Spotlight on...Geof Prysirr

Author: Bri Cavallaro

Geof Prysirr is a professional acting coach, actor and writer from Los Angeles, Calf. This January, he joins the Middlebury community to teach the class "Acting for Film and Television."


The Middlebury Campus: What brings you to snowy Vermont?

Geof Prysirr: I became familiar with the school. I like the school, I find the student body interesting and I became interested in being able to bring something to the campus, based on the work that I do. I have taught in many universities over the years. I haven't taught in one recently because I've been doing more professional work, but the opportunity presented itself. I spoke to the dean of your curriculum, and he presented two different types of courses I was very interested in teaching. One of them he said he really wanted, and the other he said he really liked, but he thought it would be better to bring the more easy acceptable class first, and the other course he found very interesting but he said that if I wanted to come back again, that could be a class I could teach.


The Campus: What was that other class that he was interested in?

GP: Actually, it was a kind of study of self. A course that would've been exploring the human instrument from a vocal, physical and emotional perspective, and learning how it works in the processes of communication. It would cross over into psychology, philosophy, acting and into basically exploring being, and what it means and could mean in the way we relate. We all have something we want to say: how do we do it most effectively? We exercise our bodies, we exercise our minds, but we never really work instrumentally.


The Campus: It seems similar to acting.

GP: It is - the acting work I deal with is a bit different than what's traditionally taught, and it comes from creating a center of self. What is it to express a clarity of self, of one's emotional being? If you can express a clarity of self, what do you do to interfere with it to create personal conflict? We're always looking at the conflict in something - what makes it difficult to do something. Think of reality TV: it's all about watching people struggle in the most embarrassing, degrading ways. We don't watch reality TV to see someone be successful: we watch them struggle to get to some eventual goal in themselves. That's why I'm interested in studying acting, in studying behavioral skills.


The Campus: What differences do you see in acting for the stage and acting for the screen?

GP: When you act for the stage, there's a much bigger externalization of the representation of what one experiences. There's a lot of explanation that takes place throughout a play. As people communicate, they're explaining themselves to each other. In a film, it's a visual medium, first and foremost - the language becomes secondary. You have lines that are profound but what you really are doing is having an observational experience of how people are relating to each other from an internal standpoint. Everything becomes much smaller. Everything becomes more compact. Most of the work that takes place in great film work takes place in someone's eyes. Think of every great film you're ever seen. When you're in a close-up: that's the money shot. When you look into someone's eyes, you get the clarity of their experience at that moment. As Michael Caine said in his autobiography: when you see someone in film, you rarely see them blink. You'll also see the lips being separated, not together. When you have your lips separated, it's very reminiscent of something we did at one point in our lives, when we were babies. You'll notice: when you open your mouth, your eyes automatically open. It shows a moment of slight wonderment. It keeps an open line of communication.