"Nothing" and the hoax that is method acting

Today, I'm going to be doing a little more editorializing rather than detailing my life story. Since I mostly finished with my Eastern New Mexico University Theatre Department experience yesterday, I thought I would take this opportunity to address something that I take closely to heart.

Contrary to the title of this piece, I don't really think that method acting on the whole is a hoax. I know there are several actors, like Daniel Day-Lewis, Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, who actually use method acting in their performances. My issue is with lesser actors, like the ones I went to school with.

I'll start with my first introduction to the concept of method acting. I owned the Original Cast recording of "A Chorus Line" about four years before I actually saw it on Broadway in New York. One of the songs that caught my attention the most was "Nothing," which was performed by Priscilla Lopez in the role of Morales.

In the song, she tells about getting to go to the High School of the Performing Arts in New York City. She takes an acting class from Mr. Karp, who has everyone pretend that they are on a bobsled. Afterwards, he asks the students what they are feeling. Some say they can feel the snow, the air and the cold. He asks Morales what she feels. She replies, "Nothing." He responds by saying, "'Nothing' will get a girl transferred," presumedly out of the Performing Arts school and into a regular public school. She initially thinks the project is absurd, but soon determines that the problem was probably that she had never been on a bobsled before.

In future class sessions, Mr. Karp has the students taking on the roles of inanimate objects. For Morales, this is even more difficult than the snowsled. The class shouts out Karp's refrain "Nothing!" when it's her turn. She gets angry because Karp didn't try to put a stop to the torment. He then tells her she'll never be an actress. Eventually, she comes to the realization that the acting class and Mr. Karp are "nothing" and she sets out to find another class that will help her become an actress. A few months later, she hears that Karp had died and she feels "nothing" for him.

My first problem is that this is really not the best way to indoctrinate young actors into the concept of method acting. Playing inanimate objects appeared to serve no purpose other than to give the instructor an opportunity to kick kids out of what was probably an overcrowded classroom. I can see him saying, "I can teach 20 students at one time how to act, but I can't teach 40." Chances are very good that most incoming students were aware of his reputation, so everyone had to "fake" feeling something during the exercises in order to appease him and not get transferred out of school. In other words, they were "acting" like method actors. This makes me wonder if the students I attended college with were in the same bind with Dr. R and had to figure out a way to appear like they were using method acting, when in fact, they actually weren't. They were probably just doing regular acting, but affecting their speech patterns to look like they were doing something different. This is the heart of the "hoax."

It's not made absolutely clear that Morales left the school, but according to Wikipedia, Priscilla Lopez, on whom the character was based, did graduate from the High School of the Performing Arts. This brings me to my next problem: At her peak in the 1970s, Priscilla Lopez was really cute. I can only imagine that she was also very attractive in high school. I find it hard to believe that there was not one boy in the class who wanted to get into her pants, to the point that he would say, "Mr. Karp? I have to admit that I also feel nothing. I was just going along with the rest of the class." There is the possiblity that all the boys in her class were gay, but I doubt it. Once this person admitted the lie, others would certainly be encouraged to chime in. But again, this is all speculation.

So I don't know if I could have become a method actor under Dr. R's instruction. I certainly couldn't do it under Ms. C, whom I had for Beginning Acting, and while Ms. F had some grasp of the concept, I don't think she was very good at actually teaching it. I guess I would have also had to "fake" being a method actor. I just never learned how.