If there is anything I have learned from my students it is this:
- Fear is the enemy of the creative spirit. Only a space held in love can set creativity free.
- Humiliation, domination, and interference are tools the egoic and insecure director or acting teacher resorts to in order to keep the actor under control.
- The actor doesn’t need to be pushed as much as they need space to come out, to venture into new unexplored territory. When their director or teacher gets out of the way, the actor can fly!
- An actor needs to know that there are no mistakes. Just possibilities for new energies to be released into the work. They need to know that every mistake may lead to some unforeseen nugget of gold.
- The actor needs to be loved and accepted so that their sensitive creative spirit can feel safe enough to take a risk and fail. And in failing, know that they have learned and grown and made space for more of what is still yet to be discovered.
- Actors need an atmosphere of ensemble in which they feel we are all in this together; struggling, failing, growing. Connected. Each of us is important to the whole but not more important than the whole.
Cindy Tanas Actors Studio teaches acting classes for Theatre and Film in Toronto and the GTA, Collingwood and Southern Georgian Bay.