I Don't Need an Acting Class

Not just unexperienced facts can deaden our work as actors, the need to explain or report the facts can get in the way of our most creative work. Digging down specifically can help this problem.

It's not just enough to be functional or accurate or good enough. There's a road in to our actor work that helps us find extraordinary choices and frees us up to do our best work.

If you think of the play as a continuation of what has already happened, it gives you a sense of how much work you have to do in order to earn the play. Excerpted from my New York class, we continue our work on the Frank Gilroy play, The Subject Was Roses.

Continuing work on the Frank Gilroy play, The Subject Was Roses , this expert from Milton's in-person class begins to explore the road in to building a character with more depth.

Working on a play begins to give actors the foundation of working on any text they get. These are excerpts from my Script Analysis class at The Actor Lab in New York.

We're combining two exercises in this class. (1) Seeing someone 'on the street' and being able to make decisions about who they are, based on their behavio and (2) building an attitude towards them.

Making choices that really bring you to life seems to be a constant struggle. Maybe it's because we're relieved that we can come up with any choice, but the choices must be worth it. They can't be passive.

Actively building an attitude to your partner can open you up to the action of the scene.

We need to really be careful about the vocabulary of acting. There are concepts that keep working their way and it can dangerously lead actors to a kind of passivity that lessens the power of experiencing.

After I vent about the Broadway production of Death of a Salesman, where they yelled at the audience for three hours, we look at the necessity of not just making great choices, but believing them. Not just performing them.

Directors give performance or effect directions. It forces actors to play cliches. Figuring out the nature of a character trait or spine or personality frees an actor to play an action ... or an impulse ... that makes behavior more actable.

Last week I gave classes in Poland and it was extremely useful to have a fresh perspective on students who were slightly new to this way of working – and also affording an opportunity for actors to talk about their particular problems.

My student, JP, has been working on the Biff and Happy scene from Death of a Salesman . In this episode we work through a place where he was stuck with that feeling of "now I'm performing a monologue."

In coaching an actor this week, I was struck again by what feels obvious—and yet is so often missed: the actor must find a personal connection to the circumstances, or the character’s conflict never becomes a lived experience.

Revisiting the concept of talking out as a way to help actors own everything they think about a character and a play.

Building the character's attitude towards their partner is not only essential in playing a scene, it saves you. There's a danger, however, in building the attitude all on one level.

Sometimes I think we've just had too many classes - and too many teachers telling you what you have to do in order to play a part. An actor needs to develop the ability to figure out what is necessary for each part.

The ability to visualize and live off images that are in the actor's imagination is a great skill to develop. It keeps you from acting in a vacuum,– to say nothing of solving the problem of a bad partner.

Actor work is not an intellectual exercise. And it’s not about “good writing.” It’s about experiencing. The audience doesn’t come to the theater for the words on the page. They come for the experience of what the character is going through — in the world of the play. In this episode, I return to one of my core tools:  Talking Out . Through études — structured improvisations in which you speak alou...

Actors have a tendency to abandon their technique as soon as they get an audition – and leap to a performance. Just taking a little time to really think about the text makes an enormous difference.

There are many roads in to building a character and, unfortunately, there is no paint-by-number approach. It's great as an actor to play with several different techniques.

When an actor does not connect, you catch them "acting". It doesn't matter if it's a television series or a play. Specificity helps us connect.

We have a tendency to leap to clichés because the dialogue seems to lead us there. There's a way to fight this.

It's very difficult to believe that there is not just one correct choice. As long as an actor is clear what the text is about, there are countless roads in to the experience of the world of the play.

"Everything is something." It seems simple, but as actors we often skip over something that can give us the key we're looking for.