The document discusses overcoming consciousness of self in acting. It states that when actors focus inward on themselves, their performances become exaggerated and inauthentic. It recommends actors focus their attention outward onto an "acting object" like a scene partner, in order to get out of their heads and lose self-consciousness. By becoming fully immersed and concentrating on the acting object, actors no longer have attention left over to observe and judge themselves, allowing their true performances to emerge.

1. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• Give the beginner actor a script, put him on
stage under the glow of bright lights, and
something all too familiar happens.

2. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• He tries to entertain. Instantly, his attention
turns inward.
• As a result, the actor’s performance is seen as
exaggerated and embellished. In other words,
fake!

3. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• Consciousness of self is as toxic to the actor as
venom is to the cobra. When we are in our
heads, we become judgmental, critical, and
doubtful.
• We become our own worst enemies, beating
ourselves up mercilessly with cruel, harsh, and
unkind words.

4. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• It’s as if we’ve become spectators watching
ourselves from the sidelines with intense
scrutiny and judging our every move.

5. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• For actors, it’s blatantly obvious when they are
in their heads. The audience’s energy
dissipates and is replaced by a musty
stagnancy that sucks the life out of the theater
like a Dementor’s kiss sucks the soul out of its
victim.

6. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• There is a paradox in all of this. If that voice
whispering in your head was a real person,
how long would you tolerate such verbal
abuse before resorting to violence?
• Yet we unleash its holy wrath on ourselves
with as much fury as the “face that launched a
thousand ships” without so much as giving it a
second thought.

7. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• Thankfully, there is a way out of this. It’s
called, “Getting out of your head.” In other
words, get the brain out of the way and
remove your mind from the work.

8. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
“You only have one element to give up to get to
the area where your real acting potential is and
that is yourself.”
- Sanford Meisner

9. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• A famous acting instructor by the name of
Stanislavsky recognized how debilitating this
can be for an actor because it prevents them
from letting go and losing themselves in an
artistic way so as to fully inhabit the mind,
mannerisms, and reality of a fictional
character.

10. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• He came up with the concept that everything
good from your acting comes out of
involvement.
• Stanislavsky called it, “the acting object.”

11. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• You need to put your attention on an object
outside of yourself.
• An acting object is not necessarily a tangible
thing. It often times is another person, such as
a scene partner.
• The more involved you get in your acting
object, the less opportunity you have to
observe yourself.

12. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• Picture this. It’s your first day of law school
and you’re in contracts class. You’re sitting in a
lecture hall with one hundred other students,
all of whom are total strangers.

13. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• The professor is a strict, no nonsense, “old
school” professor who uses the Socratic
Method.

14. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• Your seat isn’t even warm before he pulls out
the seating chart and calls on his first “victim.”
Despite sitting in the last row, the lucky person
just so happens to be you.

15. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• But instead of asking you to recite the facts to Lucy v.
Zehmer, your professor asks you to walk to the front
of the room, turn around, and face the other
students for one minute. Oh yeah, you are not
allowed to speak. You must remain silent with your
feet firmly planted on the floor and stare out at the
piercing eyes of your fellow students.

16. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• What response is this likely to evoke?
• Within seconds, your heart starts racing, your
palms get sweaty, your hand begins to twitch,
you feel a lump inside your throat the size of a
crater, and you begin to shift your weight from
one leg to another.
• The seconds feel like minutes.

17. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• How many pairs of eyes are fixed on you?
Because there are 100 students, you might have
answered, “100 pairs.” But, there are actually
“101 pairs.”
• As piercing as the stares of the 100 students in
the auditorium might be, the 101st pair is the
most paralyzing.
• To whom does the 101st pair belong? YOU! Yes,
you were watching yourself just like every other
student in the lecture hall.

18. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• Let’s tweak this uncomfortable scenario slightly.
Once again, it’s your “lucky day.” The professor
calls on you and gives you the very same
instructions that he gave you the first time: walk
to the front of the room and face the other
students for one minute.
• Except now, he gives you a tennis racket and a
tennis ball, tells you to hold the tennis racket in
one hand and bounce the ball up and down on
the racket while counting up to ten. You begin.

19. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• Which version of you is likely to be more self-
conscious? The one who had nothing to do or the
one who had something to do?
• If you answered, “the one who had the activity,”
you’d be correct.
• When given an activity that requires focus and
concentration, you can’t be involved in doing the
activity and watching yourself do it at the same
time. You only have the time and energy to do it.

20. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• The more difficult the activity, the better.
When something is difficult to do, it forces you
to use your concentration.
• Very simply, when you become so absorbed in
an activity, there is not enough of you left over
to watch yourself doing it.
• A good activity – one that is specific and truly
difficult – creates a specific kind of life. It is
both a conspiracy and a self-contained drama.

21. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• A cardinal rule of acting is that everything
good in acting comes out of your involvement.
• The more involved you get, the better.
• When you are fully committed to performing a
task, your involvement becomes analogous to
a bonfire that gives off smoke.

22. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• What are some acting objects in the
courtroom? They depend on the
circumstances.
– If I’m making a legal argument, all of my attention
is on the judge.
– If I’m cross-examining a witness, all of my
attention is on the witness.
– If I’m making an opening or a closing, all of my
attention is on the jury.

24. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• Tom Wolfe captures the essence of how
debilitating consciousness of self can be when it
manifests itself as intensely as it did with the
main character, Sherman McCoy: “My entire
central nervous system was wired. What I had
presumed to be my private inviolate self had
become a veritable amusement park to which
everybody, and I mean everybody, came
scampering and screaming. I could no more keep
them from entering my own hide than I could
keep the air out of my lungs.” Tom Wolfe,
“Bonfire of the Vanities”

25. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• “Acting is a scary, paradoxical business. One of
its central paradoxes is that in order to
succeed as an actor you have to lose
consciousness of your own self in order to
transform yourself into the character in the
play. It’s not easy, but it can be done.” –
Sanford Meisner

26. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• Acting is a faith-based enterprise.

27. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• “To take the heat off yourself – to transfer the
point of concentration outside of yourself – is
a big battle won.” – Sanford Meisner

28. Overcoming Consciousness of Self
• Your true self will shine through when you
lose consciousness of self.
• Nothing can be more liberating.