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Matt Wrather returns to the Overthinking It podcast after a legendary wrestling match with Los Angeles traffic to join Jordan Stokes and Peter Fenzel in a discussion about finding an honest way to relate and experience overplayed Christmas pop songs. To do this, they chart the history of acting method and Constantin Stanislavski’s three major apostolic traditions: that of Lee Strasberg, that of Stella Adler, and that of Sanford Meisner.

The Overthinkers consider repetition: how in some situations it seems to sap words of all meaning, and in others it provides tiny crack in the door that might be forced open toward honesty with great personal emotional effort – or perhaps through singing at half speed and then speeding up the tape so we sound like anthropomorphic rodents. And there is no greater pursuit they might apply these techniques than The Reason for the Season.

When we sing what we sing, do we mean what we mean? How does ritual bring into being the acting of our own values in real life? Do we, in fact, know it’s Christmas time at all? Do we want a lot for Christmas? Do I still want a hula hoop? Do you still want a hula hoop? I still want a hula hoop. You still want a hula hoop? I still want a hula hoop.

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Further Reading

• The Actor’s Secret Spell: Why the ‘Magic If’ Changes Everything, by Maggie Bera on Backstage
• The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, by Isaac Butler, available for purchase from Bloomsbury
• Salome Jens on Memory Alpha
• Ross Bagdasarian, a.k.a. Davd Seville, on Wikipedia
• The Chipmunk Song from The Alvin Show, on YouTube