mielabong

[mielabong]

Working hard isn't enough

It's hard to accept that working hard isn't enough.

Especially if you're someone like me who makes every effort to be a hard worker or get better at working hard every day.

Sometimes hard work burns us out.

Hard work doesn't always speed up results or processes.

Hard work has no place in what isn't meant for us.

While we glorify hard work, sometimes it's not the smartest choice, because things like time or favor are outside of our control.

We can't brute force our way through things.

We have a limited capacity to how hard we work. We can't floor the gas for the entire duration of the road trip. What about the stop signs, crossing people or animals, sharp turns, downhill roads, or fog in our path?

We need stopovers, pacing, refueling, and sometimes a change of driver. We aren't objects like cars, yet these objects need stopovers, paging, and refueling. What more humans?

Where did we get the idea that hard work is king? That it's the best advice we can give anyone? That it's the only place we should pour all of our energy into?

Where is the space for us to advocate for nuance, tact, recovery, pacing, kindness, or prudence?

When weightlifters try to increase their weight, they don't start at the heaviest. They work their way there. They try to study the best way to lift and prep with less weight to get to the goal weight.

Likewise, we don't just work hardest right away or all the time. We have to look for ways to build skill so that the upcoming work is less difficult.

Sometimes, working hard, because it's exhausting, frustrates us, especially when we do not yet see results of our hard work. I know this from personal experience.

There's a very turbulent dissonance that takes place in the part of you that is so willing to give your all yet you're witnessing life events, people, or even your own mind or body not keeping up with you.

To work hard is only 1/10 of your our entire battle as actors. And I'm talking about a single battle, not even the whole war, the bigger picture.

Working hard has a time and place, but not everything in the process of pursuing our passion requires that much passion and fire. There are going to be glacial, frustrating, unaligned, downward-spiraling, entangled, (inhale), almost hypnotically listless moments that absolutely have no place for you to "work hard" out of.

Yes, work hard and go to as many auditions as you can, but if you don't work just as hard on ensuring rest, you'll fall into a pit of such poor, burnt out health (physical, mental, or existential) that one day, even just one audition, will hurt.

I speak from experience.

We have so much we have to do as actors! We need social skills, empathy, studiousness, and life experience. There's so much to do that we can't possibly barrel through everything. How do you even brute force through life experience? I mean...??

Because life is unfair by nature, we cannot brute force our way through the industry on hard work alone.

The ugly truth is, hard work is not sustainable.

The goal is not to become a hard working actor. The goal is to be an actor who knows how to work hard when needed.

Please remember that you are an actor, not a horse or some machine known for working hard. Working hard is not the only choice you have. Don't work so hard that you one day run out of the capacity to do so when you need it most.

Pace, dear actor.

[mielabong]

The Actors' Workroom - Week 2

Before I promote Week 2, I'd like to thank my first two actors for the TAW series for supporting the first class. So, hi Mary and Rina! Thank you for supporting the first session! I hope you enjoyed!

Now, onto Week 2! Yay!

I'm excited to share 3 classes for Week 2 now that I've warmed up with my Week 1 class.

Week 2 Schedule

For SATURDAY MARCH 16, there'll be two consecutive classes.

1:00 - 2:30 pm PHT is another session of St. Joan. I feel I need to sit with this text one more time, as might be the case with a lot of scripts. As much as I love Shakespeare, I've spent a solid 14 years of my life with it and would like to explore other English scripts.

4:00 - 6:00 pm PHT will be a Commercial Acting Basics class. My past classes focused a lot on foundational technique, but being a part of the Workroom series, the actors in this class will tackle different types of commercial scripts.

For SUNDAY MARCH 17, there'll just be one class.

1:00 - 2:30 pm PHT will be a new scene work session, The Crucible by Arthur Miller. This is a play I'm very familiar with and have long wanted to direct or use in an acting class. Despite the darkness of the theme, I'm quite looking forward to this.

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Participation and Pricing

My classes have two ways you can participate. If the Workroom is scene work, there will be a PLAYER group and an OBSERVER group.

PLAYERS get to do the scene work, receive feedback, implement feedback, and will be cast during class.

OBSERVERS will be observing for the most part. But by the time we open the round table at the end of the class, observers may chime in and join the conversation with their takeaways.

But for other Workrooms like the Commercial Acting Basics class, I will only have one type - Participant. I won't be opening Observer seats yet for those classes.

My classes are open to anyone who can attend during the scheduled class. I remember when I used to have class during the pandemic at the ungodliest hours because I had students all the way in the other hemisphere of the planet! It was so much fun! I'm not opposed to the idea, but for now, the best option is to stick to the time of day I'm still coherent since I still have very few students. Maybe I'll find the time and audience to do that some day!

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Registration

To register for the class, please head over to my page: https://mielabong.tumblr.com/actorsworkroom

I will stop accepting participants for classes up to 12H before the class starts so I have time to adjust the script to the headcount

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Anyway, this is my small attempt at giving actors a regular space to play and train without long-term commitments of multi-part workshops. I think it's important to just jam, really.

Skill-based is wonderful! But I'm excited to explore more intuition-based training as a teacher and I hope there are those out there who are just as eager to go on this journey with me!

See you in the Workroom!

[mielabong]

Want to be a good actor? Live.

I speak from experience when I say: don't make being an actor your entire personality and lifestyle.

While it's great to take note of your feelings and experiences, if every move you make is done with the intention of performing, your choices will become performative even if they're genuine.

I realized this when I was in rehearsal and our director told us not to bring our roles home. Contrary to what many acting coaches and directors do where they let you sit and marinate with the character well into your personal time, though it is necessary work sometimes, I really do believe we shouldn't bring our roles home all the time.

When we're in the business of being vulnerable, it's essential we understand how to de-role. It's part of a healthy acting practice. There's a very fine line between who we are and what we play because we do so much work trying to find ourselves in our characters so we can connect to them.

Don't let yourself get lost in your work.

From my perspective as a teacher, it's unhealthy, not admirable. It's irresponsible. Why would I want to work with or hire an actor who cannot distinguish reality from their work?

The industry has glorified role immersion so much that it's forgotten that actors are human.

No matter how high our emotional quotient is or how self-aware we are, if we get lost in our characters, coming back may become a challenge.

Each actor has their own method or process, and I respect that. But as your teacher, I would never throw you right into such immersive work.

The groundwork we have to lay, especially for beginner actors, is to know thyself...

Self-awareness

Self-mastery

Mindfulness

Emotional awareness; and

All the necessary personal inner work to understand the more complex inner world of the roles we have to play.

In fact, it's so essential that a lot of my students tell me our sessions sometimes feel like therapy. This is because that's where we have to go. How can you possibly access vulnerability at a healthy pace if your trauma and wounds are still fresh? Your system won't know the difference. And in acting classes I've taken, I've witnessed classmates who spiral into panic attacks mid-session.

In our sessions together, if we have to access pain, experience, and vulnerability, we simply borrow the feeling because we're not supposed to relive the trauma.

I completely disagree with stabbing our healed wounds with the same shards of glass.

Authentic work doesn't have to be unhealthy. Unhealthy work is cheating to me.

Unhealthy work is also a dead giveaway that the actor (or the director / acting coach who instructed the actor) doesn't know what they're doing. It's possible to have a healthy process.

You can be tired after a role. That's not unhealthy. But if you can't return to your every day life after that, that's when you know there's a glitch in the process.

It's like discussing a book. Let's say you join a book club that wants to discuss a book you've already read before. Surely, if you've read it, you already know the essence of it. But the book club meeting is in two days. There's no way you can reread the entire book. So, what do you do? You read the synopsis. You dip into notes of it online or notes that you made. And then you come to the meeting with an understanding of it, but you can still very much be involved in the discussion.

Borrowing your old experiences are like that. They're already archived and healed. Don't reopen the wounds, but remember, on a cerebral, sensory level what it was like so you understand how to raise the stakes of your current role.

I say live your life because actors are people.

People have lives. They fall in love, they get rejected, they learn new skills, they take care of their health, they build relationships, they do chores.

"I want to feel my life while I'm in it." -Meryl Streep

In my honest opinion, the best acting work comes from actors who have lives outside of acting even if they attend acting classes and constantly audition.

The actors with the most sustainable careers are the ones who can return to their life after a role or audition.

That in no way diminishes the work of actors whose immersion is very deep like Christian Bale, Marlon Brando, Charlize Theron, etc. Not at all. But as actors starting, it's best to understand who we are first before these roles that we have. The names I mentioned are people who work so regularly and for such a long time in a VARIETY of roles that with each project, they develop their own process. They're further along because of their experience.

So, my best advice for my students who are novices in the craft or those who have less experience in naturalism and exposure to specific acting methods, please invest in yourself and your life.

There is no rushing or expediting life lessons, so at the same time, there is no plowing through your growth as an actor as well.

Live.

And if you're serious about your career, keep taking class. But if there's anything that truly prepares you to be a good actor, it's having a life outside of this craft.

As someone whose main work is acting, teaching acting, writing, and working in the entertainment industry, it's very hard for me too to make sure I live my life. I'm addicted to this work. I'm obsessed with telling stories. But I welcome this challenge to remain in touch with my non-entertainment life because I understand it enriches my work.

So, for 2022, live your best life onwards.

Cheers!

Miel

If you want to train with me in 2022, I've created a new course designed for those who are serious about giving acting a real shot.

If you're ready, I'm prepared to give you a grounded, solid start at the necessary technical skills of a resonant, textured actor, even if you are just a beginner.

Foundations for Actors

is an online program that's both live & full of asynchronous material for aspiring actors.

It's beginner-friendly & no experience is required.

It's a 12-session program over a span of 3 months that covers everything from breathing to culminating in a mock audition. If you want to learn more about this intensive, I have 2 more 1:1 slots left and 2 Group Sessions have just been opened that can accommodate 4-8 students each. Group Sessions are required to have at least 4 paying students in order to open. For more details, click here.

Group Sessions begin on 04 February 2022.

1:1 sessions can start any time.

[mielabong]

What does it take to become an actor?

Ever since I began to promote my acting classes online, I'd receive inquiries that I never expected to receive:

Am I allowed to take the acting class if I'm not an actor?

Am I being too presumptuous if I apply to this class as a beginner?

Do I have what it takes to be an actor?

I expected questions more along the lines of schedule, pricing, content, availability, etc. But that doesn't make the above queries invalid. In fact, I don't know why I haven't addressed that before.

It's actually a very valid question to ask about what makes someone an actor, because there are probably many misconceptions that surround that as well.

So, to those who asked me these questions, thank you! Let's debunk some myths and talk about what it really means to be an actor.

But before you jump in, make sure you're following me on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for all the latest on all things acting, performing arts, and mental health.

What is an actor?

By definition, an actor (n.) is "one who acts in a play, movie, television show, etc."

True, yes, but let's explore something a bit deeper.

I strongly believe an actor is a storyteller.

When an actor is perceived as a storyteller, there's an implied responsibility with this job. Storytellers don't just perform what was on paper. Storytellers have a responsibility to bring more dimension to the story.

Let me fill you in on some personal experience.

When I was in high school, I commenced a more focused form training in the performing arts. Before that, I just loved dancing and was considered to be a drama queen by the people I knew. But the thing is, in high school, for four whole years, I only performed. I was acting, dancing, and singing.

When I got to college to work on my theater arts degree, part of my curriculum was to do production work. We had classes in stage and production management, technical theater, and since I was on a full scholarship, I had hours to serve. I served them mostly in the theater of the school where I glued head pieces together, took attendance for the dance coaches, assisted with props and costumes--you name it.

By the time I graduated college, I had quite a range of new skills in photography, costume & set design, art direction, choreography, marketing, production management, video editing, writing, and overall production work.

Here's the cool part...

I became a better actor because of this.

Why? Because I had a deeper understanding of my role in a production. I didn't only perform anymore like in high school where I'd come in and out of shows & rehearsals. No. This time, I knew exactly what my place was.

My costume and props experience made me much more detailed in building my own characters and it enriched my exploration process as an actor. On top of that, I never lost, broke, or wasted my costume or props.

My photography experience taught me about lighting. I learned to photograph performances, so as a performer, I became more aware of the audience's presence and knew exactly what to deliver.

While I could go on forever about how production experience enriched the quality of my work as a performer, I'd like to circle back to my point on actors being storytellers.

When anyone tells a story, they first set the scene and then gradually move on to build the world of the story.

Stories have dimension, color, texture, pace, and all types of range.

Now tell me, is emotion enough of a contribution from an actor? Shouldn't the actor integrate themselves into and contribute to the world's being built?

You see, from what I've seen and experienced, if an actor focuses on his own performance for 100% of their time in the production, chances are they'll put on something that's very self-indulgent.

But if an actor focuses on their performance at the beginning and can manage to step back and understand how the entire story should be, then we'll get ourselves a generous actor.

This is why, the priority of any actor, should not to be an actor, but to be a storyteller with a responsibility to bring the story to life.

There's still so much more to this topic of what it takes to be an actor, but for now, let's close this entry with a quote:

“Acting is not about being someone different. It’s finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.” ― Meryl Streep

Stay tuned for more by following me on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for all the latest on all things acting, performing arts, and mental health.

You don't have to be miserable to be a good performer even if many believe the best work comes from the deepest pain. And you don't have to start at a hundred. Acting is for everyone with the heart for it and all skills are buildable. Do not believe anyone who gate keeps this profession, because if you are willing to put in the work, you can be an actor too.

Until the next show,

Miel

FOR MORE ON THIS SPECIFIC TOPIC, SEARCH FOR THE TAG 'WHATSANACTOR' ON THE SEARCH BAR IN MY HOME PAGE.