To my younger actor self, I would give some important general advice first: Make fewer excuses. Spend less time trying to take back the things you said or did, and rely less on apologies and more on listening. I would take early action against the pattern of regret that still plagues me; instead of staring out the window, I would pick up the phone (or the equivalent in modern-day technological advances!) and tell someone what I wanted or ask them what I could do. I would better own some of the choices I made, rather than polling people’s responses to them.
If this is general life advice it is also, I think, good rehearsal and performance advice.
To my younger actor self, in particular, I would say: Embrace the education of the body in the performing arts. At Wesleyan University, after the run of a production in which I made a big impression, more than one of my professors advised me to concentrate some time on movement classes. I was very attached to my newfound status as a campus star, so the implication that I needed to look at my body and deal with it offended my ego and my expectations. I ignored that advice and—with a self-deprecation that I thought was charming—used my own limitations as a punch line to impede really useful and challenging self-exploration. I believed, or pretended to believe, that paying attention to one’s body was a form of self-indulgence and maybe even soft-minded.
READ: 7 Movement Techniques All Actors Should Study
The body holds revelations for everyone, but especially for the actor. I learned that at NYU in Alexander class with Abigail Adams, Circus Technique with Hovey Burgess, Voice and Speech with Beverly Weidman, and Singing with Deb Lapidus. And I consider the time spent making fun of my efforts in kinesthetic disciplines (which I actually continued to do at NYU) to be a significant loss. Willing, paid-for teachers do not become more available as time goes on. I squandered a great opportunity at Wesleyan when I dismissed the exploration and application of the body in a class about Laban Dance Notation, for example, as secondary to that of the psyche. But they are different ways of describing and using the same thing: your self. Of course one informs the other—if you let it. And the earlier you start, the better chance you have of exploiting the lessons your acting instrument can teach you.
We set priorities, and when I was younger I thought I was aptly attending to the words on the page and how they would come out of my mouth over exploration of my physicality. Teachers have pointed out—and I have learned in practice—that words don’t come out of your mouth without the use of musculature, including the ones in your toes. I would give a lot to have 50 years’ worth of a more informed body, and therefore a more informed head. I think my psyche and imagination would be more fully in play when I am onstage or in front of a camera.
Wood is a Tony Award–winning actor (“Side Man”) who recently appeared in Lincoln Center Theater’s “The Babylon Line” and HBO’s “The Night Of.”
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