I’m not going to claim I know everything about acting. That would be ridiculous. I don’t know everything about anything. I don’t know everything about everything. I don’t even know everything about nothing. But I think I can share my thoughts.

  One of my teachers said connection is the secret to acting. That as long as you are connected to the other actors in the space or the audience, or at the very least connected to the text, it doesn’t matter what you say or do, because connection is what the audience is after. Although I agree that connection is very important while performing on stage, I think that that saying nothing else matters but connection is a bit extreme. I think if people paid to see The Importance of Being Ernest but none of the words that Oscar Wilde wrote were said onstage, there would be an issue, no matter how “connected” the actors were. There are exceptions, of course, like if it was experimental theatre, accessible theatre or performance art. But you need more than just connection.

  Noel Coward is attributed to saying, “The only advice I ever give to actors is to learn to speak clearly, to project your voice without shouting – and to move about the stage gracefully, without bumping into people.” But clearly there’s more than that.

  One of my acting teachers was even so bold as to say that there isn’t a secret to acting. This is, of course, stupid. Everyone knows there’s a secret to acting. There has to be. Otherwise we’d all be millionaires.

  I think the secret to acting is to find what works for you. For me, I have to learn my lines in an extremely tedious way in order for me to not even have to think when onstage. Then, I just be.

  For some people, learning their character is important. Doing tonnes of research in order to get the minor details exactly right. For others, they want to get the gist of the piece and gradually refine it, instead of trying to to learn everything perfect. Some people don’t learn their lines at all, don’t develop their characters, look hot, and then they become rich.