just think acting is just the greatest thing you can do. Right? You got to love it. So what frustrates me, what frustrates me is when students come here and they put money down, and then they don't work hard or they don't take themselves seriously, or they get defensive, or they get argumentative, or they just think that they know more than they do. I'm, like, "What the fuck are you doing here?" Those people are never going to return to craft because they don't appreciate it while they're here. And so, these actors that are really putting this kind of craft together, how do you hold on to that when you get out? And they leave here, and I'm sure all of you left whatever training program you were in with real standards.

(22:50):

I have a very high bar, and I don't lower it for anybody. Your job is to come and meet me. Meet me at my bar. I'm certainly not going to lower it for you. And if you struggle to come to my bar, you're going to turn yourself into a really good actor, and so you get out of school and you have that. You own that. It's fresh. It's right there in your mind. You know what it means to work hard. You know the standards that your teacher set for you. And, like I said, those slowly start to erode. So what am I ultimately trying to give an actor? Well, on a fundamental level, I'm giving them technique and craft. I'm giving them a high standard. Hopefully, I'm instilling in them a work ethic, real process, a passion and a love for the art form, and a real commitment to artistry.

(23:44):

That's what I want to give every single student that comes here, and so I wanted to take this first episode of season six to launch something that I have been working on for the last seven months. And I'm really proud of it. It's been a lot of work. It's been a passion project for me, so I'm officially launching with this podcast Return to Craft. You can go to returntocraft.com right now and take a look at what I have put into the world, because I kept thinking about what really we've been talking about here, how actors really, in many ways, they don't have access sometimes to a serious classroom anymore. Like that period in your life has gone.

(24:35):

And I just kept thinking about all these actors that I know that come back to me for coaching or end up in my advanced scene study class or who pop by and say hi and we have conversations and how they feel like they just drifted from the actor and the artist they were when they got out of school.

(24:53):

Those of you that are working professionally and auditioning and having a career and know something's missing, or maybe those of you that maybe have stopped for the last five, 10, 15 years for whatever reason, having kids, raising a family, your job kind of took over and you just knew at some point you wanted to get back and, now, you're like, "Fuck, I don't want to have to train again. I would love to just remember everything that I learned." So, basically, what I did is I took my entire 20 years of teaching everything I have learned as a professional Meisner teacher, as an artist who has been working on the craft of acting for the last, really, 30 years of my life, the last 20-plus as a teacher and put it in video form for you.

(25:47):

And I will say this is not beginner-acting training, so those of you that think, "Oh, this is how I can learn to act is just go to Return to Craft and download these videos and watch them," yeah, they're going to be interesting for you, but you're still not going to know how to do it. Don't let Return to Craft be a substitute for getting in the classroom and really training. Return to Craft really is for those of you that already have a way of working and you're just feeling a little dull, a little distanced.

(26:16):

So what does RTC contain? Basically, four courses, 14 videos, 12 hours of content. It is broken down into sections. Each course has a number of modules. And these videos go anywhere from 25 minutes to an hour and a half. We're going to go back over the foundation of truthful acting. We're going to go over crafting and breaking down a script, creating character, the actor as artist, detailed advanced scene study. We are going to go over Waiting for Lefty. I'm going to take you through Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/Underdog. We're going to look at Tennessee Williams' short play called Hello from Bertha so that you can really restore your acting process.

(27:11):

So why am I doing this now? To be quite honest with you, I have to practice what I preach. And if I'm challenging everyone in my classroom and those of you that are listening to me to continue to put something into the world, what's your contribution, what's your voice, like what are you doing, then I have to keep evolving. I have to keep taking chances and putting something that I believe in out into the world. And I do that in my classroom. I do it at this studio. I do it with this podcast really, which was born out of the pandemic, and the responsibility I felt to do exactly what I was challenging my students to do, to create something else. And I'm doing it now with Return to Craft.

(27:57):

Also, I have put my 10,000 hours in. I am a master teacher. I don't apologize for that. And I don't have to. I say that with a lot of pride and confidence. And it was the perfect time for me to take 20 years of teaching, to take what I dole out over two years in this classroom and put it on video for you. And so what would make me really proud is, in the next three, four, five, six years, all of you that listen, all of my former students, all of you that have come out of training programs that are feeling that they want their work to be a little bit sharper, that you take yourself through Return to Craft, and you are able to really move an audience, where people sitting or watching your work go, "Damn. Damn, that was good. That was a hell of an actor. It was so vivid. It was so alive. It was so detailed." That's what I want. I want people to leave the theater after watching you work and go, "Fuck, man, that was good. Really good actor."

(29:07):

So if you feel like you've drifted from your process, if you feel like you're just going backward and that you want to return to the principles that allow you to really be the actor you want to be, then Return to Craft might be for you. And so, listen, I've got a deal for you. For those of you that listen to this show regularly, that download this puppy as soon as it comes out, look at the date that this show dropped. Three weeks from that drop date, if you go to returntocraft.com and you use this code, daydreamer1, you like that, daydreamer1, D-A-Y-D-R-E-A-M-E-R-1, you'll get $500 off the full package. And you'll see it, when you go onto Return to Craft, you can buy the full package. You can buy them as individual courses. The content is available to you for an entire year. It also comes with a tremendous amount of downloadable content that I have provided for you, an action list, detailed worksheets on character, on archetypes, on emotion. All of that is available and included for you as well.

(30:18):

And so I'll just wrap it up here today and ask you a couple of questions. Where have you drifted? What part of your craft and your process do you feel you've neglected? What, perhaps, did you once care deeply about that you've stopped tending to, that you have stopped giving your attention to the way you did in the past? What standards have you lowered over the years? And what would returning to craft and discipline and technique actually require from you? And I'm not talking about nostalgia. I'm not talking about going backward. I'm talking about returning to the principles that will allow you to move forward in your work in a recommitted, detailed, specific and artistic way, craft, process, curiosity, imagination, vulnerability, discipline, and truth. My fellow daydreamers, prize those words, contemplate what they mean to you, and work hard on yourselves.

(31:33):

Well, my fellow daydreamers, thank you for sticking around and keeping that phone in your pocket. Listen, if you are a trained actor and you are feeling distanced from your technique, your process, from the artist that you thought and knew you were when you got out of school, go to https://www.returntocraft.com

(31:51):

I would also love a review of this podcast. If you are a fan, please go to iTunes. Write a written review. I'd appreciate that. If you would like to study with me at my New York City Conservatory, the Maggie Flanigan Studio, go to https://www.maggieflaniganstudio.com. And you can also follow me on Instagram, @maggieflaniganstudio, @creatingbehavior.

(32:10):

Lawrence Trailer, thank you for the song, my man.

(32:14):

And, my friends, stay resilient, play full out with yourself. And don't ever settle for your second best. My name is Charlie Sandlan. Peace.