Exploring New Areas Of Your Talent

Welcome!  Let me briefly summarize for you what coaching is all about.  It about you! My private coaching practice was created to train actors like yourself in an atmosphere that is both challenging and stimulating so as to inspire you—the actor—to explore new areas of your talent and creativity while becoming a confident skilled professional.

 

As a part of your creative growth, be willing to take risks in your work—learn from your successes as well as from your failures.  Don’t play it safe—there’s nothing very rewarding that comes from playing it safe. That’s why you want to keep exploring new areas of your talent.

 

Any artist worth his salt has taken big chances.  Think of the wonderful architecture we would have missed if Frank Lloyd Wright hadn’t dared to design such unconventional buildings as the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.  And where would modern art be today if artists like Picasso hadn’t broken new ground with Cubism?  So if it’s easy or comfortable, you’re not doing as much as you can.  There must be an element of danger just to keep us on our toes—to remain alert—ready for anything.  It’s that extra edge that makes life exciting and always interesting.  Give yourself more to do than less—you can’t go wrong.

 

Another aspect of the training is designed to help you develop your own personal discipline.  The more disciplined you are the more you’ll produce, the more you produce the more you’ll learn and the more likely you are to become a working actor.  You are expected to be on time for coaching, auditions, and of course on set.   So leave your personal problems behind when you enter.  You want to refine your skills and have the most creative time possible.  Keep the environment free of your outside upsets and challenge others to do the same.  This is your time to thrive as an actor so treat it accordingly and don’t spoil it by lateness, upsets and ill-prepared work.

 

Now for a word on responsibility.  Okay, it’s a word we hear all the time—“Be responsible” or “Take responsibility.”  But what does all that mean?  The way I see it is really quite simple.  It just means willing to be make things happen no matter what gets in your way instead of willing to be a victim of circumstances.  Come on now, you know you can control anything you really want to—so just cut out all the other jazz.  You’re much more able as person than you think.  So don’t look for excuses.  Do what you have to do to get the job done.

 

Going hand in hand with responsibility is communication.  Your job as an actor, as in any art form, is involved with communication.  Your own personal work and your work with others will be as good as you are able to communicate.  So when things aren’t going well with yourself or someone else—communicate.  You will find your work as well as your life much easier if you communicate in an honest, direct manner.  In this life, there will be times when difficulties must be resolved, whether in class, on a movie set, in the theatre, or at home.  And the only tool I have found that has been at all effective is communication—not by storming out or parading your emotions or trying to make yourself right—but by simply sitting down and talking it out.  And while you’re at it, be willing to listen to the other guy—he may actually have a point.  Believe me, if you grasp this one concept, life will go that much smoother.

 

As you can see, the coaching encompasses not only assisting you in expanding your talent, but also includes helping you to develop a sense of yourself as a disciplined artist in relationship to your work as an actor and in relationship to your work with others.

 

So there you have it.  If you’ve read this far and you’re still with me, you’re probably ready to launch what may be the adventure of a lifetime.  For as you grow to understand human behavior and emotion, you will learn more about yourself and others while possibly gaining some new insights as to why people are the way they are.    It’s some kind of adventure to discover what makes a person tick while exploring new areas of your talent—but that is the task at hand.  So get ready to have the time of your life—you’ve just entered a brand new era!

 

Lynette McNeill

Any Questions, Call (310) 274-1085

By Lynette McNeill
Acting Coach & Director

© 2016 Lynette McNeill Studios