What Mega Man Teaches Us About Acting

FUNNY LIST! GO!

Though a stone-cold killer on the surface, beneath Mega Man’s steely exterior beats the heart of an artist. Don’t believe me? It’s called the willing suspension of disbelief, and if you can grant him that, the Blue Bomber will Mr. Miyagi you right into virtuosity.

1. TENACITY (Auditions)
Mega Man games are hard. They didn’t coddle players back then (or now), and the only way to master a level was to play it, over and over. You failed, over and over. But each time you tried, you got better. The stuff you mastered got even easier, and the stuff you struggled with became more manageable. And the impossible stuff? That stuff still sucked, but after fifty-eight tries and seven game-overs (and start-overs) and hours or maybe days or even weeks of playing, you finally got to Concrete Man (and then he killed you… I hate Concrete Man).

Mega Man, in addition to being action-packed fun, is a lesson in patience and perseverance; and if that doesn’t apply to Theater, I don’t know what does. Auditions are a craps shoot, and though you can learn as you go (see #2), there are always going to be things coming at you for which you could not reasonably prepare. So you’re gonna fail. I know I have. But you don’t give up. You furiously mash the B button until the level reloads, and you try again.

Not because you have to. Not because you need this gig to survive (ain’t nobody gettin’ paid nothin’). Not so you don’t have to explain your life choices to your family again. But because it’s fun. If it’s not fun, why the hell are you doing it?

A friend of mine says that auditioning is one of his favorite things to do, because it’s the only time he can present a finished product that is entirely of his own making. He’s a consummate professional and very good at taking direction, but that doesn’t mean he always likes the direction he’s given. Auditioning is the only time he gets to show 100% of himself, and no one else gets to stick their thumbs into it. At least until the audition is over, and the casting director says, “Do it again, but this time imagine you’re a constipated manatee.”

Auditioning is a fun game. Granted it requires a little more prep than your average Mega Man stage, but if you’re like 90% of professional and big-city actors, you’ll spend as much or more time auditioning than being part of a show. Find a way to enjoy the challenge. If not, put the controller down and walk away. Mega Man is very disappointed in you, but he ain’t your daddy: who cares what he thinks?

2. LEARN-AS-YOU-PLAY
As Egoraptor mentions in his legendary Sequelitis video, Mega Man games are the best when it comes to Conveyance: they show you how to play the game as you’re playing it. They show you an enemy, then they show you an obstacle, then they COMBINE the enemy and the obstacle! Whoa!

Theater is a little trickier. There are hundreds of opportunities to learn the game as you go, but they aren’t as obvious, and the consequences are much less immediate. Odds are, if you ignore a potential lesson, you’re not going to fall off a cliff or get shot by those damn hard-hat guys at an inopportune moment. It might lose you an audition later, or leave you less prepared for a performance, maybe even make you miss out on a new acting insight that would let you Level Up your work (there aren’t any Level-Ups in Mega Man; we’ll save that for another pod-blog-cast).

So it’s always a good idea to Look for something to learn. The first time I played Hortensio in Taming of the Shrew, it was just a chore to complete. It wasn’t until I did it in Unrehearsed Shakespeare, when I properly studied the role, that I finally learned why Hortensio is the coolest sidekick in all the Elizabethan cannon. If I had looked at my first time as an opportunity to learn something in stead of just something to get through, I probably wouldn’t have been so miserable.

Lesson learned. Conveyance.

3. BOSS BATTLES
You got through the level! You’re barely alive, you used up all your Metal Blades, but you made it through that little spring-lock door, and then BAM! Quick Man drops a boomerang on you.

W in the actual F!

So you try again, you fail again, and after eight more tries you make it to Quick Man again. You throw every weapon in your arsenal at him: Bubbles, Fire, even friggin’ Leaves, all to no avail. THEN, just for a breather, you try out the Time Stopper.

Holy Mother of Gummi Bears! Did that just happen?

For many actors, there’s a single Key, some prop or costume piece that clicks with them and allows them to connect with and embody their character. Alfred Lunt called it his green umbrella. I call it my Hadouken. Six o’ one.

But don’t limit your Hadouken to just props or costume pieces. Your Hadouken could be an acting style, a physicality, even a specific delivery of a specific line. My old acting teacher was fond of saying ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat.’ Bizarre taxidermal fetishes aside, the analogy certainly holds true for acting. Try new and different things as often as you can. Make like Brick and keep looking for that click. (Minus the alcohol; shame on you)

4. SPECIAL POWERS (Or: Boss Battles 2: The Bossening)
Every Mega Man game has an Order-Of-Play: a make-it-easy guide of which bosses you should attack in which order. That’s because each boss’s weapon happens to be the weakness of another boss. Gemini Man’s works on Needle Man’s works on Snake Man’s works on Gemini Man’s (kinda). Each victory gives you what you need to make the next that much more achievable.

Each performance you master (don’t say perform, say master) makes it that much easier to master your next. Whether it’s a new style, a new physicality, a new revelation (Ja willing), or just increased comfort-level, these seemingly separate experiences build off of each other to make you even stronger than Zero, even without the red body armor and 80’s rock-ballad hair.

So it’s always a good idea to expand your view while tackling new roles. It’s sort of a Konami Code for making each Hadouken-search easier than the last one.

5. DOCTOR WILY: A STUDY IN BECKETT
Beckett’s stuff can be pretty depressing, but Hey! (Navi), Mega Man’s got some emo-chops too, and not just Quick Man’s incredibly symbolic vulnerability to sitting still. Doctor Wily is Inevitability Personified: he just keeps comin’ back, over and over, no matter what Mega Man does.

So what does Mega Man do? Does he give up? No, he hats up! He hats the eff up and gets back out there and fights that crazy doctor again. Sure, his victories sometimes seem futile, but he celebrates when he can and doesn’t let the inevitable entropy of the future rain on his parade. He lives in the moment, like a Buddha, or a fish, or a robot (kinda).

Theater is one of the most ephemeral artforms, and the Last Night is often so overshadowed by manly hugs and manly tears and drunken bacchanalias that it’s easy to lose sight of the show’s own value. I’ve often been left with disappointment that I didn’t do more with a role or try harder to pick up the lead actress or get in shape for that nude scene I insisted on adding. Back when I used to actually earn a living acting, the bittersweetness of a show’s ending was often accompanied by the terror that I might never get a paying gig again, or that the next show I lined up would fail to live up to my new expectations. But, much like Mega Man, you’re playing for the journey and for those victories: you’re playing for this game, not the next.

And what about poor Doctor Wily? That guy never succeeds at anything he does. But lucky for him, he took a lesson from #1 and gets right back on that metaphor. Ironically, each character is essentially defined by their futile struggle against the other.

That might sound like kind of a downer, but if it’s what you want to do, then what’s the problem? Trite but true: it helps to achieve a balance between Working towards goals and Appreciating the journey toward those goals. If you learn to love the sowing, you’ll love the reaping all the more.

Level Start