I Don't Need an Acting Class

Cultivating the imagination was one of Stella Adler's core tenets as an acting teacher. But the idea of the imagination is often misunderstood when actors assume that their imagination is limited to their experience. We must inform and enrich our imaginations in order to broaden it as an instrument. When educated, the imagination becomes a much more useful tool. This is why it’s so important to do...

It essential for us to step back and look at our character's timeline in the play, to know where he or she is going. One of the benefits of playing a role is that, unlike in life, we know what the future is. And so the actor, unlike your character, knows where your character is headed. This is important information to have because it informs what pieces of past we need to build in order to get the...

This week, Milton talks about what it means to “go there,” or commit 100% to giving ourselves over to the circumstances of the play. It’s an enormous emotional risk because by letting go completely, we make ourselves vulnerable, revealing our true selves through a character. “It’s like going off a high diving board. You know you won’t die because there’s water there, but it’s so far down. It’s not...

This week, Milton touches on a very tenuous aspect of building a character’s past. There is a difference between experiencing a past event from the perspective of the present, and experiencing the past in that moment , as if reliving the scene. It’s an important distinction because your relationship to the past event in the present is different than it was at the time it was happening. There are n...

When building a craft, it’s important that we actively put to use the tools and techniques that we’ve learned. Otherwise we’ll keep “winging it”, hoping and praying that it lands. Also, kicking ass on an exercise doesn’t mean that we’ve mastered the concept. We must be disciplined, practicing the techniques over and over again in order to integrate them into our way of working, and eventually it b...

There are many different aspects of acting technique. One of them is building a character’s past. A helpful way to approach this is to know what the major events are in this person’s life. We ‘build’ these events by talking them out in improvised monologues so the character’s past is in us. If an event is referred to in the text, then you know you have to build it. But there are other events that...

In this episode, Milton talks about the difference between acting as an art form and acting to “get a job,” and how one is much more fulfilling than the other. The Art of Acting is about the pursuit of uncovering the essence, or human spirit, of the role. But that cannot be found overnight— it’s a journey through the complexity of the human condition. Part of our job, as actors is to actively make...

We begin our second season with a reminder that acting is not a math equation. “The method,” said Stanislavsky, “is not a guide, it’s a culture.” This means that a creative process, like a culture, is meant to change and grow. There is no hard and fast, static rule book for acting; we require different things for different roles. But if we keep digging, exploring, trying new things, seeing what wo...

Don't panic. We'll be back with Season 2 of I Don't Need an Acting Class in September!

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content! ⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe⁠⁠⁠ As we continue making discoveries about all the dimensions that make up a character, we always want to look for what is actable or doable. For example, if your character is compulsive, the challenge is to translate that into something doable. One way to get there is by asking ourse...

This week, Milton talks about how building different moments in your characters past reveals new information about them, and the importance of knowing exactly what that information is. We must ask the question: What does this moment I’m building tell me about my character? Your answer will clarify a new dimension of this human being. Then, we must integrate every character-discovery, so that you h...

As we approach a play and begin letting the facts simmer in our imagination, we can begin to ask questions, as though we are interviewing our character. There are no right or wrong questions and no two actors will ask the same ones. Your own personal exploration becomes part of your signature on the role. But here’s the rub: we cannot answer these questions based on our own limited personal experi...

We often run into trouble when we try to recreate a performance. This is because the action “to do what I did yesterday” is different from the action that made you DO what you did yesterday. But there are ways to avoid falling into this trap. In this episode, Milton gives examples of adjustments you can make so that the circumstances keep feeding you and the performance stays alive.

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content! ⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe⁠⁠⁠ It can often be overwhelming if you think about the massive responsibility we have as actors and all the many pieces we must fully own before it all comes together to create an illusion that looks and sounds like the truth. We can’t master everything at once and if we try to, we’ll...

This week, Milton talks about resisting the urge to play an effect, or a result. Often if we receive an “effect direction” such as: “it’s too big” or “it’s too small,” we will then overcompensate in the opposite direction. By doing so, we’re playing an effect, focused on our behavior as opposed to what creates that behavior. Part of being an intelligent actor is having the ability to translate an...

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...