“Do we need to suffer in order to make great art?”

This question was asked the other day. A student actor was disturbed about being in an acting class where the teacher was abusive. The teacher’s theory was that one needs to “break down the students” before they can learn how to be artists. This is not an uncommon theory among acting teachers. I suspect it is pervasive in other forms of art education as well—dance, music, studio art. The theory further posits that one must be hardened to the sufferings of the soul a life of art will inevitably entail.

Please, please, please, let’s dispel a few destructive, though popular myths.

Most artists suffer whether we want to or not. It’s a tough life. No use making it tougher. Certainly, it’s no use putting ourselves in a position where we will be abused by others. So one more time, life for an artist has enough suffering all ready built into it. Don’t be afraid that suffering will pass you by unless you actively put yourself into a miserable situation. You don’t need to seek it out. You’ll have your share of suffering, I promise, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die, no need to worry on that score. So don’t allow yourself to be abused in order to experience “suffering.” Not by “teachers,” yourself, or anyone else. There are plenty of great teachers out there who are not abusive.

Is suffering good for art? Well, living is good for art, and so in that sense, we need to know what suffering is. But to dwell there? Then there will be so much else that you are not allowing yourself to feel. It’s giving yourself permission to lead an emotionally constricted life, experiencing the same suffering feeling over and over again.

Look at what Stanislavsky has to say about tension in An Actor Prepares. You can’t have a free body and voice while you’re lifting a piano. He says the very first prerequisite for effective acting is relaxation. Likewise, if you’re living with all kinds of tension and emotional anguish, you cannot give yourself with full availability to the material. Even if the material is about an emotionally suffering person, you must be free to express that artistically.  Otherwise, it’s just bad acting.

Stanislavsky talks over and over again about just how tenuous and delicate the thread of the creative state is, and how easily it can be broken. How protective of that thread we must be, exclaims Stanislavsky!

In studying the great actors, one thing always comes through in their work: the great relish they take in their role. Part of what an audience experiences when they watch great acting is the mask slipping ever-so-slightly to where the actor as a human being exists. The audience starts to think not just about the story, but about what a wonderful thing storytelling itself is. The audience members start to think about the malleability of human beings who can show such full empathy for others—human beings who inhabit their characters physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It holds out hope that there is a possibility of being understood by another.

Now an actor should never play that directly, that would just be egotism, but if an actor as a human being is, in fact, living that joy in the profession and the art, then some part of that is communicated to the audience, without the actor indicating it. That is a healing thing for the audience to feel. Art becomes worthwhile, and the audience goes home feeling more human, more connected.

And isn’t that what we are all aiming for?