Free True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor by David Mamet

is the course of a play, a career, a performance, a life in the theatre.
    Stanislavsky said that the job of the actor was to bring the life of the human soul to the stage. That life is
your
life. It is not neat and packaged. It is not predictable;it is often terrifying, disgusting, humiliating. It is all the things which make up your life. You don’t have to wish it away. You
can’t
wish it away, you can only repress it. But you needn’t do so.
    The beginning of wisdom is the phrase “I don’t understand.” Fine. You are faced with a part, a play, a scene. Begin with the useful phrase “I don’t understand.” “I don’t understand how I am to proceed.” Perhaps you feel better already.
    Let’s revert to some very simple first principles: Your job is to communicate the play to the audience, by
doing something like
that which the playwright has shown the character to be doing. So, logically, a first step must be to observe what the character is doing.
    At the beginning of
Hamlet
, Horatio comes onto the battlements to find out what all the hoopla is about this supposed ghost. That’s what he’s doing. There is no belief required, no emotion, only action. He, Horatio, wants to find out what the fuss is about.
    All right. That’s the
character
. The character is not
you
, it is not
anybody
, it exists only in the lines of dialogue on the page. What, then, are you to do?
You
don’t want to do anything which involves a ghost, that would entail a certain measure of
belief
on your part. (What if you don’t believe in ghosts, or don’t believe in ghosts on the night of performance?)
    Well, then, the next step of your task is to discard anything in the operations of the character which would require you to “feel” or to “believe”—to reducethe operations of the character to the lowest common denominator, so as not to burden yourself, so as to be able to act truthfully.
    Now, you
might
or
might not
be able to act truthfully in a scene where you had to find out about a ghost; but nothing could stop you from acting truthfully in a situation where you had to
clean up a mess
.
    One could say that that is the irreducible essence of that scene. (Please note that there may be other correct answers, but there is no
perfect
answer. It is the purpose of this simple analysis to get you out onstage playing a scene
something like
that which the playwright delineated. The search for the
perfect
analysis will keep you
off
the stage and in the classroom.) So, you say that, in the scene,
your
job is to
clean up a mess
. (Horatio’s job was to clear up the hoopla about the ghost;
your
job is to clean up a mess.) Please note that we have, at this point, left Shakespeare’s scene behind. We need never again refer to the ghost, or to fear, or to belief. The purpose of our simple analysis is to understand not the
appearance
but the
mechanics
of the scene. We want to lift up the hood, as it were, and look at the wiring.
    All right. Now, when we go to a party, we are introduced to many people. Some we have met before, but we remember them vaguely It is helpful, in these cases, to ask a friend, “Who is that woman again?” And the friend might respond, “Oh, she’s the wildlife veterinarian,” and we nod, and, our recollection jogged, we say, “Oh, yes. Thank you.”
    Similarly, when we have determined our action (in this case, to clean up a mess), we might require or enjoy a jog to our memory: “
What
does that mean again?” This is where the application of the phrase “as if” becomes most helpful.
What
does it mean to clean up a mess?
    Well, it’s as if you went shopping with your little sister and she was caught shoplifting. And you go to the store manager and clean up her mess. It’s as if the credit card company charged you three thousand dollars for items you never bought. You don’t have to
believe
these things have happened. First, it’s impossible, as they didn’t happen. They are fantasy; and, second, even