So, apparently I AM continuing on with this thing. At least until my next grotesque monstrosity sprouts wings. You know, in blog form. 

But this isn’t some trying-to-be-funny-&-failing type of thing. Like my burning hatred for the World Dryer Corporation.

This one’s actually from the heart. 

I regret that I didn’t publish Tom Poole’s full response to an article I wrote called “What Acting Isn’t.” 

BACKSTORY: So, this simple questionnaire went out to actors I knew. It was prefaced by the idea that we ALL know what acting IS. But I was interested in their take on what acting ISN’T. I had to edit just about every entry down due to space/character length/etc. I just found everybody’s unedited answers while rummaging through old docs today. And I felt the need to post Tom’s, which I had to cut down due to the aforementioned reasons, thereby taking the creative teeth out of it. 

But here for the first time is Tom Poole’s full answer, which speaks volumes about not only his writing style, but also the brilliant intuition he had about acting. I particularly love his final comment in parenthesis. 

I swear these should be taught in college acting classes. “The Five Commandments” for what NOT to do onstage: 

1) Acting Crime - Forced Jollity.

Pretending that a risque play on words from the sixteenth century involving a harquebus and a humblebee breaks them up. 

2) Perversely Unusual Line Readings.

Taking a simple conversational line and finding a way to place the emphasis and/or shift away from natural rhythm sufficiently to render it nonsensical. 

3) Hidden Eyes.

Letting your only detectable awareness of the audience’s existence be an almost supernatural ability to keep your most expressive feature averted, squinted, o’erbrowed, or, in the last ditch, entirely covered by arm, hand, hat, hair, or wastebasket. 

4) Approximitus.

Either never learning the lines exactly, or learning them so late in the process and so undependably that your performance effectively escapes direction. 

5) Swimming On The Table.

Discovering a way to abduct an otherwise perfectly functional scene in a play and hold it hostage by means of some wildly funny and completely arbitrary bit you picked up at Clown School in Florence. 

(I would like to note however that actors, despite my intense and highly personal involvement with great numbers of them, fall very far down on my list of the kinds of people who inspire me to complain. I’m not sure what the acting equivalent would be, but the Don’t Complain About Farmers With Your Mouth Full bumper sticker comes to mind when I hear not-even-remotely-informed people whining about performances they didn’t like. Being judged by anyone who can breathe is not a rewarding substitute for good pay, benefits, job security, or all the other things actors mostly do without in order to keep going.)