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As I wrote here, for me, the breakthrough in understanding acting came through improvisational theatre. If theatre with a predetermined text is a path you walk facing a future you already know and can see ahead of you, improvisational theatre is a journey you make backwards: you move backwards towards an unknown future, while all you can see is the past that has just happened. The actor knows the future of the scene; the character must not.

Boris Zakhava, an influential theatre teacher, wrote more than 50 years ago: “The true artist’s motto should be: in every performance, a little differently from the previous one.” (Boris Zakhava, The Mastery of the Actor and the Director, 3rd ed., Moscow, 1973, p. 114; my translation.)

The question is how, in a theatre performance with a predetermined text—or in each take, as a film actor—you can achieve this “a little differently” that Zakhava talks about. And here one of acting’s paradoxes appears: you can make it a little different each time by knowing extremely well everything you have to do and everything you have to say—in other words, by knowing every physical and verbal action perfectly.

So, when it comes to the things that are non-negotiable, an actor has to know the text perfectly, word for word, comma for comma. There is a way of knowing the text that is specific to acting: to know a text as an actor means being able to say it very fast, even if you are woken from sleep, word for word, without hesitation or a single mistake. Only then can you be truly free while performing; only then can you be a little different each time. It is important for you, as an actor, to understand this very clearly and unequivocally. It is also important to train yourself to do this as an acting student, so that you can do it in any project, at school, in the theatre, or on a film set. This is the most boring part, but it is mandatory. It has nothing to do with talent; it is only about deliberate work. The method does not matter. Everyone can find their own technique; the important thing is that it works. For example, whether I am working in my native language or another language, I write the text out by hand dozens of times until I have learnt it. It may take a day or a week; I keep going until, without the text in front of me, I can say all the lines, one after another, at the fastest possible pace while carrying out a physical action. Only when I can function like that do I consider the text learnt. I repeat: everyone has their own technique.

As a personal rule, I arrive on set without any written copy of the text. Of course it is not easy, and of course it requires effort, but if you do not meet this mandatory condition as an actor, you cannot be truly free in performance. That freedom comes only afterwards. The sine qua non is to know the text “like the Lord’s Prayer”, as another Romanian expression goes.

That is enough for today—I am tired of trying to sound intelligent. : – )

Good luck learning your lines, friends!