Scene4 Magazine | letters to the editor

Arthur Meiselman's December column, "Anthony Hopkins Unwired!", recalls the quote from Edward Gibbon: "The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous."

Or else the quote from Louis Armstrong, answering a society matron who asked him his definition of jazz: "Lady, if you have to ask, you'll never know."

Sir Anthony Hopkins, that greatest of actors, reminds us that talent is innate and unteachable. And Meiselman, a lifelong observer and director of actors, approves and endorses that basic wisdom. My own observation would be, comparing actors with poets, that a successful acting class would be much less a class than a workshop. The participants would all be of roughly equal talent, if differing styles, and the only thing that would distinguish the teacher is length and depth of experience. Whether you want or need a class is a matter strictly of temperament, not instruction. Whereas Hopkins is a lone wolf who avoids the company of actors, an actor like, say, Al Pacino seeks out the classroom experience and the comments of his fellows. It's similar to the difference between Robert Frost, who gloried in the classroom and the company of poets, and that great solitary Emily Dickinson. The one thing that unites them all is that, in the end, no one HAD to teach them to be great artists. They were born that way.

Having said my piece, I will only urge Meiselman and Sir Anthony to be very careful about accepting any parcels in future from James Lipton.

Read Arthur Meiselman's Column