We recently connected with Charles Constant and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Charles thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

Essentially, it was on the job training. I started acting in High School and we just did whatever we could, guided, of course, by an adult director who actually knew something about the process.

After I graduated, I looked for professional work. This was back when summer stock theater and repertory theaters still existed or at least were more prevalent. We would do multiple shows for a few months, rotating through different plays over the course the summer. One night, it might be Richard III, another night it might be a Neil Simon comedy another night it might be Our Town. Again, it was mostly learning from trying different things on stage, but also watching older, more experienced actors and talking with them.

My first organized training was in Chicago, with a man named Ted Liss. Ted had started as a young man working in radio and went on to study at the Goodman School. Some of his teachers had worked with Constantine Stanislavsky, so he was effectively a third generation student of the Stanislavsky method which, I guess, would make me a 4th generation student.

All of the initial trading was geared toward the stage and I feel that I really benefitted from that. I learned some much about script analysis and characterization that i feel is left out of much modern training for actors who mostly want to work on camera. I was very lucky to have had that opportunity. I also spent some time in London, where I received additional training.

There were also many dance and singing classes along the way.

Then, after being a working actor for many years, I studied the Meisner Technique at the Baron-Brown Studio in Santa Monica. They have an excellent program and it was great addition to my actors “Tool Box”.

I still study and am currently taking classes in the work of Yat Malmgren with a gentleman named Giles Foreman, when he is in visiting from England, so the learning never stops.

In all of the that, there was an emphasis on voice and movement training. One’s voice and body are really the only two things with which you can communicate the life of a character and the more expressive you can be with them, the more detailed and full your performance will be,

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Currently, I do a lot of voiceover work and large part of that is audiobook narration. For me, it is the perfect job! I get to play every part and I work from home. Audiobook narration is considerably more difficult than most people imagine. It’s not only about the qualityof one’s voice, which is actually secondary, it’s all about the performance.

I still appear on stage from time to time as well as act on camera. This past year I completed several films and began producing them as well. I am an executive producer as well as an actor in the feature film all I’ve gotten then some, which was chosen for this year’s Slamdance film festival. It was a wonderful experience and a great honor, because out of the thousands of films submitted, they chose only five narrative features.

The whole experience offered me the opportunity to work with a terrific team of other actors as well as the co-writers and directors of the film Tehben Dean And Rasheed Stephens; two very talented and generous men. We now have a core group people, both behind and in front of the camera, and have a number of other films currently in development. I’m just starting out as a producer, so I still have much to learn, but so far I am really enjoying that side of filmmaking.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

First of all, I think nearly everyone is creative in many ways, so I don’t like to separate “creatives“ from non-creatives“. Building a business, becoming a teacher, being a plumber, all require creativity, but I understand the use of the word here being applicable to creativity in The Arts.

When I first decided that Acting was what I wanted to do for living, of course I got a lot of negative feedback from my father and from a number of friends and acquaintances. It was well meaning and perfectly understandable. It’s hard for people to comprehend why anyone would choose a career path on which the majority of people stumble and end up living in poverty or near poverty.

The simple answer is that acting is the thing that made me the happiest and, while eating ramen noodles for the rest of my life or living in a crappy apartment forever wouldn’t make me happy, knowing that I hadn’t even tried to do what I wanted to do would make me the unhappiest of all.

Here’s a quote that, for me, sums up the motivation for choosing a life in the arts: “lf you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you did not bring forth what is it within you, what is within you will destroy you.” I suppose people will either get that or they won’t.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I want to tell stories. Storytelling has been an important part of human existence since the beginning of time. Even cave paintings are a form of storytelling.

We can learn so much about life and about each other from effective storytelling. People get to experience lives and worlds otherwise Would not. A lot of times, people go through things in their own lives that are too painful for them to deal with, but through music or painting or performance, etc., sometimes they are able to relive those experiences or re-examine them from a safe distance and it can help heal them. Of course, sometimes, people just want to escape from their present reality and a great story is a fantastic way of doing that.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.charlesconstant.com
• Instagram: @chuckconstant
• Linkedin: Www.linkedin.com/charles-constant-a827086
• Twitter: @chuckconstant
• Other: Linktr.ee/charlesconstant

Image Credits
Lauren Desberg