Hey y’all, Happy June!
This topic has been on my mind for a while, and I’m excited to dive into the concept of Generosity. Principally what it means to be a generous actor/auditioner, and the idea of generosity as a counter to ego.
For our regular podcast listeners you will have heard this concept come up a few times recently in various takeaways, and it came up again recently in our conversation with Dean Nolan from Texas Tech. He talked about how much they are looking for generous actors – and we’ve heard different versions of this idea with different words from so many different faculty members over 250+ episodes. The idea that schools are looking for kind, generous actors. For good human beings who will fit well within their community and be giving to their fellow classmates.
Without always naming it, these faculty members are describing both a positive kind of actor-student they are looking for, and describing its opposite. So let’s take a moment and live in what that opposite might be, which would be an ungenerous actor. That’s sometimes easier to define, right? We can all picture an ungenerous actor as someone who doesn’t listen, doesn’t care for or about their fellow castmates/classmates, and in short, is all about themselves. In a scene a selfish actor might be constantly upstaging their fellow actors, stepping on laughs, or grabbing moments of spotlight. And if we can sit in empathy for a moment with this characterization of a selfish actor, at some level all of us who have gone into this profession can understand these impulses, right? As the great Sir Laurence Olivier is quoted as saying, when asked why he wanted to be an Actor, he said: “the reason we do what we do, dear boy: look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me –”. And can’t we all understand that need to be seen and validated and appreciated? Especially in a competitive business, in a competitive process, where you are saying at some level “pick me instead of them”.
But why am I spending time outlining an Arrogant actor in a blog about Generosity? Because I think it’s a really helpful framing to think about generosity as a counter to ego, as opposed to thinking of humility. Because it is a tricky tightrope we walk as actors, having the self-confidence and self-belief to walk in the room and say why it should be us – why what we have to share is special and worthy of a place at your program, without teetering into arrogance. And I find so often with students when they try to reckon with the fear of arrogance, they lead with something I like to call “loud humility”, which can manifest itself in performative apologizing, and too much meekness. And one of the easiest things to dismiss in an audition room is a too-meek actor. If you don’t think you belong on that stage, neither will anyone else.
But a generous actor is something else. A generous actor is not meek – they have the confidence in who they are and their ability to stand in the spotlight, but they have gone one step further in being able to give it away. It takes much more confidence to be truly generous than to be arrogant. Right beneath the surface of arrogance there is often deep insecurity. A need to prove yourself in order to believe in yourself. But beneath a generous actor is a beacon that says that the rising tide of this performance will lift all ships.
I love to make sports analogies in the podcast/blog space, and one strikes me when you consider the best basketball players. The best players are able to score themselves, but also to lift up their teammates and make them better. They are able to work toward getting their team the best shot with clarity of whether that means they need to take it or they should pass it to an open teammate. But just like with performers, giving the ball up when you are no threat to score yourself is not useful – the other team could just not cover you at all and it would make it harder on your team. And if you’ll never pass the ball then they could triple-team you and you’ll never be able to score. That balance of being able to score and have the confidence to take the shot, but also being open to the possibility that there is a better shot for your open teammate is the same balance we are looking for onstage.
So how does this manifest in auditions? Certainly it’s easier to show this kind of generosity when you are auditioning with a reader or a fellow actor, but there are many ways it can manifest even when you’re doing Songs and Monologues solo. You can be generous with your accompanist, generous with your auditor, and generous to yourself.
What do I mean by generous to yourself? Doesn’t that sound like a version of the selfish actor described above? Let’s take the example where you’re given an adjustment by a faculty member. Meaning you’ve performed all of your material, but now they are telling you to try it again a different way. The arrogant actor might be resistant to feedback, and respond defensively or not be willing to take an adjustment at all. But again, I see less of this archetype in auditions than the overly-performatively-humble actor who is quick to beat themselves up in an audition room. They might hear feedback and be so stuck in the idea that the faculty member hated it and what that means, that they aren’t able to actually take and make an adjustment successfully. If the original run didn’t go how they planned, they may hear the faculty give the adjustment, but be so stuck beating themselves up on their own feedback from their original take that they don’t really have space to add in the faculty feedback in a useful way. This is not being generous to yourself. If instead as an actor you can live in the present, trust that whatever the run that happened was a valid run done by a talented actor, then you can move forward with taking the adjustment that was actually given to you while treating the faculty member like a colleague, instead of giving them the power over this being the ultimate take that decides whether you are a good actor or not. This is being generous to yourself, to the person giving you the note, and maintaining the balance of healthy ego that allows you to belong on that stage alongside this faculty member, and to give it a go based on the feedback.
In the same way that we talk about with contrasting Songs and Monologues, that a “big” Comedy isn’t always the best contrast to a “big” Dramatic piece – loud Humility is not necessarily the opposite of loud Ego. It takes a whole lot of self-confidence to be able to be truly generous as an actor, and that warm beacon of energy will attract people to you at the college level and into your professional career. So that’s my challenge to all of you – can you do the work you need to in order to be truly confident in what you are doing, and then – can you give it away?
About the Author
Charlie is a native Pittsburgher and a proud graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied Acting. As an actor, select stage credits include the NY Public Theatre’s “Shakespeare in the Park” (All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure), the Pearl Theatre Company (Richard II), the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (King Lear, The Three Musketeers, Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labour’s Lost), The Shakespeare Theatre of DC (Richard II, Henry V, As You Like It, Mrs. Warren’s Profession), Middlebury Actor’s Workshop (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), The Arts Center of Coastal Carolina (The Unexpected Guest), and Chautauqua Theatre Company (Much Ado About Nothing, Vaidehi, Ah, Wilderness!).
In 2015, Charlie co-founded Esperance Theater Company — a company that produced classical-based work here in NYC. With Esperance, Charlie produced and performed in 12th Night, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Breitwisch Farm. As a teacher, Charlie has been working with MTCA for over 20 years, where he is now a Director of the company alongside Leo Ash Evens. Charlie has also taught for Texas State University, PACE University, The Performing Arts Project (TPAP), Broadway Dreams, the City University of New York, Carnegie Mellon’s Pre-College program, and the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. As a Teacher and Director, he is able to do two of his favorite things in life: help students to find their authentic selves as artists, and help them find their best fit in their collegiate journey. Charlie also hosts the “Mapping The College Audition” podcast, where he continues that work, and helps demystify this daunting audition process for listeners around the world.
Charlie is also the proud father to a precocious toddler, partner to an amazing Tony-nominated + Grammy-winning Actress, and a humble Broadway Show League Softball MVP.
