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Authenticity
II. Authenticity: Being True To You
“This above all: to thine own self be true.” – Shakespeare
Be Inspired
“Deep, deep within ourselves within the treasure house of our souls are buried
tremendous creative powers and abilities. But they remain unused as long as we do not know
about them or as long as we deny them.”-- Michael Chekhov, one of Russia’s preeminent
actors and directors
Authenticity
• “I know when I sing I’m honest. I’m giving my authentic response. The rest of the time I don’t know.” Frank Sinatra
Authenticity
• As controversial as this might sound, you’re the most interesting when you’re not managing yourself and responding impulsively from how you feel.
Authenticity
• Here’s a short story about how leaving yourself alone leads to more truthful and honest behavior.
• When I auditioned for my first role, I had to memorize a lengthy monologue. While reciting it, I forgot one of the lines and froze like a dear In headlights. It took a couple of seconds for me to regain my composure, but I was soon able to recall the line.
Authenticity
• Afterwards, I was expecting the casting director to berate me for forgetting the line. To my surprise she said, “Do you know what the best part of that monologue was?” I said, “What?” She said, “When you forgot your line and you had to struggle to recall the words. There was something distinctly human in that moment when you struggled – that was when we got to see the real you emerge.”
Authenticity
• From this, I learned two important lessons. – If there is something real flowing through you and
you let it “live” inside your body by experiencing it, it will manifest itself through your behavior. No information is needed because the behavior reveals it all.
– When you have freedom, a much richer version of you emerges. Give yourself permission to let go and be free.
Authenticity
• Disclaimer: I’m not suggesting that you “screw up” in the courtroom. What I am suggesting, however, is that you follow your impulses and allow yourself to respond truthfully from how you are feeling in the moment.
Courtroom Example
• Expert: I offer my opinion – within a reasonable degree of medical certainty – that the patient’s subcutaneous emphysema resulted from and had progressively worsened as a result of endotracheal intubation and bronchoscopy.
Real Life Example
• Me: Spontaneously and instinctively.
Real Life Example
• Response: Gales of laughter by the jury. But they weren’t laughing at me – they were laughing with me. They were just as confused as I was and were able to empathize with me because I was expressing something that they couldn’t: the frustration of being completely and utterly lost. They were living vicariously through me!
Spontaneity
• A slight digression into spontaneity.• One of the cardinal rules in acting is that
unplanned behavior (i.e., organic) is much more interesting than planned behavior.
• The ability to not anticipate and to be surprised is invaluable.
Spontaneity
Spontaneity is to acting what salt is to soup. Without it, it’s bland.
Authenticity
• It can be difficult to stand before the jury and be yourself. Why?– (1) Because we don’t think that we’re
enough. We feel like we have to “go big” or “go home,” otherwise we’ll be dull and uninteresting. There is an element in a performing artist’s talent that seeks out drama.
Authenticity
– But when we push too hard, our performance becomes “forced” and loses any semblance of authenticity. Instead, it becomes artificial and contrived. In acting, we refer to this as “entertaining.”
– Thankfully, there is a way out of it.
Authenticity
– In acting, we call it the “pinch” and the “ouch.”• Don’t do anything until something happens to make
you do it.• Example: I pinch you. You say, “ouch!” My pinch
justified your “ouch.” Stated otherwise, your “ouch!” was the direct result of my pinch.
Authenticity
–(2) We are our own worst critics. We are painfully aware of our own shortcomings and what we might even describe as our “glaring defects.”
Authenticity
– (3) We strive for perfection. There can be nothing more stifling to creativity than the need for perfection. It paralyzes us like a cobra’s venom and is the leading cause of procrastination. Yet, perfection is something that has been ingrained in us since we were in law school. As elusive as it might be, it’s something that we strive for every day.
Authenticity
– The transcripts of some of the best opening and closing statements ever made contained some of the worst bastardizations of the English language and would have been enough to cause any respectable elementary school English teacher to roll over in their graves. Yet they were as truthful and honest as the lawyers could be in the moment he made them.
Authenticity– (4) We carry the weight of the world on
our shoulders. The stakes could not be higher. One false step and our client could spend the rest of his life rotting away in a cold, dank jail cell.
– (5) Finding the courage to be yourself requires a certain amount of emotional vulnerability, vulnerability which is viewed as a “weakness” by those in the legal community.
Authenticity• Who is to blame for this “baggage” that we carry?
Authenticity• One culprit is pop culture: Society has conditioned us to
mimic the mark and style of others. We’ve been told that if we can look like others, act like others, argue like others, then and only then can we be successful. For example, “Be like Michael Jordan or at least wear Air Jordans.”
Authenticity• A second culprit is ourselves. We all have a version of
ourselves that we want to present. As lawyers, we have preconceived notions of what a lawyer should look like and sound like.
Authenticity
• The result …–We walk around behind a veil – concealing
what we’re actually thinking and feeling – and go out of our way to be like “them.” In today’s environment where the next disparaging comment is but a Tweet away, it is easier to stay in the background and not draw any attention. Unnoticed seems easier than unworthy. We spend our lives editing, censoring, and hiding ourselves from the world.
Authenticity
•We indulge in this fiction for a number of reasons:–We want to fit in. There is a puritanical
goodness to avoiding attention. It’s almost a moral cleanliness, like an organized closet. Across geographic borders and cultural boundaries, attention attracts danger while anonymity can be seen as a virtue.
Authenticity
–We feel that the real person is not nearly as “charming” and interesting as the happy and cheerful person who goes out of his way to complement others.–We are embarrassed at what we
perceive to be “glaring defects” and “imperfections” – i.e., traits that are viewed by society as impolite and uncivilized.
Authenticity
• What’s wrong with this?
Authenticity
–When you walk around like Michael Jordan or Edward Bennett Williams, you become nothing more than a carbon copy of them – an impostor of sorts.
Authenticity
–The tragedy in this is that there will never be another “you” that walks this Earth yet you have deprived the world of the richest, most colorful, and most exciting parts of yourself that sets you apart from every other human being and that gives you your unique, personal identity.
Authenticity
Your authenticity cannot be replicated!
Authenticity
“Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”
-- Oscar Wilde
Authenticity
• One day I was watching a lawyer in court.
• He was short, with a round belly and a baldhead, and a little rim of hair around the sides. His ears were as large as Dumbo’s. He wore oversized glasses with large black rims that sat on top of his large nose. He blinked a lot when he talked, and his voice was soft and scratchy.
Authenticity
• Despite the fact that he seemed timid and stiff, he also seemed comfortable with who he was and unaware of what most would label, “glaring defects.”
• There was a power to his presence.
Authenticity
• The argument was distinctly his. There will never be another like it.
• Afterwards, I spoke to him. What he said had a profound effect on me even to this day: “I’m all I got. And that’s enough.”
Authenticity• People ask me what drew me to acting. From
the first day of class, I realized that I had something in common with actors: a common struggle.
• The struggle that I’m talking about are the very things that had plagued me for most of my adult life: self-limiting beliefs.
Authenticity
• Here’s what I mean.• Often actors are embarrassed about what
makes them unique. Many are afraid that they are not enough. They think they are “too nice” or “not nice enough” and try to cover it up by attempting to be someone who they aren’t.
Authenticity
• Ironically, those traits that actors find most embarrassing – such as quirks, peculiarities, and idiosyncrasies – are often times an actors’ greatest strengths. Indeed, they are the most powerful experiences that actors can draw upon to bring a character to life.
Authenticity
• Think about it. Who doesn’t like to see the craziness of Jack Nicholson, the self-deprecation of Ben Stiller, or the painful shyness of Diane Keaton?
Authenticity
• Why? Because it’s real! • When an actor brings the essence of his true
self to a role, the audience says, “Wow. You’re brave to show what you’re really like.”
Authenticity• There is a story about the legendary actress Uta Hagen. She
was asked to play a comedic role, but because she didn’t think she was funny she turned it down. She changed her mind when she realized she could be as silly as the character by tapping into the part of herself that came out when she was feeding her poodles.
Authenticity
• Takeaways from this story:– Access what you already know! You don’t need to
invent anything. What’s there is already enough.– While we each possess our own individual truths,
every one of these truths is universal. In other words, we should be able to play each of the different cores – from love to power to respect – by mining our mental rolodex and asking, “When am I like this?”
Your Rich Inner Life
• How you live in everyday life is not all of you. We have a much richer inner life than what we let out. If our full potential was represented by all of the keys on a keyboard, most of us would spend our entire life playing the same two keys despite the fact that a keyboard has 88 keys and vast tonal capabilities.
Your Rich Inner Life
• We have not even scratched the surface of our tremendous creative powers and abilities. They remain dormant and unused as long as we don’t know about them or as long as we deny them. The best and most human parts of you are those that you have inhabited and hidden from the world!
Your Rich Inner Life
• A keyboard has 88 keys. How may keys does your instrument have?
Authenticity
• As the great Ernest Hemmingway once said, “the truth has a certain ring to it.”
• Acting is about finding that truth. And advocacy is no different. Great lawyers are not afraid to be who they are, whatever that is.
• When a lawyer brings the essence of who he is to the courtroom, the jury thinks, “Wow! That lawyer is real!”
Authenticity
• Finding the courage to be yourself is not easy. But it is a courage that we all possess. It requires getting in touch with your emotions – taking a journey into the deepest recesses of your being to find that chest where your innermost fears and experiences are buried, opening it up, pulling them out and exclaiming, “Here! Here’s who I am!”
Authenticity
• You might be surprised to find what’s inside. It is not all rainbows and unicorns. As important as it is to know your strengths, you also need to know your differences.
Authenticity
• There is a story that when Jack Nicholson discovered his quirky and eccentric side, he was mortified. Ironically, that rich inner life that he was so ashamed of became his signature trademark. Now, when Nicholson is cast in a movie, directors go out of their way to write scenes which will allow this colorful side of him to be on display.
Authenticity
• Jack Nicholson’s story teaches us that we might have “blind spots” when it comes to how the world sees us.
Authenticity
• These are not necessarily shortcomings, and the key is not to “fix” them or to become self-conscious about them.
• Instead, the objective is to see yourself from a new perspective so that the blind spots are no longer blind.
Authenticity
• Consider the reflections of Sanford Meisner.
Authenticity
• Meisner: “Examine the partner sitting next to you. And give me, when I ask for it, a list of what you observe.”
• Student: When she is asked, the blond girl says about the young man seated to her right: “I observe red hair. I observe a soft green shirt. He has blue eyes and short, thin, lighter-colored eyelashes. Small hands. Leans over a lot. Stocky. Green pants. Brown shoes.”
Authenticity• Meisner: “Was this observation done by you or by
some character out of a play?”
• Student: “By me.”
• Meisner: “Are you talking to me now or is Lady Macbeth talking?”
• Student: “I’m talking to you.”
Authenticity
• Meisner: “That’s you. That’s you in person. Your observation was straight, unadulterated observation. When you observed, you observed as yourself, not as a character in a play.”
Authenticity• Meisner: “Are you looking at me now?”
• Student: “Yes.”
• Meisner: “As Othello?”
• Student: “No.”
• Meisner: “As who?”
• Student: “As myself.”
• Meisner: “Can you hold onto that?”
Authenticity
• Moral of the story: Every performing artist reveals themselves in their work! It all comes from their “own garden.”
• Acting is the art of self-revelation!
The Emergence of YOU
Ray Charles is present in his music.
“My music runs through me like my blood.”
The Emergence of YOU
Picasso is present in his paintings
The Emergence of YOU
Ernest Hemingway is present in his writings.
The Emergence of YOU
• It’s a fallacy to think that the actor becomes another person. Instead, the actor turns himself in a direction that others have never seen before.
• My instructor uses this example, “Before we can get Othello on stage, we have to get you on stage!”
• Of course, friends and family recognize me when I’m performing. But with this caveat, “That’s Mike playing Hamlet but that’s Mike doing things I’ve never seen him do before.” I have revealed parts of myself in the service of the role by bringing my authentic self to the stage.
Authenticity
A poem to offer inspiration: “Take Off The Mask”
AuthenticityA vital part of the artist’s journey is the path to finding yourself.
To discover and embrace who you really are.
To connect to your power by taking off your mask.
To let your core shine through to illuminate every part of your work.
How liberating to take the risk to be you!
Authenticity• How do you put your finger on the pulse of
what is special and unique about you – that which makes you you?
Authenticity
• Imagine a mirror. When you look in a mirror and you see the reflection of yourself, you’re seeing how you see yourself. And you’re seeing yourself with all the imperfections, all the perceived flaws, and all the insecurities. Your perception of yourself is very likely to be distorted.
Authenticity
• What if you could have a different mirror? What if you had a mirror that could show you the best of how the world sees you? This may be idealistic, but indulge in it.
• A mirror that didn’t just reflect yourself back to you but that showed you why people value you, why they fall in love with you, why they follow you, and why they promote you.
Authenticity
• There is something very liberating about being able to see how the world sees you at your best. Knowing who you are when you are at your best provides an aspirational vision of what you can live into in your work and in your life.
Authenticity
• There is a brilliantly conceived exercise developed by Meisner called the “word repetition exercise” that allows you to see yourself through the eyes of others.
• The exercise trains two muscles of an actor:– The ability to look and see; and– The ability to listen and hear.
Authenticity• The creative genius of this exercise is that it trains the actor
to listen to what their partner means, not just to what they say. In essence, we become “sensitized responders.”
• We become better in tune to reading human behavior and body language and answering truthfully from where it goes inside us.
• This is important because while the playwright gives an actor the words, it is the actor’s job to pick up on the impulses.
• The more you do this exercise, the more perceptive you will become.
Authenticity
• Take the time to step outside of yourself and examine the character that you play in real life. What makes you different and sets you apart from others? Go on the hunt!
• Listen to feedback and take it in. Ask your closest friends: “How would you describe me in three words?” Dig into yourself to ask, “Is there anything secret that I’m afraid to reveal?”
