Looking Past Ambition
by Craig Slaight

The phone rings: “This is Craig.” “Yes, I have a daughter. She’s an amazing actor. She’s been just astonishing ever since she was a baby. Everyone who meets her instantly asks if she’s in show business. She’s had classes in tap, ballet (for six years!), commercial acting, dialects, modeling (runway), résumés, makeup and hair. She’s been in The Mountain Play, the Passion Play and 10 community musicals. She’s played Annie, Lucy, the Artful Dodger and Joan of Arc. I know in my heart that if I could just get her an agent, she’d be the next Winona Ryder. By the way, if my kid comes and takes classes there, can she get a part in a movie?” Though my instinct is to burst into a rousing chorus of Noël Coward’s “Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs. Worthington,” I resist. Much of what this parent says alarms me. As the director of the Young Conservatory at American Conservatory Theater I’m attempting to look past ambition—whether it is shot from the child or the well-meaning parent. If you look past the child’s ambition you’ll find her desire to create, and there is the kernel, however deeply imbedded, of the richly human need to share. For me, it’s all about sharing.

It’s Not About Making It
In the past 15 years I’ve made training and directing young actors my art and my trade. Prior to that I was a professional director. Throughout these years I’ve attempted to do two very specific things: demystify technique and passionately demand that young people be taken seriously. To find that kernel of the richly human need to share in young people, you’ve got to take them seriously.

This article isn’t going to be about how to modify what we do in the professional world to make it digestible for the child. If acting is a re-creation of life experience (and for me it is), then anyone is capable of such re-creation whenever imagination and form allow. And if there is anything I’ve learned in this journey with young actors, it is that they have powerful imaginations and the diligence and capability to assimilate form to reveal truth.

The other thing I’ve learned is that young people who are interested in the arts desire the most muscular and demanding training available, and they are frequently let down. If we felt that young people in the 1980s were lethargic and without vision, we are seeing anything but that in the young people of 2002. No matter where I’ve been (and I’ve worked with young people from all over the U.S. and England) I’ve seen the same hunger in the eyes of young people. The first look you get from a fresh crop of young actors is suspicion—it’s always suspicion, with a hefty dollop of concerned expectation. Do you blame them? Let’s face it, there’s much to be suspicious about in this world and often adults play into whatever the expectations are concerning young people’s creative journey. The second look you get, if you’ve captured their attention, is a desire to explore new places in their experience—and always, always, the passion to do something well. The third look you get is the one that shows you the light behind the eyes and the availability to go to a new place. When I first started working with young people, it was the third look that always pierced my heart. Having spent many years directing professional actors, I committed to leading young people to vital actor training when I saw that third look. I joke with Melissa Smith, the conservatory director at ACT, that if you ask a graduate acting student to explore “green,” you get, “That’s not my choice.” You ask a young person to explore “green,” and you get, “Green? [Followed by a pause of confused consternation.] Yeah! Green!!!!” They’re available and ready to go. I haven’t worked any differently with teenagers than I did with Julie Harris, Betty Garrett or any professional actor. I may need to illuminate and define more, but I never need to water down, to settle for less. Where young people lack girdle-tight technique, they overwhelm in imagination and the astonishing ability to say yes.

So how does one answer the desirous parent or young person, hell-bent on “making it?” I say immediately that I don’t know much about making it. I offer that endless study, years of grooming, plastic surgery, coaching until you are emotionally and financially broke, engaging in countless opportunities to showcase darling dearest and even getting Uncle Chad to introduce you to Mel Gibson’s manicurist probably won’t lead to making it. But when my attempts to dissuade a young person (or a well-meaning parent) from studying acting with “making it” as a chief goal land on uninterested ears, I try to get at that kernel, that urge to share, and try to put that urge into finding ways to share (act) in the most truthful and dynamic ways possible.

Handing Down Tradition
Quite early on I realized that what young actors work on is important. It’s ludicrous to dress a 16-year-old boy up to play Willy Loman. Just as ludicrous is handing an intelligent, imaginative young woman the role of an animated panda bear that ultimately reveals life lessons about how to be kind. Somewhere between Death of a Salesman and Babar the Elephant exists a voice that younger actors can approach—and younger actors have a better chance of learning the techniques of character creation when the literature speaks to them. Don’t get me wrong, I run screaming and kicking from indulgent, over-obvious drivel that attempts to capture “teen angst.” At ACT, I’ve commissioned over 20 plays by major writers that look at the world through youthful eyes. When I talk with writers about this form of playwriting, I use Romeo and Juliet or Antigone as examples, and I seek the finest writers, not necessarily ones who have previously written for children. This kind of commission work goes very far in taking young people seriously. You’ve never seen eyes quite as wide as the eyes of a young actor who has just been handed new pages by the playwright for the world premiere she’s rehearsing.

Just as we hand down language, it is crucial that we hand down the traditions of our training from one generation to the next. For me, mentors have played a large role in my learning about acting and directing. The careful hand that guided me, the benevolent but stern voice that pointed out my mistakes and encouraged my successes made all the difference in the techniques I developed and engendered a sense that I was part of an ageless tradition. This is at the heart of the kernel. We often get caught up in the creative moment, self-absorbed in the conviction that we’re creating something altogether new. But people have been doing this since early cave dwellers re-created the success of the hunt over dinner. I find that young actors hunger for ritual and history in their work and long to be part of something special. When we attach more to this goal than to getting the gig, when we invest in a more richly developed continuum of experience and creativity than a shot in a Fox Network series, we begin to answer the need to share. And, more importantly, when young people realize the depth possible in their connection to theatre, we’ve done a lifelong service.

The End of Innocence
When I see late teens begin to contemplate college, conservatory or university study I am always a little saddened, because reality really sets in. When the young person plans to leave the protected and nurturing environment of home, he starts to realize the limitations of the craft—limitations that heretofore have been missing. As a child, if you wanted to act, you could act. You could find a school production, a community production, take an acting class, create, and there was a structure and support for the creation. When I audition late teens I see in their eyes the awareness that not everyone will get a part. More striking than this are the conversations I have in counseling sessions with my older teen actors in which they say, “But, I really want to do this. It means so much to me. There are so many people who want to do this. What if I won’t be able to do this?”

Responsible parents are equally concerned (sometimes more concerned) about the alarming statistics on the profession of acting. I don’t know a high school senior (or his parents) who has a passion to act and who isn’t aware of the employment statistics published yearly by Equity, SAG and AFTRA. To these students and parents I try to encourage calm, careful planning and provide the assurance that over and over I’ve seen these things take care of themselves. As with a painter or a writer, if the need to act burns, one finds a way to do it. If something else comes along and becomes the flame, there shouldn’t be regret. The wonderful, late fiction writer William Maxwell once sent me a postcard that said, “I know it is the same in the theatre as it is in fiction: just do the work and everything good will follow.” I try to support the passion, without apology, and at the same time counsel intelligent steps.

I strongly believe that a solid liberal arts education is essential for actors. Actors need to be smart people, capable of bringing intelligence and empathy to myriad human experiences. It takes more than technique to illuminate a world. Having said that, I’ve worked with incredibly talented actors who never got a liberal arts education. Winona Ryder never attended college. As she is one of ACT’s most illustrious alumni, should I then encourage other young actors to bypass college? Not likely. However, it’s absolutely essential to be ready when the time comes to present yourself as an actor to someone who can employ you. I stress that there may be few opportunities for such meetings and that each one will really count. Interestingly enough, this seems to land on parents and on young people, and they realize that thorough training and thorough education are necessary.

The Bottom Line
In working with youth, either in training or in the workplace, people often focus on delivering a result rather than finding a process to unlock, to create, to form. The role of training young people as actors needs to be in concert with the role of helping them develop into compassionate human beings. I’ve gotten so much more from the young person who ultimately understood what the character was doing, needing, feeling, struggling with, than the one who was given a “bit” to do on a soundstage. Young people have an uncanny way with impersonation. I’m astonished that cliché is tolerated—even encouraged.

Often our approach to young actor training is overly concerned with the fun quotient. When will we stop encouraging comedic improvisation games as a tool for serious actor training and begin to apply exercises that do more than entertain? I’ve seen too many classes that began with comedy-club tactics under the guise of warm-up only to end 30 minutes later with the expectation that the young actors are ready to work on a scene from a Tennessee Williams play. It is here that theatre games can come into conflict with serious study.

This isn’t to dismiss the value of recreational drama as pleasurable and even valuable. Creation should be fun. But often I feel we trade in the opportunity for serious growth and removal of obstacles in order to have fun. The cellist understands the need for drill and repetitive techniques that are often less than fun. I spent a season at the Interlochen Center for the Arts—an art center known for championing high-class training in all the arts but particularly known for its outstanding musical training. Those students understood the discipline required to be an accomplished musician. I learned so much about music training there and found more that linked approaches to actor training than I ever would have thought possible. I’m not afraid of discipline in my work with young people now. And, frankly, neither are my students—once they’ve learned that such hard work reveals wondrous results. Part of taking the young person seriously is being responsible for her journey making it as deep and proficient as possible. As professional mentors in a young life we must be ready to bring passion to the work as well as discipline.

Finally, working with young actors keeps the kernel to share alive in me. It is a constant test of what I think I know and what needs to be continually reexamined. I see a mirror image of my own budding creative life in young actors, and it gives me amazing hope for the possibilities for genuine truth and beauty in our art. As we replace ourselves, we must embrace the handing down of the work with enormous generosity, consummate expectations that surpass mediocrity, and humble admiration for the birth of creation at any age. I can’t think of a better way to explore my world.

Craig Slaight is the director of the Young Conservatory and New Plays Program at American Conservatory Theater.