module 12: overcoming consciousness of self & silencing the inner critic

Overcoming Consciousness of Self

• Give the beginner actor a script, put him on stage under the glow of bright lights, and something all too familiar happens.


• He tries to entertain. Instantly, his attention turns inward.

• As a result, the actor’s performance is seen as exaggerated. In other words, fake!

Overcoming Consciousness of Self• Consciousness of self is as toxic to the actor as

venom is to the cobra. When we are in our heads, we become judgmental, critical, and doubtful.

• We become our own worst enemies, beating ourselves up mercilessly with cruel, harsh, and unkind words.


• It’s as if we’ve become spectators watching ourselves from the sidelines with intense scrutiny and judging our every move.


• For actors, it’s blatantly obvious when they are in their heads. The audience’s energy dissipates and is replaced by a musty stagnancy that sucks the life out of the theater like a Dementor’s kiss sucks the soul out of its victim.


• There is a paradox in all of this. If that voice whispering in your head was a real person, how long would you tolerate such verbal abuse before resorting to violence?

• Yet we unleash its holy wrath on ourselves with as much fury as the “face that launched a thousand ships” without so much as giving it a second thought.


• Thankfully, there is a way out of this. It’s called, “Getting out of your head.”


• A famous acting instructor by the name of Stanislavsky recognized how debilitating this can be for an actor because it prevents them from letting go and losing themselves in an artistic way so as to fully inhabit the mind, mannerisms, and reality of a fictional character.


• He came up with the concept that everything good from your acting comes out of involvement.

• Stanislavsky called it, “the acting object.”


• You need to put your attention on an object outside of yourself.

• An acting object is not necessarily a tangible thing. It often times is another person, such as a scene partner.

• The more involved you get in your acting object, the less opportunity you have to observe yourself.


• Picture this. It’s your first day of law school and you’re in contracts class. You’re sitting in a lecture hall with one hundred other students, all of whom are total strangers.


• The professor is a strict, no nonsense, “old school” professor who uses the Socratic Method.


• Your seat isn’t even warm before he pulls out the seating chart and calls on his first “victim.” Despite sitting in the last row, the lucky person just so happens to be you.


• But instead of asking you to recite the facts to Lucy v. Zehmer, your professor asks you to walk to the front of the room, turn around, and face the other students for one minute. Oh yeah, you are not allowed to speak. You must remain silent with your feet firmly planted on the floor and stare out at the piercing eyes of your fellow students.


• What response is this likely to evoke?• Within seconds, your heart starts racing, your

palms get sweaty, your hand begins to twitch, you feel a lump inside your throat the size of a crater, and you begin to shift your weight from one leg to another.

• The seconds feel like minutes.


• How many pairs of eyes are fixed on you? Because there are 100 students, you might have answered, “100 pairs.” But, there are actually “101 pairs.”

• As piercing as the stares of the 100 students in the auditorium might be, the 101st pair is the most paralyzing.

• To whom does the 101st pair belong? YOU! Yes, you were watching yourself just like every other student in the lecture hall.


• Let’s tweak this uncomfortable scenario slightly. Once again, it’s your “lucky day.” The professor calls on you and gives you the very same instructions that he gave you the first time: walk to the front of the room and face the other students for one minute.

• Except now, he gives you a tennis racket and a tennis ball, tells you to hold the tennis racket in one hand and bounce the ball up and down on the racket while counting up to ten. You begin.


• Which version of you is likely to be more self-conscious? The one who had nothing to do or the one who had something to do?

• If you answered, “the one who had the activity,” you’d be correct.

• When given an activity that requires focus and concentration, you can’t be involved in doing the activity and watching yourself do it at the same time.


• Very simply, when you become so absorbed in an activity, there is not enough of you left to watch yourself doing it. And that is a good thing!

• In addition, a good activity gathers you together and creates a specific kind of life.


• A cardinal rule of acting is that everything good in acting comes out of your involvement.

• The more involved you get, the better. • When you are fully committed to performing a

task, your involvement becomes analogous to a bonfire that gives off smoke.


• What are some acting objects in the courtroom? They depend on the circumstances.– If I’m making a legal argument, all of my attention

is on the judge.– If I’m cross-examining a witness, all of my

attention is on the witness.– If I’m making an opening or a closing, all of my

attention is on the jury.


• Tom Wolfe captures the essence of how debilitating consciousness of self can be when it manifests itself as intensely as it did with the main character, Sherman McCoy: “My entire central nervous system was wired. What I had presumed to be my private inviolate self had become a veritable amusement park to which everybody, and I mean everybody, came scampering and screaming. I could no more keep them from entering my own hide than I could keep the air out of my lungs.” Tom Wolfe, “Bonfire of the Vanities”


• “Acting is a scary, paradoxical business. One of its central paradoxes is that in order to succeed as an actor you have to lose consciousness of your own self in order to transform yourself into the character in the play. It’s not easy, but it can be done.” – Sanford Meisner


• Acting is a faith-based enterprise.


• “To take the heat off yourself – to transfer the point of concentration outside of yourself – is a big battle won.” – Sanford Meisner


• In acting we call this, “getting out of your head.” Nothing can be more liberating.

• Your true self will shine through when you lose consciousness of self.

module 12: overcoming consciousness of self & silencing the inner critic

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