Stacy Keach on the Mystery of Discovery

Discovery—how it happens is still a mystery to me. Sometimes it comes like a thief in the night or a child taking its first steps—unexpected and unplanned. At other times, it comes as a result of a painstaking, trial-and-error process in the pursuit of a specific objective. There are still other times when, in the midst of pursuing a goal, something is discovered that has nothing to do with the original plan. For example, I was looking everywhere in my office for a pair of glasses. While opening and closing drawers and rummaging through coat pockets, I inadvertently discovered a series of photographs that I had been looking for for years. It just happened.

I've played piano and keyboard since I was 12. Over the years, I've written musical compositions and songs without words. For some unknown reasons, I've had this block about putting lyrics to the music. I just couldn't do it. It baffled me because I've written poetry and stories, but I could never apply more than a few words to the music I was creating. Then, one day, I was ruminating on a TV show I narrate for CNBC called "American Greed." The slogan for the show is "Some people will do anything for money." A light went on. I sat down at the computer and began to write lyrics to a song about "Anything for Money." Then I began to get this melody in my head. I sat down at my keyboard, noodling around on a country-blues riff. And a song was born. What I discovered was that I was doing things out of order—I had been trying to find the words to the music instead of the other way around. Finding the music to the lyrics was the method I had discovered. It took me close to 70 years to find it.

I also discover things in the process of creating characters as an actor. When that happens, it's often informed by the contributions of others—the director, the playwright, the other actors, and oftentimes the audience. During the rehearsal process in my search for the way to play a character or a moment, discovery comes as a result of repetition. Talent has been described as the ability to embrace repetition as a process, as an adventure or a journey or a fascinating experience. Repetition is the way you discover things, whether you're a scientist or an actor or a musician.

When I was a student at Berkeley in an English class, a professor told us that when Sinclair Lewis was asked what the key was to being a successful writer, he replied, "I have discovered it's applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair." I think that's true in just about anything—you have to be unafraid of just doing it and repeating your work. It's drudgery to a lot of people, to repeat something over and over like an assembly line, but it leads to spontaneity, intimacy, credibility. These are all indelibly tied to a continuous stream of discovery. When the actor is in a constant state of discovery, he becomes accessible to his feelings. The audience responds to that.

There are additional technical aspects that make discovery happen. In the context of the theater, there's knowing the words. If you have your nose in the script, there's no way to create those elements of the character that you want. You also need to know what the director and the writer want to accomplish. It's important to know what the character looks like. These are all discovered in the rehearsal process.

Discovery—it's still a mystery to me, but I know it happens, and I'm very happy that it does.

Stage, film, and TV star Stacy Keach is returning to Broadway, starring in the Lincoln Center Theater production of Jon Robin Baitz's "Other Desert Cities" at the Booth Theatre. He is perhaps best known for the iconic role of Mike Hammer on the long-running series of the same name and as the father on "Titus" his latest television series is "Lights Out" on FX. Keach is also a noted Shakespearean actor who began his career at the New York Shakespeare Festival. His many films include "W.," "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," "The Long Riders," and the upcoming "The Bourne Legacy."