Making Active Choices
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 pas...
19 Touko 15min
Living Off Your Partner
Actively building an attitude to your partner can open you up to the action of the scene.
13 Touko 13min
Empathy and Sympathy
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 experien...
5 Touko 12min
Believe Your Choices
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...
29 Huhti 14min
Character Traits and Actions
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 impul...
21 Huhti 16min
Actors Talk Acting
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 ta...
16 Huhti 16min
Working On A Monologue
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."
7 Huhti 18min
The Actor's Personal Connection
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 b...
31 Maalis 14min
