I got a BFA in Theatre Arts (you can applaud), and even apart from that, I’ve spent a lot of time in acting classes. That is to say, I’ve been in many an environment where tears are a highly coveted signal of a success that’s otherwise kind of inscrutable.
My first acting class of acting school was taught by Michael Hammond. He is an actor, an expert in Shakespeare, a clear-visioned director and professor, a folk musician, and generally an incredibly earnest and kind person. Our friendship was instant and lasting. I have taken every opportunity I’ve had to interview him about his personal beliefs about acting and teaching because he does both incredibly dutifully and with great sensitivity. He sincerely trusts his students, and believes in the simple equation that when you trust someone, they’ll tell you the truth. In that first freshman year class, he’d remind us that you can’t fake a chemical. You have to convince yourself, and nobody else– your body doesn’t know the difference between reality and make-believe. In telling us this, he let us off the hook: we weren’t there to convince him of anything, nor were we there to succeed by anyone’s standards. We were just there to Explore Imaginary Circumstances, and that, unlike pageanting one’s own most painful emotions, is fun!
Michael grew up in a small Iowa town with the centerpiece of a church to which everyone belonged. He tells me that there was a real sense of social cohesion to that, a sense of belonging, and that everyone knew everyone’s business. In his real life, the popular belief was that there were no psychological problems– only spiritual ones. It’s no surprise that theater was such a compelling outlet. But, Michael tells me, the question isn’t so much what led him to acting to begin with, but why he couldn’t manage to quit, try as he might. “I thought it was vain, self-aggrandizing,” he told me, “I thought, ‘if I want to serve others, you know, there are more efficient ways of doing it’. That’s the puritanical background, resurfacing”. I asked him when that went away. He told me it never did, but he now recognizes the feeling as merely stagnation jitters between jobs: “if I’m doing it, it’s all I ever want to do. But I’ve spent so much time waiting for the chance to do it that I blame the art form. I’d feel like this is costing me too much, to wait so long between opportunities is corrosive, it causes me to question the integrity of the activity itself. But the problem isn’t the artform, the problem is not being busy!”.
Aware of the heartache a career in the arts can present, Michael runs his freshman acting class like an emotional daycare. It begins with the class, dressed in Movement Clothes, sitting in a cluster on the floor as he reads a chapter of a book to us. Sometimes, a lively discussion ensues. Sometimes not– he doesn’t push it. Sometimes, he brings his guitar and plays us some music. Then, we move out onto the floor and do some acting exercises. Most memorably was an exercise I can only attempt to describe. It didn’t have a name, or if it did, we never used it. The game was to physically and vocally embody the colors red, yellow or blue, and amplify the embodiment to a level 1-3, 4-6, or 7-9. We’d organize our bodies in space to form a boxing ring and two young actors would get in the middle and play while Michael yelled out from the sidelines, instructing a different color and scale to one actor at a time: Becca, yellow, 4-6; Charlotte, blue, 7-91! It was silly, and that was the point. As eighteen-year-olds who feel like there’s a lot to prove, humiliating oneself publicly undoes any vanity we come in with, and opens up more possibilities for growth than doing a scene Really Well on day one. Michael explained his affinity for silliness to me as being what got him into acting to begin with– goofing off was discouraged for him, but being entertaining and making people laugh were highly encouraged. It’s a skill he believes in sharpening: “laughing onstage is just as hard as crying onstage,” he said to me, “for some, it’s harder– I’ve seen actors really push to get a ‘realistic-sounding’ laugh”. I knew what he was describing: I’d heard it too, could easily conjure the strained sound of forced laughter in my mind. Better disguised to me, though, is fake-crying.
Some people can get the tears going, but they don’t always feel as good to the audience to see as they might feel to the actor to shed. I struggle to describe what the difference actually is. I asked Michael, as someone who has seen a lot of straining, if there’s a specific look to it. “You know there is,” he laughed, “why are you asking me?”. He tells me it’s mystifying, because he can’t remember ever having asked an actor specifically to cry, but I get it– I can remember being an early student feeling like my professors were speaking in code, like what they were secretly asking for was tears. What we (I) fail to consider when trying to force a compelling cry is that people don’t like to be manipulated. When I ask Michael about this, he laughs: “I have to preface what I’m about to say by saying that I sometimes think I confuse cynicism with integrity. Personally. I think I’m so preoccupied with integrity that I become somewhat cynical about how other people are behaving. It’s a slightly more complicated version of being a judgmental asshole,” it’s an invaluable thing to hear from an arts teacher, I have to note!!! He continues to describe that there is “a spectrum of dishonesty,” he calls it, “where the more vulnerable you become, the less you have to signal it, and it’s the signaling that requires the audience to distance themselves. [...] For me, I know that the moment I suspect someone is trying to get me to feel a certain way is the moment I step back. That’s where I am as an actor and where I am as a teacher to an actor. It’s kind of creepy and degrading to watch an actor who’s been told to be emotional, to watch them push that way”.
There are many hacks for producing tears that are unrelated to emotions. In instances of such hack-tears being shed, their off-brand-ness is weirdly obvious: they don’t get us in the gut as much. Technically speaking, they fall quickly and coldly, and they don’t linger on the face. That’s because tears that we cry from emotion are of a completely different chemical makeup than tears we cry from utility (dryness or irritation). Emotional tears contain hormones and proteins which, in addition to affecting our brain chemistry, provide them with a higher viscosity so that they stick to our skin and fall slowly down our faces. The biological advantage of this is that it is a more obvious, lasting social signal of our distress or vulnerability. When an actor cries tears that move us, it’s because they’re also being moved, and they’re tapping into our (the audience’s, that is), biological sense of responsibility for one another. That’s what feels so good– Michael and I agree– that the rewarding feelings are flowing both ways, that we are mutually benefitting somehow. “I’d be the first to admit that being an actor requires a certain– maybe not narcissism from a clinical standpoint– but, I mean, a lot of people who claim to be shy otherwise are performers,” Michael says, “On some level, whether we’re shy or bold socially, we want to be attended to. We want to be able to share ourselves with others”. I hope everybody is as lucky to have such an engaged and generous audience to share with as I’ve been to have Michael!
a fun anecdote about this: Julian took this class the year before me and had his first color exercise immediately after being broken up with, and cried while expressing “blue 1-3”. He remembers this being the only day he’s ever cried in acting class, and that it garnered a significant response from his peers, but that Michael could tell his crying was unrelated to the activity.
Big love for this one all around!
This brought me so much joy. Great read.