The notion of acting class exercises often conjures up some pretty tiresome images—akin to what the girl talked about in A Chorus Line—pretending to be a table, be a sports car, or an ice-cream cone. As I’ve already mentioned, my approach as a teacher is based in my experience as a director, and I almost never have time for exercises as a director. That being said, below are some I believe to be down-to-earth, common-sense, and can help the actor solve certain issues. These should be done only as needed, and then what you get—put it to use in your next scene. Please understand: These exercises are to be done and supervised by a trained teacher, not done alone by the actor.
1.Song and Dance Exercise
2.Picture Exercise
3.Creating an Environment
4.Personal Monologue
5.Audition Exercise
6.Improvisation Exercise
7.Relaxation Exercise
8.Shoot Exercise
1. OPEN UP—THE SONG AND DANCE EXERCISE
This exercise has two parts. First, the actor stands in front of the class and sings, trying to keep his body relaxed and still. He puts concentration on his feelings, his impulses, and tries to experience them and release them. At first his emotional response may be slight, but as the actor becomes more relaxed, I want him to coax those small impulses, try to encourage them. Usually there are specific points of physical tension that serve to hold your impulses, your emotions in check. So part of the exercise is to become aware of this tension, where it resides, and how to release it, allowing the inner feelings to come out. Don’t dissipate these feelings with fidgeting, spasms, nervous rocking or any talk. When the actor is inhibited from extraneous movement in this exercise, the emotions often become much more available. With one actress I found that as she was singing, she was holding her thumb and finger together, tightly. Very tightly. As soon as I saw that and made her release the tension there, she started crying. The same occurred with an actor who kept raising his eyebrows. I just took my hand and tried to loosen that area—bang. Emotion. So it’s about trying to locate that tension. I try to be somewhat gentle with the actor, a little humorous—they’re often nervous about standing there in front of the class, so I try to get them to relax and have a sense of humor about it.
In the second part of the exercise, the actor is instructed to carry out specific movements and rhythms of various kinds, like jazz, marching, jumping, and to sing out fully. The effort is intended to release the voice and body to a freer expressiveness. So when the emotions haven’t been tapped during the first part of the exercise, sometimes the physical activity of the second will help loosen them up.
With this exercise, open your voice. Get in touch with any mild sensation that can lead you further to a strong emotional response. Allow the emotional connection. Experience freedom of rhythm and movement, connect with what is happening, and deal with tension, attitudes, and defenses that might interfere with your emotional responsiveness. This exercise is very good for close-ups, by the way—it can develop the ability for a strong emotional response without any jerky movements, keeping yourself in the frame. The actor is capable of experiencing anything, but in some cases needs to be trained to get out of his or her own way and allow the experience to happen. (For further discussion of the song and dance exercise, see the chapter, “Exposing the Secret.”)
2. DETAILS, BABY—THE PICTURE EXERCISE
Find a painting or a photograph of a character: let’s say one of artist Toulouse-Lautrec’s ladies. Create the exact physical pose the character has in the picture, the exact makeup and costume—this will enhance the reality, and hence your own belief. Aim to create the exact pose, the character’s attitude, the inner emotional life, the outer physical life, the full, real sense of the person in the picture. Really be the character. It’s a matter of getting so into the picture or painting that you are almost possessed by it.
Once you nail the pose and that inner and outer life, then the exercise can be expanded by adding movement or behavior, by saying a few sentences or a poem or a monologue, all of which emanate from the character you’ve created based on the photograph. This work on behavior must come from the picture. It’s as if you couldn’t do what you are doing without the picture having informed that choice. If you speak, don’t try just to be clever, don’t come up with lines that you think explain the biography of the character. Just try to be true to this person. If, as you do the exercise, your work on the character weakens, go back into the pose of the picture—get reconnected, get re-involved.
As the actor connects with the picture and begins to take on the characteristics of the person portrayed, a transformation occurs into a specific character. This is very detailed work, done by the actor outside class in preparation for the exercise. You must pay strict attention to the nth degree of the pose, the emotional attitude, and the inner life of the person in the picture—the hand gesture, the position of the shoulder. Where is the character looking? In what manner? What is he or she thinking? Now you must execute physically and emotionally what you see, and through this execution you involve yourself in the creation of the character. Through this exercise, the actor gains a power, clarity, and definition of the character that he would not otherwise have. Exact physical duplication and a real investigation of the emotional life are both keys to fulfilling the exercise.
In terms of selecting a photograph, it is best not to choose an actor or model or some other celebrity—because their personalities can be well-known, the exercise then becomes one of mimicry. Instead, find a connection with just a real person. Find a butcher. Find a housewife. The possibilities are endless. It’s about you and that photograph. A full-body shot is generally better than a close-up, because you can see the clothes, the posture, and you can better assess the behavior you need to create. It’s best if you have an emotional response or connection to the picture that will motivate and propel you. Don’t cop out by choosing a picture of someone who happens to wear the clothes you already have in your closet. Find someone you have to reach for, who challenges you. Don’t use a mirror to prepare, other than maybe to check the pose a few times. Instead, try to rely on your sense of observation and perception to duplicate the posture and the attitude. As you prepare the exercise, see if you can take the character out—go ahead and take him or her out to the grocery market and feel the real life there, interact with real people. Unless, of course, your character is from another century or has a strange costume or something that will get you in trouble with the police. Although that might be interesting, too!
An actress who was in the original Roots was in class with me when she was offered a role in the sequel, which would have required her to play someone much older than she was. She was panicked that she couldn’t pull off playing the older age, and was ready to turn down the part. I had her bring in a picture exercise of an older woman—she brought in a picture of her aunt. She really nailed the exercise, and as a result her own belief was enhanced and she ended up booking the part in the sequel.
The American actor is accused of not being as good as the British in creating a character. Bullshit. Dustin Hoffman as a 100-year-old Indian in Little Big Man. Brando as The Godfather. Walter Huston in Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Streep in Sophie’s Choice. Kathy Bates in Misery. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. So there is a history of great character work by American actors, and this exercise helps develop the tools that will continue that tradition.
3. BE THERE FOR THE PAYOFF—CREATING AN ENVIRONMENT
You’re at home, working on your stamp collection, your painting, your writing work. You’re very involved. You look at your watch—you’ve been doing this for an hour and a half, absorbed, lost in the activity. This is what is possible in your acting work: really creating a place and your involvement in an activity.
The environmental exercise helps the actor create a place and this involvement: bedroom, office, kitchen, workroom, or whatever environment the actor assigns. The exercise is used to make those places more specific and personal by adding the actor’s own hairbrush, or an actress’s makeup on her own dressing table, or more emotionally charged objects such as family photos, an heirloom brooch, a personal letter, etc. The actor assembles furniture and props to create a place, specific and believable, so that the environment is vital in centering the actor in a reality.
The purpose of the exercise in the end is to get the actor involved, living and functioning as a person in a room, rather than an actor on a stage. A couple of boxes and a chair won’t do the job. You really have to invest in creating your space with your objects. Don’t just bring three books and a bedspread. Really create your own space. Then discover some involving activity that interests the hell out of you, a behavior that engages your concentration, your creativity—not something banal. I’m not wild about painting one’s nails while text messaging. Reading People magazine? Banned. I’ve seen a few new male actors in class choose some masturbation ritual. Now, as Victor Borge said, “Unless of course you absolutely have to...,” I’d rather you didn’t, as it seems geared more toward showing off a certain bravado than about the exercise itself. Cooking? Okay, if you’re good, and if you take care and are really involved. Definitely not stapling headshots. You must have something you like to do that uses the creative part of your mind, right? Something that really involves you. You’ve got these kinds of activities—Come on!
Over the years, I have added a wrinkle to the environmental exercise. The actor has a task and a life in the space, but now as the actor becomes fully absorbed and relaxed and at ease, a crisis occurs: the phone rings with news that someone dear has been hurt in an accident; a letter arrives from a lover breaking off the relationship; you find your spouse’s diary and discover a terrible secret; a person comes to deliver you a court summons. The actor, absorbed by his behavior, relaxed and at ease in the space, has not anticipated the crisis and responds to it more naturally, more deeply. The idea here is not to show off your writing skills, creating a minutes-long telephone call of epic tragic proportions. The class need not even know what the crisis is. With your involved activity as the foundation, the simple point of the crisis is to discover your response to it. It needs to hit you. Don’t spend time away from class heavily preparing the crisis and your response. Just pick something hot, or you can even have in mind two or three possible crises, have the idea of what they might be before you go, but then really let it happen right there during the exercise. As you do the exercise, you can pick the one that seems hottest at the moment. Receive the crisis quickly and respond to it (remember to use the tools of reflective delay and the “six o’clock news” concept). Does your behavior change? How so? How is your concentration on the activity you’ve been doing in the exercise altered by the crisis? Do you try to return to the activity, but you can’t? Discover the answers as you do this exercise. Don’t just receive the bad news, sit down, and cry. Respond behaviorally, using your environment to help you.
4. A KEY TO YOU—THE PERSONAL MONOLOGUE
You need to be personal in your work always. Towards that result, the personal monologue is a powerful tool. You write a piece, not being concerned about whether it’s a play or not, just something you feel strongly about. It could be about your life directly: your struggle as an immigrant child trying to connect with a new country; or your struggle to come to grips with a father who has never expressed his love. One recent monologue was about the actor’s struggle to become a person and not just a “spoiled rich kid.” Another actor wrote about his struggle with his attitude toward reading for a part, and the doubting voice within him that prevented positive results. So you take one of these personal situations and write or improvise the monologue in the class, connecting very intimately with the experience you’re covering. It’s not necessary for the monologue to be true, by the way. An actress in class did one where she talked about how she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer—by the end of the monologue the whole class was in tears, and then it turned out she made the thing up. (Actors sometimes can be downright ornery.)
The personal monologue eggs you on to become more vulnerable. It’s about your life, your feelings, your emotions. Naked personal involvement. An evocative experience that springs from you spontaneously and emotionally. It reveals the depth of emotion, the power of your own experience. You can take this powerful experience to any play or film you work on by applying the same kind of immediacy and passion that you had in the personal monologue.
The personal monologue should be a process. It should affect you as an actor and possibly as a person. You should be trying to work something out in the personal monologue—it should be about something, and you should learn something from doing it. Be careful not just to sit in a chair and bemoan how awful your childhood was. Get creative. An actor once did a personal monologue about why he didn’t work in the industry more. I told him he should ask the class, “Why don’t I work more?” The answers from the class were frank and direct, and led the actor to look at real issues about himself that opened his eyes. I once wrote a personal monologue for an actress, in which she acted out excerpts from various roles that I thought she could play. Not only did she create a fabulous character for each role, but she let the performance of each of those monologues affect her as she went from one to another, finally culminating in a very personal statement of her doubts about ever achieving these roles. Very dangerous for her. Risky. It was her best work ever as an actress.
As Hamlet, your job as the actor is not to be a professional puppet, echoing Shakespeare’s words through his ventriloquist character. You are an artist creating on-the-spot behavior, experiences, and dialogue that should seem as if you yourself had authored it, even though it’s Shakespeare’s. The personal monologue makes it clear to you that your personal story can be emotional and passionate, and so allows you to believe in your power as an actor to make even Shakespeare personal. (For a further discussion of the Personal Monologue, see the chapter, “Personal Confidence.”)
5. GO FOR IT, ITS YOURS—THE AUDITION EXERCISE
In an audition exercise, we set up a casting office on stage, and we’ll have classmates play a casting person and/or a director, and the actor will come in and do whatever he or she actually does at an audition. The actor can bring “sides” from an audition he or she already had, or the material may be chosen for them. This is a very revealing exercise. Because aside from the acting part of it, you’ll often spot physical mannerisms, or an attitude that the actor brings into the audition that is not productive, no matter how good the acting is. But of course, you can also see what the actor does with regard to the choices about character and script. As a teacher, I can count on the fact that the Audition Exercise will yield about three times the number of questions from the class as scenes—because of course, everyone wants to be better at booking work. So here are my thoughts on this for now, with more to come in the Administration section as well:
First off, there are no readings, only actings. When auditioning, you must act the part, not read it. The casting people want to see that you can do the part, and you must reveal to them your acting ability and your rightness for this role. You’re telling them, “Relax—I can do it.” And part of the equation is creating a sense that there’s even more to come if they give you the role. So yes, you nail the acting, and make them feel as if there is more discovery ahead.
Sometimes you can be more effective by creating a place in which to play the scene by moving the furniture in the casting office where possible. In other words, take possession of the space—but be quick about it. They’re on a schedule. Many readings these days are occurring for camera—they’re recording your audition to show the director later on. You may have to stand on a mark or sit in a particular chair. No problem. They may want you to play directly to the camera lens, or to the person in the room next to the camera. No problem. You’re a professional, right? So do what they ask. I can play The Iceman Cometh in a chair. I can do Romeo into a lens. I can be emotional while moving or not moving. You have to stay relaxed and as flexible as you can about it. It probably won’t come down to movement, anyhow. It’s going to come down to acting: Discern what is happening in the scene in the simplest sense, nail who the character is, make an acting choice which is alive for you, some choice that fires you, keep it simple—and go for it.
My advice is always to hold the script, even if you know the lines. If you present a memorized audition they’ll see you in terms of a “finished performance,” and you’re not there yet. Again, let them think there’s more to come. The idea behind holding the script for lines is “Pay me and I’ll learn them.” Really commit to your acting partner, even if it’s a casting person who doesn’t give much. Some actors say after a reading, “I couldn’t do anything. The person I was reading with was a zombie.” This defense does not hold up in court. The professional actor can play passionately to a door. The professional actress can be a seductive Miss Julie to a broom. And sometimes you might prefer the broom! If you finish a reading and feel that you didn’t do what you wanted, go ahead—ask to do it one more time. Even if you’re in your car on the way home. Turn around. Go back. But if you do, and they let you read again, you’d better be damned good!
I think actors freak out about auditions because they literally think they’re going to die. It’s a wild thought, but it’s as if they’re reminded of some time in the distant ancient past when they had to plead their case before an austere magistrate who—if they failed to convince him—took their house, their family, their life. With or without this ancient scenario, actors feel the terror of the test. Therefore, know an audition is going for a job, a part, a stepping stone in your career, not life and death. Robert DeNiro did a talk at Paramount once, and responding to a question about auditions, said, “Look, you go in, you read, you do the best you can, you go home. You’re probably not going to get the job, anyway.” There’s a certain relaxedness that I like about that. It is only one part, there will be many more.
I often hear actors tell me that they feel the part they’re reading for is too small, the material too stupid, that for whatever reason they really don’t want the part. If that is the case—don’t go. Really. Don’t do yourself and the producers an injustice by reading for a part you don’t really want. Be willing to be honest with yourself about the material and the role, and communicate with your agents. If you’re not into the part, don’t read for it. Or change your mind about it, and go in with some enthusiasm, knowing full well that these opportunities, and your response to them, are a part of your life as an actor. And you must work professionally. There are no actors, as there are other artists, such as painters and composers, who are discovered after they are dead.
Sometimes you’ll encounter a situation, it may be within an audition setting, or it may be a separate “general” meeting, where you simply have to be conversational with the director or writer. Don’t be this person:
“Well, the last thing I did was this project, The Werewolf Eats Gidget, it was really small, I mean, like I shot a day on it. But I’m feeling more confident. In class they’re talking to me a lot about my confidence. My therapist is helping, too. And it’s working, because I’m feeling better, even though I still hate LA. Except for the food. I’m a bit, I know, distracted...I just broke up with my guy....
Do not talk about your last acting job, the art of acting, or your life as an actor. Talk about the paintings in the room, last Sunday’s football game, hot fashion items, or other current matters that interest you. Your job here is just to be a person. Be charming. Be confident. Let them know you see them as individuals, and let them see where you are coming from. If you have a passion for politics or painting or music, let them know. And ask about them—always good to be more interested in them than you’re interested in you. Remember, they are looking for someone. They need to fill a role. What they actually want is to resolve a situation: an uncast part. You could be their answer.
By the way, if you are not their answer, either from a reading or interview, fine. Just go about your business. Get in your car and go. Have lunch. Clean the house, plant flowers, read a book, wrestle with a Turk, or rehearse a scene for class. Do not dwell on the possible reasons as to why and wherefore you didn’t get the part. Instead, write a nice letter. The letter should be along the lines of what a pleasure it was to meet them, thanks for the opportunity, if anything ever comes up, etc. Many actors have gotten work based on a good follow-up letter after having been turned down for a part.
And regarding “feedback”: it is often unclear, inaccurate, unusable. No matter what the feedback is, the truth of the matter is you do not know what was said by whom to whom regarding your audition. It’s unknowable. It’s presented as “fact,” but you simply do not know unless the director is speaking to you personally. I once turned down an actor for a part because I felt he had too much of a streetwise quality. The agent passed along to him that I thought he was “too sleazy.” This actor was a friend of mine, and it affected the relationship for years. So don’t listen to feedback. Don’t doubt your own existence and your reasons for being an actor. Have dignity, work on yourself, study, and it will come. Persist. Persist. Persist.
6. DON’T GET CLEVER—THE IMPROVISATION EXERCISE
Just as two chemicals react when mixed with each other, so do two people—but contrary to what you may think, words are not the catalyst. What is happening between people, the emotional interchange, the subtext—this is what drives a story. In teaching, I use an improvisation exercise as a tool to drive home this lesson. In addition to the various ways to use improvisation as discussed above, which can be considered exercises in their own right, this specific Improvisation Exercise is used to help develop the actor’s impulses and ability to discover each moment anew, fresh, using their imagination, without preconception or roadmap or censorship.
The idea is that I’ll get at least two actors to come up on stage. I may give a circumstance to both, or just to one of the actors. But often what I like to do is set up improvisations where very little or no information is given. Maybe I’ll just whisper to one of the actors: You need to break up with him. So what’s going on? With either a few words from me or none, the actors are forced to relate to each other, trying to discover the answer from their partner. Why is she being cold to me? What’s going on with her today? The actors have to search, really look for new, honest answers—rather than those that might have been glibly available had I told them a bunch of circumstances for the improvisation, or where I wanted it to go. They can’t rely on Stanislavski’s aforementioned “muscle of the tongue”—the actor’s facility with language or words used as a substitute for honest emotions and behavior. I don’t want them to write a clever story with funny lines. The desired result is for a spontaneous moment-to-moment experience for the actors, which leads to deeper emotion, behavior, and communication with their partners—and surprises. The power of the exercise is huge in getting the actors not to think, but to be caught off-guard, and so experience more and find the real truth of their personal responses. It’s a kind of risky fun, and often humorous—but hopefully not just because of clever lines, but through human interaction.
7. RELAXATION EXERCISE
The strings on the violin or piano—too tight? Snap. Shrill. Too loose? No sound, bland. Try playing a violin with strings made of cooked spaghetti. No go. A balance is needed between relaxation and tension. Relaxation is necessary for the easy flow of energy, emotion, and physical activity from the actor. Excessive tension can stop this flow for sure, but I believe a performer also needs a bit of that metaphorical string tension in order to be at his or her best.
Every so often in class, when I have a student whose tension has become an obstacle to their expressiveness, I will do a relaxation exercise. In this exercise, the actor sits in a chair and simply tries to fall asleep. The attention of the actor is directed toward a specific body part where tension exists. Once the actor spots the area of tension, often relaxation will quickly occur. Common areas are around the mouth, back of the neck, lower back, and at the temples. I coax him to either gently move these parts to relieve the tension, or lightly massage the areas such as the tiny muscles around the mouth, or gently move and roll the head to relieve tension in the neck. In this simple way, relief from tension can happen. This is best done with a teacher present, but certainly simply trying to fall asleep in a chair can be done as relaxation before doing a scene in class or professionally.
In dealing with tension and relaxation, one must be able to differentiate between a negative kind of nervousness (fearful, introverted, shaky) and a positive excitement (stimulated, stirred, induced to action). Nervousness can be your enemy, can hold you back, interfere with your creative intensity. Excitement can be a friend, helpful if used properly, making you more alive and expressive.
So in working on relaxation, you must be careful not to water down your intensity. Some actors have the misunderstanding that they should be absolutely calm, that their heartbeats should not accelerate a jot, that they should be on stage or in front of the camera just as they are reading the newspaper and having coffee on a leisurely Sunday morning. Should the actor be completely calm? Not necessarily. You only need to be relaxed to the extent that emotions, energy, and physical behavior are not impeded. If you feel the pulse racing, this may be just the excitement of acting, which is positive. But if you really are feeling impeded, that’s a sign of tension, which is a negative, so that’s a moment when you can try the relaxation exercise. But this should be done judiciously to balance things out. My opinion is that too much time is devoted to dealing with the so-called problem of nervousness and tension so that relaxation becomes an end in itself, often replacing intensity and excitement with dullness and lack of energy. A relaxed, no intensity, apathetic, loose-as-a-noodle actor is not your sexiest, most dangerous Richard III.
8. THE SHOOT EXERCISE
In a Shoot Exercise, the actors choose a scene in advance to perform, but they don’t rehearse. They memorize the material on their own, individually. The most they do together is run the lines just before the scene goes up, maybe agree on a set plan for the stage, but that’s it. They have to rely on their talent, their impulses, their ability to observe and listen and respond to their partner in that moment. Hopefully the freedom of a Shoot Exercise can be refreshing—the scene isn’t overworked. It’s not overthought. There’s no guilt about whether the rehearsal process was detailed enough. The imagination flies, and the actor can feel freer to let it rip.
The idea here is that the actors should be able to apply the lessons they’ve been learning through rehearsed scene work to the more likely professional circumstance, particularly in film and television, which is that there may be very little or zero rehearsal before the cameras are turned on. You may ask why if the realistic professional circumstance in film and TV is little or no rehearsal, why train on all these in-depth, rehearsed and researched scenes? Because you have to learn to do the necessary work in a methodical fashion before you apply it on the fly. People will often remark to a talented artist, director, musician, or any skilled tradesperson: How did you do that so well, and so effortlessly? Well, through years of methodical study, apprenticeship and experience, that’s how! The Shoot Exercise is there to put this acquired ability to the test.
In the theatre, of course, weeks of rehearsal is the norm, and even on film projects, the more rehearsal that occurs before filming, the better the chances are that the project will move forward efficiently. So this exercise allows the actors who have been in class a while the chance to see how their work can be applied in a zero rehearsal environment, but it’s not something I recommend for newer actors in class, nor as a steady diet during your studies.
So these are the exercises I use. They are simple, and I hope clear. They are training tools, and keep in mind as I said—to be used if the actor is having a particular problem. They can be great fun. But—no headache? No aspirin necessary.