"Fear is the Mind Killer"

(Part of the Litany against Fear spoken by the character Bene Gesserit in Frank Herbert's DUNE.)

For the actor, fear is the killer of the creative impulse and the willingness to take risks. Fear is what manifests the ghosts of judgement, failure, the critic-ego and the need to be "right."

Simply put, fear is the greatest obstacle to an actor's development while training. As one develops the skills of an actor, one is acquiring the facility of using the tools of the craft, the stage, the theatre, etc.

However, the most important and most difficult aspect of teaching an actor is how to help them work on themselves.

This begins with getting the actor in training to see their fear, identify it, and then to run through it to the other side, where freedom awaits.

Fear of judgement, failure, one's own ego and often uncomfortable human impulses that take one out the mundane world can be dealt with through exercises and careful, thoughtful instruction that lead an actor through these fears.

Dealing with the fears that dwell deep within one's own psyche is a different story. This is nearly impossible to teach outside of a rigorous and intensive conservatory environment. It requires that the actor willingly place themselves in a laboratory and become the subject of their own experimentation.

This is not to say that training and actor should be therapy or psychological and behavioral mediation. That kind of work is specialized and belongs to medical professionals, not acting teachers. Beware of any acting teacher who professes to practice such teaching.

What is true is that there is a challenge placed before the actor in training: to access the authentic responses to the kinds of crises that dramatic characters often find themselves in, it is important for the actor to understand and examine their own inner responses to such potential crises.

Dramatic characters are often deeply motivated to act through much more than circumstances and conflict. They often are wrestling with deep seated fear, guilt and shame, all suppressed under thick layer of denial.

An actor who wishes to tap into a character's deepest inner life must face these elements within themselves.

The fear of these truths, which all humans possess, is a difficult process to teach an actor.

By definition, the actor brings themselves to any role they play. Therefore, they must bring the part of the self that connects with a character's often unpleasant aspects: what are your character's secrets? What are they ashamed of? What are they guilty of? What are they afraid of? What are they in denial of? Who do they love and how and why? Whom do they hate and how and why? What are some of the complicated impulses that are dramatized that seem ethically fraught, morally ambiguous or even repugnant?

How does your own inner state connect or not connect with these truths about a character?

We use the word substitution in acting to describe replacing a fictional character we are dealing with as played by another actor with the image of someone we might have a similar relationship to in our own lives in order to more authentically play our own character.

How can we be effective in our own substitutions unless we truly understand own own deepest feelings about those relationships? Can we overcome our personal fear of these often difficult aspects of our own lives in order to use them effectively in our work?

That is the biggest question every actor in training must ask themselves as they reach to stage when craft, technique, text and stagecraft are no longer enough to get at the deep heart of a character.

The obstacle to this is usually always FEAR.