IS THAT A RULE?
A lot of actors operate on inherited behavior without ever stopping to ask what category it actually belongs to. Some things are true rules. Some are personal boundaries. Some are standards. Some are expectations. And a huge amount of what actors obey is just culture repeating itself. If you don’t know which is which, you start giving your power away to habits that were never binding in the first place.
BOUNDARIES, RULES, NORMS, STANDARDS, AND EXPECTATIONS
A lot of actors do things a certain way simply because that’s how everyone else does them.
I’m a Broadway acting coach, and the smartest actors aren’t obedient. They’re intentional.
If you don’t know what’s a boundary, what’s a rule, and what’s just a norm pretending to be one, you start handing over your power for free.
BOUNDARIES ARE ABOUT WHAT YOU DO
A boundary is how you protect your energy, your craft, and your mental health. It’s not about controlling someone else. It’s about deciding what you will do.
A boundary sounds like this: I don’t take notes from people I don’t trust. I don’t let one rough audition ruin my whole week. If a room feels unsafe, I leave.
That is a boundary. Your action, not your demand.
One of the biggest mistakes actors make is calling something a boundary when it’s actually a wish for someone else to change. “They can’t talk to me like that” is not a boundary. A boundary is what you do when they talk to you like that.
RULES ARE THE ACTUAL NON-NEGOTIABLES
Rules are the real logistics. Union policies. Labor law. Submission instructions. The concrete requirements of the room.
You do not get to negotiate these, and you need to know them well enough that they don’t rattle you.
But there are actually very few true rules. What throws actors off is not rules themselves. It’s the amount of folklore that gets treated like law.
NORMS ARE JUST INHERITED HABITS
Norms are the unspoken habits of actor culture. Starting every audition from the exact same place. Reaching out to casting instead of the director because “that’s just how it’s done.” Carrying songs you don’t care about because someone once said you should. Avoiding anything that takes up space or stands out.
None of that is policy. None of it is automatically required.
It’s copycat behavior until proven otherwise.
Your job is to separate fact from folklore. Rules are enforced. Norms are inherited. And you are allowed to question anything you inherited.
STANDARDS ARE THE BAR YOU SET
Standards are different. Standards are the bar you set for your craft and your conduct.
That includes things like bringing in clean cuts, having an actual point of view in your material, singing songs you can stand behind, treating accompanists like colleagues, and remembering that you are auditioning the creative team as much as they are auditioning you.
The mistake is having standards you never name and then resenting the process for failing to meet a bar you never articulated. If something matters deeply to you, know it. Name it. Live by it.
EXPECTATIONS ARE JUST PREDICTIONS
Expectations are your assumptions about how things are going to unfold.
Expecting a callback. Expecting the accompanist to follow a tempo you never clarified. Expecting the audition to feel like a performance instead of a technical presentation. Expecting your career to gain momentum without you actively building momentum.
Expectations are guesses, not guarantees.
The problem starts when you treat your prediction like a promise the world owes you.
Prepare thoroughly. Clarify what you can. Then release the assumption and let reality tell you what is actually happening.
SORT THE BUCKET BEFORE YOU OBEY IT
The next time your brain says, “Everyone else does it this way,” stop.
Ask which bucket it belongs in. Is it a boundary? A rule? A norm? A standard? An expectation?
That one move gives you back a huge amount of agency, because once you know what something is, you can decide how much authority it actually deserves.
🥜 IN A NUTSHELL
Rules are real. Norms are inherited. Boundaries are yours. Standards are chosen. Expectations are guesses.
If you don’t sort them correctly, you’ll obey things that were never in charge of you to begin with.
