Jason George is an actor with over fifty guest star and eight series regular television roles to his credit.   Most recently seen on Grey’s Anatomy as Dr. Ben Warren, Jason is also a regular on the new ABC series Mistresses.  George is also known for his work on Eve and Eli Stone and films such as Three Can Play That Game, The Climb, and Barbershop. A classically trained theater actor, George starred in U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Rita Dove’s epic drama, The Darker Face of the Earth.  Jason has a BA from the University of Virginia, and a MFA in Acting from Temple University, where he sits on the Board for Temple’s School of Communications and Theater.  George spends much of his free time in support of his fellow actors by serving on the National Boards of both the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists—now merged into SAG-AFTRA.  As the chair of the union’s National Diversity Advisory committee, Co-Chair of the Hollywood EEO Committee, and part of the unions’ negotiating team for the last several prime-time television and film contracts, he has been instrumental in championing diversity and protecting performers.

Jason took time with us to answer questions about how he applies his theatre-based training to working in television, how to keep your skills sharp after you’ve left school, and much, much more.

You have both a BA (University of Virginia) and a MFA (Temple University).  How would you describe the difference between the two degrees?

My BA is actually in Rhetoric and Communication Studies, with a minor in Drama.  That said, the primary difference is singularity of focus.  The point of an undergraduate degree is broad exposure resulting in the selection of a discipline. I was planning on law school when I took an acting class my first year of school and that changed everything—I selected a new discipline.  Similarly, I’m sure there were people who came in to study theater but learned they had a love of science or architecture. If undergrad is the opportunity for us to try out many different things on a near-professional level—like an artistic Forest Gump—then graduate school is where you are forced to become an artistic Terminator, singularly focused on the craft.  I remember graduate school consisting of Monday through Friday classes from 8am until 5pm, rehearsals for a main stage play from 6pm til 10pm, then we’d do late night rehearsals for class scene work, and more rehearsals for the main stage show on Saturdays from 10 am to 6pm. Sundays were laundry, with more class scene work rehearsals.  At least that was my experience at Temple University back in the day.

Your training was theater-based but you now work primarily in television.  How would you say the training translates?

Theater is an actor’s medium, film is a director’s medium, and television is a writer’s medium. Gross generalization, but fairly accurate.  On stage, doing a play, I am the actor, the stunt-person, the editor, and sometimes the special effect.  Nobody can stop me from doing what I want on stage. They can fire me the next day, but I am in control when I hit the boards.  That said, you can’t have a bunch of actors on stage at the same time, doing their own individual plays. So, while being given this great power, you by definition have to learn to collaborate with your fellow actors and directors. I believe that same collaborative effort serves me well in television.  I collaborate to make the scene electric in the moment so that rather than “saving the scene” in post-production, the editing and sweeping musical score can take the scene to a transcendent level.  That ability to collaborate and work with other people’s rhythms is necessary in all media.

Beyond that, it’s about calibrating your energy appropriately.  The vocal resonance and physical presence I bring on stage to reach the second balcony is a searchlight that can cut through the fog and reach the clouds. But for the camera, you have to learn to modulate it down to a laser beam that is no less intense but far more focused and precise.   A visible head tilt on stage may become an almost imperceptible shifting of the eyes on camera. But the impetus for either reaction—the internal life of the actor—remains the same.

How important has your training been to you in your career?

Training has been invaluable. But please note I said my training—not my MFA. Nobody ultimately cares about those three letters ‘MFA’ on your resume.  They want to know if you can do the work, and that means training. But I know that a MFA meant three years of eating, sleeping and drinking the craft.  It represents a crucible where my insecure ticks were burned out of me and replaced with tools and choices.  My confidence in my ability to do the work was exponentially increased by my MFA.  The tools at my disposal as an actor were dramatically increased because of my training.  I’ve gotten a couple of different roles as a series regular because when they handed me a five page scene or a two page speech and told me we were shooting in twenty minutes, I smiled and said, “OK”  and was off book, word perfect, with a distinct point of view in both cases.

How do you prepare for auditions?

I read the material through a few times just to get my first, instinctual reactions to the material.  Then I start asking 101 questions:  Who is this character? What do they want? Why do they feel the need to speak?  If I could only speak two or three lines of the dialogue what are those key operative lines?

I break the scene down into manageable beats and find an intellectual through line. Then I improv the piece and throw intellect out—even playing the exact opposite of my initial thoughts.  I let all those ingredients and possible choices marinate in my subconscious as I sleep (I hate getting auditions same day because I love how much deeper the work gets from me when I’ve literally slept on it).  I ultimately come up with exactly the version I want to present.  Then as I go into the audition room, I drop the blueprint and just play.  Whatever was meant to stick does, and sometimes I find new stuff that comes from that subconscious.  My favorite part in an audition is when I’ve performed exactly what I had in my head to the best of my ability then ask, “Wanna take me someplace different?”…and they do.  That ‘someplace different’ that a director, writer or casting director takes me is the collaboration that makes me love being an actor.

Once you’ve been cast in a role, what type of preparation do you do?

See above.

I’m not really kidding.  I like to say that I don’t audition; I do excerpted performances for small, select audiences.

One of the biggest differences between preparing an audition and preparing a performance is tracking the character across the entire piece.  This is easier in theater where the story is usually performed in chronological sequence, but film or television are almost always shot out of sequence, and you want relationships or character growth to track appropriately.

This is even more difficult in television when sometimes even the writers didn’t know about a piece of your character’s history until it becomes useful to be invented—I mean revealed.   Which is the other point: once I’ve got the role, I use those collaborators— talking with the director and writer, wardrobe, and hair and makeup people.  I fight for my character and I soak up all their ideas, using what meshes with my natural inclinations.

How would you describe your time in graduate school?

Monastic.  We were like monks and the craft was our religion.  That and hitting the bars regularly (we are actors after all) so we were like Dionysian monks.  It was the hardest time of my life where I felt the most insecure.  It’s also where I made some of my best friends and learned how powerful I could be.

What is your greatest memory from your time in school?

I did a show at Temple University called HOME by Samm Art Williams, directed by guest director-rapper extraordinaire, Ozzy Jones.  It was the first time that I was in every second of a show and it put me through the wringer.  I was beaten, imprisoned, humiliated, suicidal and had a dream sequence love-making session…all during the ten minutes or so of the show when I was naked.  In that performance I learned the difference between artistic integrity and shock value, I learned what it meant to have reverence for the writer but retain the arrogance of the actor.  I grew up in many ways as an actor in that show.

What should an acting student be looking for in a training program?

VERSATILITY.  I’m not a fan of dogmatically following one style of acting.  One person may completely respond to Meisner training while another responds to Practical Aesthetics or Michael Chekhov’s Psychological Gesture.  Mask work may seem archaic and useless to some folks but I’m guessing Andy Serkis has put elements of it to good use in all his virtuoso performance capture roles.  For me, some great lessons about acting came from stage combat or dance class.

I think you want to be exposed to writers and directors.

I think it’s also useful to train for a “day job”.  I knew I wanted to teach someday and Temple was the first to give me that opportunity (I now run a group for actors called Collaborations Workshop).

Do you have a dream role that you’ve yet to play?

Someday I need to wear tights and have superpowers….and if that’s on camera even better.   I did Aaron the Moor from TITUS ANDRONICUS in an undergraduate production at the University of Virginia.  It’s a problematic play in many ways, but that particular “villain” (I might see him as an overzealous revolutionary) would be fun to tackle now with some training and experience on my side.

You’ve talked a lot about the collaborative aspect of theater. Once an actor has left the confines of school, what are some ways they can find to maintain that sort of safe laboratory for collaboration, inspiration, and honing of craft?

There are a number of ways of doing this.  The best is of course to keep working.  Collaborating with various directors and actors will naturally keep you sharp.  Barring a constant stream of work, however, one of the best ways to keep sharp is to take classes or workshops.  I’m not the first person to use the analogy of working out at a gym (and I won’t be the last) probably because it’s an incredibly apt metaphor.  Some people go to the gym to learn the basics of how to work out. Some people already know the basics and want to try new methods of training.  Others are fairly proficient but are looking for colleagues to help push them to raise their game, achieve their best, and stay informed of the latest trends.  Acting classes and workshops are the same.  Beginning, intermediate, and advance actors take them to learn, maintain, and master the craft of acting.  Classes are also an opportunity to take a shot at those roles often reserved for name-brand stars.  It’s a support group, a place for networking and pooling resources as well.  Of course, many things actors do in class can also be done by actors on their own.  And whether an actor is in class or not they should be putting their spare, individual time to good use.  Ultimately, however, the primary benefit of being part of a class over toiling alone is the collaboration with other artists–specifically someone with an objective, experienced eye. We want to work with people who challenge us and push us further than we thought possible.  And when that happens in a safe environment where experimentation is encouraged, those people are called teachers.   Collaboration, for me anyway, is the most electrifying part of the acting experience.  It’s why I started a class of my own and named it Collaborations Workshop.  I wanted to work with actors and focus on the process, not the result.  I wanted to enjoy collaborating on the craft without worrying about ratings or box office or even booking the job.  Even when you work fairly regularly, you want to explore new territory—it’s what makes us artists.

What advice do you have for someone just graduating and about to embark on their career?

Enjoy the ride—it’s a long ride.  Never be satisfied, but know what is satisfactory.  Keep your overhead low and a day job that is flexible.  Learn how to network, and start by being kind to the assistants and interns.

And learn the business.

Tons of people want to be actors.

Only some of them are talented.

Only some of the talented will keep their finances balanced and flexible.

Only some of the financially stable and talented will stick it out in the career marathon.

Only some of the journeyman actors will learn the business well enough to create either their own luck or their own work.

Thanks, Jason!