Bar Talk.
/Nothing more comforting than to be in the bar with your fellow actors.
Watch what you take from the evening’s banter as truth.
You learn from experience. Testing the experience is done in acting class where discussion of the work also takes place. Theory and practice.
And it’s done on set.
Chit-chat about acting, the process, auditions, this director, that casting director et al over beer is reassuring as you feel the commonality with your peers. Very important. It helps objectify you and the troubles you face as an actor. They face them too.
But, it isn’t a forum for serious examination of the acting questions nor of the business side. The bar atmosphere lends itself to personal prejudices and ungrounded ideas.
So, check yourself to see if you walk home after closing thinking, ‘Aha, that’s the key to booking work! I’ll scream in the audition room before each and every audition just like she said!’
Especially if ‘she’ is an actor who has more credits and experience than you. That’s like teenage boys chatting at recess in the school yard and ‘learning’ about the opposite sex from the older boys. Disaster.
Sharp appraisal, professional critique based on your work are all done in class. Other lessons are learned in the audition room and on set where necessity of production teaches you. These situations are formal and professional and that is where you learn.
Only there.
Bar talk is good to catch up on gossip and to find out what isn’t true.