I Don't Need an Acting Class

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content! ⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe⁠⁠⁠ This episode is the third in our trilogy about making everything something. This week Milton gives us a strategy for this. Using his “Why I Love the Theater” exercise as an example, he discusses how to building one thing at a time by talking it out, making sure it feeds you and add...

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content! https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe This week’s episode is a continuation of last week’s topic. Milton talks about the importance of treating every fact and every element as if it’s important. Even those facts that seem to be incidental plot points cannot be skipped over in rehearsal. If they are, the lie that is your play...

In this episode, Milton takes a question from Benjamin in Canada who asked him to clarify an idea from our episode The Biggest Sin: beginning your work on a play as if you know nothing. Another way to say that is: begin your work with a mindset of assuming nothing. If you assume you already know about a fact of your character or the circumstances of the play, you’ll neglect to dig deeper and end u...

Last episode we talked about theme. This week, we continue that conversation but make the distinction between truly big ideas and everything else. Big ideas affect all of us, they shape civilization. As actors, our understanding of a big idea has to go beyond our own personal relationship to it in order for us to communicate the idea that the writer intended. This is what is meant by “raising ours...

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content! ⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe⁠⁠⁠ In every play, there’s a big, universal, cosmic idea, (or theme.) It’s what the writer wants to communicate. As actors we must know what this big idea is. We won’t know what it is right away- our rehearsal process is our discovery process. But eventually, in order to play the part,...

This week’s episode is a direct response to a question from one of our listeners. Belen from Argentina wanted to know what to do when she’s in the middle of a scene and suddenly remembers none of it is real. Email your questions to: questionsformilton@gmail.com

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content! ⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe⁠⁠⁠ It’s true that your talent is in your choices, but that’s not all there’s to it. Your choices must serve the central idea of the play, and must be consistent with the given circumstances of your character. And yet, making a good choice is still not enough. You have to understand wh...

Acting is not mathematical. You won’t always use the same tools, and what worked for you during one project may not work for you in another. There are so many different paths you can take when building something out of nothing, but here’s what is certain: you must dig deep into every aspect. If you just logically answer questions, thinking that if you have the answers your work is done, your perfo...

If there’s one word all actors are familiar with it’s “objective.” But how often is the idea of “objective” a practical tool and how often is it an albatross around our necks? Stanislavsky wanted acting vocabulary to come out of common usage, and he wanted it to free us, not cripple us. Today we examine where the word came from, and whether the concept of “objective” was even Stanislavsky’s in the...

We've all been there. You look at your script and see something that resembles a list. What do most actors do? They act it as a list and by doing so, sound like they're running down a dull inventory of groceries. There's no connection to what they're talking about, no specific choices made, and therefore, no real human being with a past standing before us. This is an episode about having a specifi...

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content! ⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe⁠⁠⁠ When Milton recently asked Gustavo Dudamel, the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, what he saw when he looked at a piece of orchestral music, he said: “I see phrases.” This is a perfect metaphor for how we need to approach text as actors: not as a group of sentences but as...

In the Summer of 1980 during the run of a regional production of Boys in the Band, Milton wrote a letter to Stella Adler asking for her guidance. She responded: “The actor in you is beginning to feel the birth pangs in acquiring the role and that is very normal. The work you do at home is done, and is in you…Let it go where it wants. That’s the impressive joy of just letting it happen instead of f...

Whether you’re auditioning for a pilot or in rehearsal for a Clifford Odets play, our jobs as actors is to launch, imaginatively, into the world of the piece, and open ourselves to its influence. But how do we build this world? By talking out one believable moment at a time and knowing we have to earn what we create. Have a question or comment? Email us at: questionsformilton@gmail.com

As actors, most of us have had the experience of closely identifying with a character we’re playing. In this episode, Milton talks about the mistake so many of us make when we feel like we relate to a role. “The problem is,” he says, “somehow in the back of our minds we think that’s enough, that we don’t have to do any other work.” Tune in to find out how to avoid this common pitfall, and how we c...

How did we end up studying acting in the first place? In this episode, Milton puts his teaching in context by giving us a brief history of modern acting technique; from 19th-century realism to Konstantin Stanislavky and the American teachers who adapted his principals and revolutionized the American acting landscape.

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content! ⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe⁠⁠⁠ In this episode, Milton talks about how writing and thinking are great ways for actors to avoid acting, and offers a practical technique that allows us to fully own (and earn) our character’s reality, or in other words: make a complete lie sound like the truth. Email your questions...

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content! ⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe⁠⁠⁠ Contrary to popular belief, just because you can answer “who, what, why, where, when” and “what do I want?” doesn’t mean you can act. Stella Adler said: “Facts are death to the actor until they’re fed through the imagination and become the *experience* of the facts.” Tune into this...

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content! ⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe⁠⁠⁠ In this episode, Milton reveals what he feels to be The Biggest Sin of Acting and offers solutions on how we can resist the urge to commit it. What is one of those solutions? Look at the blank canvas and think: “so many possibilities.” Email your acting questions to: questionsformi...

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content! ⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe⁠⁠⁠ Have you ever worried that studying and honing a technique as an actor will destroy your natural ability? Is acting just about being "natural"? In this first episode of I Don't Need an Acting Class, Milton answers the question: "why take an acting class?" We...