Finding the Right Teacher

If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. —Lin Chi

The implication of this quote, advice by the ninth-century sage Lin Chi to one of his monks, is that those who think they’ve found all the answers need to start questioning. Even though the original context for this quote is religious or, more precisely, philosophical, I believe it holds for the pursuit of any knowledge, including actor training. Beware the day you believe you have met the Buddha, the day you have “arrived,” the time when you believe you have mastered acting. In the context of actor training, beware the acting teacher who tells you they have all the answers or that their particular technique is the only way, for there are as many ways as there are actors and teachers.

Yet, finding the right teacher or teachers for you is of utmost importance. If you take your work and your career seriously, then you need an artistic home in which to train and grow. Like in any professional discipline, you need not only a place to work out regularly—ideally, daily—to stay in game shape but also a trusted coach, a guide, an experienced and skilled facilitator to provide you with the objective outside eye necessary to stay in a relationship of inquiry with your craft.

Any learning environment must be organized around a certain set of beliefs, methodologies, and desired outcomes. An acting studio is no different. Those beliefs and tools when articulated by the teacher will eventually graft themselves to names and labels, which will then be called a certain technique. This technique will be articulated and conveyed through a means of instruction. It is not merely the technique per se that is the criteria by which you should examine and choose a training studio but, perhaps more importantly, how that methodology is conveyed and transmitted to the students by the teacher.

Put another way, who you are in the room with is of utmost importance. The first thing you should ask yourself when shopping around for a teacher is, “Do I want to be in the room regularly with this particular person to work on my craft?” You are going to spend a lot of professionally intimate time with this person, and to get to the place of vulnerability, surrender, and your unprotected self, necessary conditions for inspired acting, you need to be able to not only trust the person guiding the room but also desire to be in the work with them.

The word sensei means “one who has gone before.” As someone who occupies many acting studios, I consider myself simply another actor in the room, one who has gone before. Accordingly, I operate from this core principle. Similarly, teachers in Montessori schools are strategically called facilitators, not teachers. This is not just linguistic judo, as there is a concrete and discernable difference between the meaning of the two words—teacher and facilitator. A classroom occupied by a teacher is, by definition, teacher-centric. A classroom occupied by a facilitator is student-centric. A teacher delivers knowledge to their students from outside the student experience. A facilitator helps release the intrinsic knowledge the students already have within them through a process of continuous, active inquiry. A teacher has a set pedagogical agenda that must be imparted to the students in a certain way—learning is, in this manner, prescriptive.

A facilitator, however, acts merely as a guide in a thoughtfully designed exploratory environment of collective inquiry, where the students have as much to teach the class as the facilitator, and they are allowed to discover not only what they need to learn but also, perhaps most importantly, how they actually learn. The most important thing, first and foremost, for you as an actor in training is to learn how you learn, not how somebody else learns or how the teacher wants you to learn, but how you learn. You need to get yourself in a studio with someone who gets that and understands you, helps you learn how you learn. Like the old parable goes:

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

The fish in this scenario is you learning how you learn. Therein lies your true artistic power and longevity. This is the key to an artistic and professional career grounded in perpetual inquiry and the beginner’s mind—learning how you learn. Once you’ve learned that, you can learn virtually anything. We human beings were born to learn.

Personally, I prefer to think of myself as a facilitator. I believe my job when working with my acting students is to simply facilitate learning. I facilitate the release of their intrinsic knowledge via the careful design of pedagogical experiences. I myself operate in my own acting studio from the belief that all my student actors already have all the knowledge they need deep inside of them. It is one of my credos. My job, therefore, as the “teacher” in the room, is to help facilitate the release of this organic knowledge. This produces the most profound and sustained release of potential in student actors, for they gain ownership over their own work this way. I humbly suggest you seek out an acting studio occupied by a sensei (one who has gone before) who works from this philosophical and practical belief.

Beware the teacher-centric classroom. There is an important reason for this: The objective of your training is not to acquire any technique for the purposes of getting it right, to please the teacher, or to get their approval but to gain ownership over your own acting. Any learned technique should ultimately release your potential, not satisfy someone else’s teaching agenda. I believe if I have done my job well, my students shouldn’t need me anymore.

Love the Buddha; become the Buddha; kill the Buddha.

I have learned from dozens of wonderfully talented and generous acting teachers over the course of my career. They taught a myriad of different techniques in a variety of ways, and yet I learned an enormous amount from each of them. That said, they all had a few qualities in common. So after you have answered the first question, “Do I want to spend time in the room with this person?” then there are some other criteria by which I suggest you evaluate your potential facilitator.

Technique

Effective facilitators have a rigorous grasp on the particular technique they teach. In other words, and pardon my French, they “know their shit inside and out”; they have walked the walk and live the work. The technique is alive in their bodies. Look for a facilitator who models their technique in their teaching and effortlessly embodies the technique. Gifted facilitators don’t need to be the best actors in the business, but they do need to be able to solve the problem of acting from the inside out, using the particular technique they profess. They do need to be able to actually articulate the technique in the doing.

You wouldn’t pay money to be in a math class with a teacher who couldn’t actually solve the equation on the board. The same holds true for acting technique. You want to be in the room with someone who not only understands how to solve the problems themselves (for all acting is problem solving) but also can help you discover how you will go about solving the problems of acting for yourself. They are not simply trying to get you to do what they do. Perhaps more important than their own mastery of their technique is how they share that technique with you. Consider the following:

• Who were this facilitator’s teachers?

• How long have they been teaching?

• What do their former and current students have to say about the class?

• Are the students in that class actually learning the technique?

• Are their students gaining ownership over the technique or just parroting the teacher?

• Is their acting actually improving? By what metrics?

• Does the technique appear to be helping the students grow? Do you see tangible, repeatable growth in their work?

• Are the students in the class having breakthroughs?

• Do you like the students’ acting? Do you find it compelling and imaginative?

• Are the students working on their feet or sitting around? Actors learn by doing. If the acting teacher talks too much (one of the most ubiquitous crimes in our industry) or, even worse, talks a lot about themselves, get out immediately!

  Diagnostic Eye

  Effective facilitators have sharp diagnostic eyes for what to look for in the work and how to provide constructive feedback to their students in a helpful and positive manner. You should look for a facilitator who is able to expertly assess and diagnose a scene or exercise to the end of providing their students with specific and helpful feedback that moves their work forward. If the scene is five minutes long, what does the teacher choose to work on when the scene is done? Why? What is the effect of this feedback on the student working? How is it tied to the technique? Consider the following:

• Is the facilitator giving specific, individually tailored feedback? Or are they giving more or less the same note to all the students?

• Is the feedback helpful?

• Are the students able to process the note? Or do they seem confused and frustrated with the feedback?

• Does the feedback lead to breakthroughs, greater awareness, or growth?

  Atmosphere

  Effective facilitators create dynamic atmospheres in their acting studios, where students feel free to risk failure. They give permission to their students and encourage them to dare to fuck it up rather than try to get it right. Although the atmosphere should always be playful and filled with joy, a professional pressure must also be present in the room, where everyone understands they are there to do something significant and important. Actor training is a discipline in service of an artform. Students are there to work on a craft, not screw around. Likewise, you will want a facilitator who cre- ates an environment in their studio of permission, trust, respect, playfulness, humor, generosity, and kindness, as well as a seriousness of purpose with an appropriate level of professional pressure.

  You should feel that you can access your artistic self, take risks, step out of your comfort zone, and fail better. There is no learning without failure. The facilitator should ideally create an atmosphere of objective observation with a minimal amount of personal judgment. The room should be as egalitarian as possible. Again, beware the teacher-centric acting studio; the days of the egomaniacal acting teacher are long gone. Consider the following:

• What’s the overall vibe in the class?

• Do the students seem engaged and happy to be there? Or do they seem

  scared and tentative?

• Are the students free to explore their process?

• Are the students encouraged to take risks? Or do they seem afraid?

• Are students eager to get up and work? Or are they hesitant and un-

  prepared?

• Is there an ethos of training for adversity?

• Do you sense a pursuit of excellence in the room? Or is mediocre work accepted? Or is the atmosphere one of “work quickly so we get through everyone”? “Getting through everyone” is not sufficient or desirable. You want to be in an atmosphere that strives for excellence.

Reaching the Individual

Effective facilitators are able to reach the individual student in front of them, each time, every time. They don’t just spray the room with general knowledge like a cat in heat but tailor their own work to match the idiosyncratic needs of the unique human being in front of them. They respond to the particular person before them and adjust their facilitation accordingly. Consider the following:

• Does the facilitator respond deftly and with nuance to the different human beings who cycle through the class? Or does the facilitator respond to all the students with the same prescriptive answers?

• Does the facilitator appear to be making an effort to truly “see” the individual in front of them who is working and then reach them with technique that best suits their way of working? Or do they give the same rote prescription for all the ailments in the room?

• Does the facilitator lead their actors to breakthroughs before letting them sit back down?

  Idiosyncratic Teaching Voice

  Effective facilitators have their own personal voice and style. They are masters at expressing who they are as human beings and conveying their passion for the art of acting through their own teaching. They should love facilitating, and you should feel it in your bones. Beware the teacher who is "over it". Consider the following:

• Does this facilitator seem to both love their work and the art of acting?

• Does this facilitator seem comfortable in their own skin as they navi-

  gate the room?

• Is the facilitator’s energy positive, and does it radiate to all the students

  in the class?

• Does this facilitator model the work in the room?

  In my humble opinion, you will want to find the facilitator who most helps you release the fullest and most potent version of your artistic self and who creates the least amount of interference in you as they do so. It may take some shopping around to find this person or these people, but you will eventually find them. They are out there. There may even be many of them. You will learn a myriad of different techniques from all of them and gratefully place the tools they helped you discover, or rediscover, in your actor toolbox. Like falling in love or buying a home, you will ultimately feel in your gut who is the right facilitator for you, for you will come alive in the space between while working in their presence.