Jeremy- 4 Rules for Acting: Higher, Lighter, Simpler and More Joyful

Higher: An understanding that art is art and non art is non art. The mind must be trained to know the difference!

Lighter: A character is an entity that you reach up into the heavens and enter. It is not the other way around under any circumstances. Bad actors should really use their magic “if” and ask themselves, “If it is true that the character is really me, what would this play be like if I was its inspiration?” Oh yes, Carl the Bastard, what I really want to see is you. When Shakespeare wrote Hamlet he had this dream: OH GOD! One day- hundreds of yeas from now- Carl the Bastard will be born! And then finally this script will make sense!

Simpler: Grand gesture. Ground gesture. The simplest detail of movement that projects your entire character to the audience and to yourself.

More Joyful: Theatre is clean, it is beautiful, it is filled with music and laughter and blood and murder and sex and love and terror and hope. It is a reason to love life, and like all love, it is evil when it is false. Evil, when it comes with tricks. Evil, when it’s the same worthless love thrown around again and again and again.

-Jm