I Don't Need an Acting Class

“Raising the stakes” is an expression we hear a lot in the world of acting technique. In this episode, Milton gives you very practical ideas and exercises that will help you raise the stakes. These are practices you can apply to any project you’re working on that will help to turn the dial. “The reason practical techniques like this are so useful,” says Milton, “is that, without artificially raisi...

Have you ever felt like you’re playing two actions at once in a scene and therefore not committing 100% to anything at all? In this episode, Milton addresses a problem that Greg had while shooting a short film in which he felt torn between two different actions and ended up feeling confused as to what he was doing. It raised the question of whether it’s possible to play two actions at once, or if...

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content! https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe In this episode, as the Ice Cream Man relentlessly plays his song on the streets of Hamilton Heights— (are they trying to make us go crazy?)— Milton talks about developing the ability to know when your work isn’t working. This is about trusting yourself. If it feels like it’s not working...

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content! https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe Like the many other tools we have at our disposal, working on a character trait can give you something to hold onto, something that is “playable.” Here’s what’s important to keep in mind: a character trait is not a plot. It has to be something we can “get” about the character, without th...

When creating a character, it’s important to take yourself out of the mix. If you don’t, you’ll bring the character down to you, falling back on how you would react to the given circumstances, as opposed to taking stock of what you know about the character, and building a human being based on those facts. If you know where the character ends up— being a success— then you can further examine the na...

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content! ⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe⁠⁠⁠ In this episode, Milton muses on the Stella Adler quote: "Your talent is in your choices,” realizing the ways this statement has been widely misinterpreted and misunderstood. The idea has crippled actors because we’re so busy trying to come up with brilliant choices, it paraly...

There’s a difference between getting the job and getting the part. And if we want to elevate ourselves to doing great work and truly “get the part,” then we have to understand that the key lies in discerning a plot problem from a soul problem. Your character’s soul problem is what runs deep. It’s what’s really going on, underneath the plot. This is not about getting the answer right, it’s an explo...

One of our listeners recently began work as a series regular on a new show, and found herself a little lost because of the lack of information she’s been given about her character. When you don’t know where your character came from or is headed, how do you create a three-dimensional human being? How do you approach material when you’ve been given so few facts and there is so much unknown? Do you j...

In this episode Milton shares how his “Talking Out” technique was born in order to clarify how it can best work for us as actors. We talk out in order to take ownership of what we are talking about, little by little. Instead of feeling the pressure to deliver a “performance,” we start where we are, even if it means we are not as connected as we want to be, or will eventually be. This is what Stell...

We all know the importance of doing research when creating a role, but even more important is what you do with that research. If you can’t turn it into something actable, it’s useless. This is a skill that we have to develop through practice: the ability to take a dry piece of information and determine what it means from an actor’s point of view. The facts should lead you to thinking; thinking lea...

As an actor, you want to be so much more than just “accurate.” You must have something going on inside of you that makes you alive on the outside. An exercise we can employ that helps us connect to the life inside of us is talking out something you love or something you hate. “You can do this if you will begin to be observers in life and not an audience in life,” Milton says in this episode. “Look...

There was a period where you took the time and energy to communicate, either writing a letter or speaking. We’re now living in a world where language has become truncated into a shorthand of images and soundbites and yes, emojis. This episode is a rant about that. In may not be consequential for most people, but for actors, it’s important that we utilize the muscle of outward self-expression, lest...

The ability to identify what’s going on in any given scene from an actor’s perspective is very important. Instead of getting bogged down in all the elements of the scene— specifically the plot and what your character is going through emotionally— we have to be able to take those facts and translate them into a clear action that activates us. If the action does not bring us to life, we have to find...

Because of the pandemic, the nature of the business of acting has changed, and most likely there’s no going back. Working remotely has become so pervasive that even when theater reopens, self-tape auditions and Zoom readings will remain a vital part of what we do everyday. Because of that, imaginatively *building the place* is that much more essential. We may be in our bedrooms sitting in front of...

In this episode, Milton draws parallels between the actor’s and writer’s process when it comes to creating a character. Both the actor and the writer have to live with a new character, talk with them, walk with them, get to know them fully, inside and out. The improvisational exercises we do as actors allow us to see how they behave, how they see the world. It’s not about getting the answer right,...

It’s ironic that in this present global, digital age where information travels at the speed of light, we feel so emotionally disconnected to what’s happening in our world, whether in our own country or on the other side of the globe. Perhaps our access to all of it has desensitized us. This has affected our acting because of our inability to understand big ideas. “It’s not enough to be truthful or...

Welcome to Season 3! Based on Stella Adler’s work with Stanislavsky, everything we do as actors comes out of the world of the play, or the given circumstances that the writer has given us. One way into the world is understand the playwright’s world view, what they want to say. This season, as the class begins working on George Bernard Shaw, Milton asks us to begin slowly brainstorming what the wor...

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content! ⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe⁠⁠⁠ A great technique that we have at your disposal when building a character, is to interview them. Or, come up with interview questions and answer them as the character you’re playing. If you, the actor, could ask your character anything, what would you most want to know? The questio...

Actors often ask: “how is this character like me?” But unless we know how the characters we play are different from us, it’s hard not to fall back on playing ourselves, or a variation thereof. Knowing the clear differences in how you and your character approach the world is the first step in finding actable character traits that will help you eventually embody this human being. Brought to you by w...

One effective way to uncover your action in a scene is to ask: what is going on with him/her/them/you? Actions, as we refer to them in acting, are often misunderstood as “activity” or “plot.” The true action is what’s going on beneath all of that, internally, within the character. It is what you are really doing to your scene partner(s) in order to get something. Asking yourself “what is going on?...

It’s important to realize how conditioned we are to quickly jump to a conclusion about a character when we read lines of dialogue. We will end up playing an uniterteresting cliché unless we slow down and dig deeper to find a bold choice that we love. This will help you enormously in auditions because if you go beyond the obvious choice, you will walk in (or appear on tape) with something whole ori...

“Once you go to the script, all creative work stops” Milton says. It’s a provocative statement but it’s true if you consider how most actors jump straight to a performance or an intelligent rendering of the lines before they ever have an understanding of the world they’re inhabiting, or even a monologue’s sequence of thoughts. In this week’s short episode, Milton uses the short film he’s working o...

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content! https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe It’s something every actor can relate to: you walk in the room, onstage on in front of the camera. Your heart is racing, your mouth is dry, and before you even speak, you know your nerves are getting the best of you. In that moment, instead of trusting all the work you’ve done and living...

Stanislavsky’s Method of Acting was born out of trial and error. He was not a natural talent. Had he been, we probably would not have been gifted with his discoveries of the craft. By analyzing his students’ successes and failures, and his own, he created techniques that were practical and coaxed the actor “toward the inner most source of their creativity.” Brought to you by weaudition.com

As you gain a deeper understanding of the role you’re playing through analysis and rehearsal, it’s important that we give ourselves permission for our actions, or impulses, to change. It’s not something static that we decide in advance. And, if an action becomes stale and is no longer bringing you to life, it’s essential that it changes. Brought to you by weaudition.com