7 Ways Acting Helps Me Be a Better Writer

I already knew theatre was valuable to me. It taught me skills I still use in my career. It helped me become more confident in the way I conduct myself day-to-day and opened my eyes to new ideas and ways to see the world.

But despite all that, I’ve always thought of myself as more a writer than an actor. I’m good with words on the page, and I’ve seen (and worked with) enough really talented performers to know that I’m okay, but not on their level. Not only that, but acting is physically and emotionally exhausting, and my body and brain just can’t handle it at a level any more intense than amateur (sometimes not even that).

Still, apart from being enjoyable in its own right, acting has also given me a cross-media gift. How? It’s taught me to be a better writer. It’s taught me that…

1. …creativity can be collaborative without being stifling.

I was (am) a terrible co-writer. Just like when my grandma let us “help” with the pie crust and then re-rolled it herself, I consumed the pair-written story my friend Anita and I were assigned in grade six and argued forever with my friend Diana until the play we co-wrote in grade eleven went my way.

I’m not sure whether I’m better now or it’s just that nobody asks me to collaborate anymore. But I have learned how to incorporate others’ suggestions into my work, even when my ego disagrees. And I’ve learned to accept criticism graciously (I hope) and with respect for its validity (I know), regardless of whether I agree or intend to use it.

Acting taught me to give the directors’ notes a try before dismissing them. Everyone in the cast and crew wants the show to turn out, and we all have to work together to do it. Giving each others’ suggestions a shot helps us create a whole none of us could have imagined on his or her own. Artists are individuals; theatre is an emergent phenomenon. To succeed, I have to let go of my ego and prioritize the end product.

2. …it’s always the artist, never the audience.

Whether acting or writing, it’s easy to blame the reader who doesn’t “get” your work. They’re not smart enough to follow! They’re not educated enough to understand the references! They just don’t like this kind of thing.

Good directors (and scene partners) don’t let me get away with that. Actors ask about whether performances “read”– that is, is what I’m doing clear enough to my audience that they will have the same understanding of it as I do?

I can feel an emotion all I want. I can cry real tears of sorrow. But if the audience can’t see them, who cares how the scene makes me feel?

In writing, it’s tempting to dismiss criticism as a failure on the reader’s part, but in the end, just as it’s an actor’s responsibility to make sure her audience perceives her stage punch as a real violence, it’s my responsibility to make sure my idea smacks the reader crystal-clear.

3. …the physical reality of bodies and space changes characters and scenes.

When your favourite form of narrative is books, it can be difficult to remember that characters’ physical presence changes the way people react to them, and that their physical environment changes the story. When acting, you can’t forget it. A six-foot-tall man can’t play a character the same way as a four-foot-tall woman — they will simply “read” differently.

Likewise, the size and shape of a theatre affect the feel of your show — not to mention the actual set design.

As a writer, I’m tempted to get into the heads of my characters and into the logic of the puzzles of the plot. Sometimes I need to be reminded to take a step back and look at the bodies my characters inhabit, what it means that they’re shorter than me or don’t wear glasses or dress differently. I need to zoom out and see the world around them, too.

Because the shows I toured in as a teenager changed depending on the venue where we performed them; the drastic difference between two productions of a favourite show can be as simple as gender-bending the casting.

4. …a work is different from the sum of its parts.

It happens every rehearsal period. We rehearse the scenes one by one. We rehearse the transitions between the scenes. We review the lighting changes and sound cues and prop hand-offs.

We know every detail to know about each scene, done one at a time. So we should know the whole show. And yet, on that first day when we put it all together, something new is born. Our performances change — have to change! — to accommodate this unfamiliar thing we’ve built

A play is more than just a bunch of scenes strung along in a particular order. That’s what (traditional Western) plays are made of, not what they mean.

Sometimes, as a writer, I forget that stories are made of scenes, but that doesn’t mean they’re just scenes. I have to trust that scenes that feel incomplete in revision will come together to form the whole I’m imagining when reading. A holistically great sentence can sometimes be made of words that, taken individually, aren’t ideal, and that’s just the way it works.

5. …I can be comfortable presenting my own creative work.

A confession: I am often mystified by the moment in critique group when it’s time to share everyone’s pages, and nobody wants to read theirs. It’s not that they’re afraid of other people reading their work — OK, maybe we all are, but we knew that would happen — but they definitely don’t want to hear their own voice reading it aloud.

Thanks to acting, I’ve learned to be comfortable reading aloud, even when it’s my own most personal pieces of writing. I can turn on the “Shakespeare In the Park” part of my brain and turn off the Blush and Get Nervous lobe.

6. …nothing works for every audience every time.

When performing a comedy, there’s nothing quite as disheartening as an audience that fails to so much as snicker at an early joke that got riotous laughter every other night.

What’s wrong? we ask each other backstage. Did we mess something up? Did we not do it right?

No, it’s just that every audience member is different. Maybe everyone in the house tonight had a bad day and weren’t in the mood to find that joke funny. Maybe the other nights, we had someone with infectious laughter in the crowd. Maybe this audience thinks it’s just as funny but doesn’t like to laugh. Maybe they don’t think it’s funny, but they’re still enjoying the play for what it is to them.

There’s no such thing as a joke that makes everyone laugh all the time, because sometimes part of what makes people laugh is out of the comedians’ control.

Likewise, I have to accept that no matter how many people like what I write, for reasons out of my control, some people won’t. Sometimes, inexperienced actors try to force laughs from a quiet audience and, in doing so, distort all the good things that make people want to see the play; equally, I need to remember that aiming to write something that pleases everyone is a good way to write something that pleases no one.

7. …writing and theatre each have special things they can do.

As an actor, I always want to savour the words. Listen to how beautiful this language is, audience! Admire the crafted cleverness of that joke!

Patient and talented directors constantly remind me that performing a play is not just about loving the language. Sometimes, the words have to get downplayed for visuals, or for character, or for a bajillion other things that come together to make theatre what it is. I can’t make the audience feel what I feel when I read the script; that’s not something live performance is meant to do.

Watching a play and reading a book are very different things, and that’s okay. And within a certain form of media, maybe if something isn’t working in one form (a short story), it can still work in another (novel).

The important thing isn’t to dwell on what each can’t do but to love and take advantage of what it can.