“Freedom” is Not the Ultimate Thing You Need As An Actor

(Photo: Fordham Theatre)

by Ashley Griffin, Stage Directions

Sean Bean (well known for his work on “Lord of the Rings” and “Game of Thrones”) once spoke out against having intimacy directors on set for the reason it “killed spontaneity.” Several actors have made similar statements (though it’s interesting to note that they’ve primarily come from older, cis, straight white men, with other demographics, especially well-known female-identifying actors coming to the defense of intimacy direction.)

This idea of needing freedom to follow your spontaneous instincts as an actor in any circumstance has been a holy grail in acting for the past 75 or so years. What we’ve been taught is the key to honest, natural acting is to follow your instincts. Stella Adler famously said: “Your art is in your choice.” And to a great extent, I agree. There is great truth to Adler’s statement.

But the factor that we’ve almost completely ignored, especially in 21st-century acting training in the U.S., is the necessity and benefit of limitations. Neil Gaiman gives an example in one of his interviews (I cannot find the link) where he talks about how as a writer, “no limitations” can actually produce more writer’s block. He says (paraphrased) that one of the worst things you can do to a writer is ask them to write something about “whatever they want.” They will often sit and drift endlessly with the deadline looming larger and larger. But give a writer something specific, no matter how odd (he uses the example of “I need a short story about a cat who thinks he’s Shakespeare”) – suddenly an author’s imagination begins to go wild and the story is off and running.

Limitations have been a mainstay of art since time immemorial. If you want to write a certain kind of poem you must stay within a very rigid structure (but it’s that rigid structure that allows you to have freedom within it.) Dancers do not get to say, “I don’t want to learn choreography, I just want to dance however the spirit moves me.”

What I find most ironic is one of the most limiting acting situations you can experience is being on a film set – where you must hit a very specific mark and turn your head at a very specific angle (while being natural and acting well) in order for the director and cinematographer to get the shot. There can actually be great freedom in this – the limitations are ensuring that your performance's truth is communicated as effectively as possible. Try watching a filmed scene where in one take an actor is hitting their marks, and in the next, they were moving however they want. The second take might have felt free to the actor, but it completely blocked us from experiencing their performance.

I’ve always enjoyed elements of limitations to performance. Maybe it’s the fact that I started as a child actor. I did my first play when I was five years old – and at that age, no one was having an in-depth conversation with me about where my instincts were leading me in terms of blocking. I was told to enter here, cross here, sit here, and not deviate. I might have been young, but I did understand the basics of objective and intention, so my goal became to use my blocking as linchpins on which to hang my organic performance – and it was fun to figure out how I was going to use a cross, or a movement to communicate that.

Perhaps a lot of that had to do with my dance training. Dancing is precise. It’s technical. Unless you are dealing with very specific styles you do not get the freedom to change or adapt the choreography. If you’re dancing “Giselle” you have to turn on a certain count and figure out how to make that fit with the character and the story you’re telling. And dancing for Bob Fosse, you could infamously get corrected for your pinky finger being a centimeter too high. I’ve never heard anyone complain that Fosse or Fosse Technique was stifling their performance.

I was shocked to find that at certain training programs (especially college,) people looked down on such technical skills and requirements – even in dance class. Even in ballet. Teachers would joke about things being limiting, and in mock dance auditions, it was the students who “made the choreography their own” (to the point where the choreography was flat-out not being executed correctly) who were rewarded. I remember being utterly confused.

If you walk into a Broadway dance audition and you “make the choreography your own” to the point where you’re not hitting counts, or even doing the choreography as taught, you’ll be thrown out of the audition. Just as if you’re an actor in a big film and you can’t hit your mark, you’ll be replaced in a heartbeat.

Throughout much of performance history pre-Stanislavsky there was nothing “natural” about acting – in some ways, it was closer to dance or mime with performers mastering stylized positions they would move between depending on what was happening in a speech or scene (I highly recommend watching the fantastic film “Stage Beauty” as an example.) I’m in no way suggesting that we return to that, but the beneficial element that I think has been lost is a knowledge of how to technically utilize your body so that it is reflecting your actions and objectives in the strongest way possible.

And we have no problem doing this with certain things – fight choreography is extremely technical (note it has the word “choreography.”) Fights are created to literal counts, and angles of hands, arms, etc. are carefully crafted and rehearsed. I have never felt like I was “following my impulses” in a fight scene” – and that’s a really good thing! That doesn’t mean I didn’t feel organic in what I was doing, or honest in my acting, it means that I was combining organic inner acting, actions, and objectives with technical physical considerations – much as a dancer can execute a difficult step while still communicating the character they’re playing.

So why is the conversation so different regarding scenes of a sexual or intimate nature? We would never say that a sword fight should be improvised so that the actors can feel “organic” while doing it…so why do actors feel like they can’t do their job as an actor in a sexual scene without “improv” being a part of it? Sean Bean especially should value the need for controlled choreography on set – he’s been at the center of some of the most infamous, violent death scenes on film. But in order to be organic in a sex scene he just has to “let loose with no limitations?”

We need to start valuing physical limitations as actors and the freedom they provide. Likewise, we need to erase this double standard of sex scenes vs. literally every other type of scene in a film. It is our job to organically execute a performance while still following the technical specifications required of us. I find it baffling that “romance” is consistently an outlier in these conversations. It is common to hear actors at a press junket asked if they are dating their costar because they just had such great chemistry on screen, but I’ve never heard an actor playing a villain asked if they’ve really tried to kill their costar because their homicidal rage against them was just so believable in the film.

Fight scenes can be well choreographed and still feel authentic, but unless you’re really following your impulses and getting off with your onscreen romantic partner the performance is false? I hands down guarantee that if you asked Stephen McRae and Sarah Lamb (two principals at the Royal Ballet) if they’re truly feeling turned on and completely following their physical instincts while dancing Kenneth MacMillian’s infamous balcony scene in “Romeo and Juliet” they would laugh and say that would be ridiculous given the technical requirements they need to execute. And yet, they communicate utter instinctual romance with their performance.

There’s a great story that Uta Hagen tells about performing as Blanche in “A Streetcar Named Desire” opposite Marlon Brando. Apparently every night during the rape scene Brando would stop following the precise choreography and start getting really rough with her – most notably he would dig his thumbs in just below her shoulders and start shaking her, causing her immense pain and leaving her with horrible bruises. When they exited she would tell him to stop and that he was hurting her. His response was:

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I just felt it.”

This went on night after night until one performance when Hagen saw him once again start coming towards her, thumbs at the ready, that she just flat out started screaming and moving in a physically panicked way. This so shocked Brando that he dropped his hands, and it took him a moment to get back to the scene. That night when they exited Brando, concerned, asked Hagen if she was ok. She replied:

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I just felt it.”

Is it that folks who don’t want to be “held back” in intimacy scenes truly believe no harm can come to either actor from “winging it?” Do they feel insecure about the moment and feel they’ll only be able to be believable if they’re actually turned on? Do they really just want to “get off” on making out with their costar?

Whatever the reason, it’s time to shut it down and embrace limitations as artists. Limitations are, in the end, what set us free to give the best performances we can. Imagine if we had no blocking, no director to guide us, nothing set about what we should do onstage or in front of a camera. As Gaiman suggested, I don’t think we would end up with much worthwhile art.