Acting coach and founder of The Markland Studio in Los Angeles John Markland joins us for an insightful conversation on his career, his transformative teaching methodology, rooted in the exploration of foundational trauma, and how his techniques differ from the ones known to actors around the world today such as the teachings of Stanislavski, Lee Strasberg, and method acting. From mentoring Emmy Award winner Jeremy Allen White to shaping the performances of acclaimed actors like Rami Malek and Lee Pace, John’s expertise promises an enlightening journey into the art and craft of storytelling on the silver screen.
“I often felt exploited as an actor,” he explained. “I felt like I would get to these places and be able to express them, but the more often I’d go back to these emotional places I found it harder and harder to connect to the emotions of those memories and wounds and traumas. So then I started more of the Jungian theory and recognized that the idea of using anything was unsustainable, that there’s an exploitative nature to it. That’s when I started playing with the idea of, ‘what if there’s a cathartic nature to it? What if there’s the intention of when you go back to these sense memories, moments and experiences to elevate them or free them or even heal them so there’s this sense of movement?’”
Of the many acting techniques out there, method seems to draw the most attention from casual viewers and actors alike, but it’s also highly misunderstood as a technique in which the actor “lives in” the role and never breaks character. “Method is wonderful, it revolutionized the style of acting that had been accepted for two hundreds years before then to make it more naturalistic. I think it really helped actors grasp this sense of ‘it doesn’t have to be just performance, it can be an experience’.
“I love it as a research tool,” he went on. “I think it’s great when an actor takes a character and goes out into the real world and experiences what it would be like to have the backstory of the character, the body, the voice, the dialect, the expressions, the gestures. It’s going to inform you better than any scene work can. You have to recognize that you’re not that,” he laughs. “You’re still you and part of you wants to and needs to be expressed, and it’s your responsibility to have an interpretation of the character. I love the method as a research tool, but I don’t always feel it’s the strongest way to enter into a play or to get in front of the camera. You have to acknowledge yourself and allow part of yourself to be in it too.”
To learn more about The Markland Studio, visit themarklandstudio.com
