YOUR GROWING LIST OF ACTING TIPS
These tips are profoundly simple and very practical. They are not an acting lesson in themselves but they will clearly point the way to the concepts and skills you need to work on. They will also raise your awareness of the mindset that is required to manage the exciting and rewarding job of being an actor.
You will also find FREE exercises that enable you to test out the concepts.
For $20 (AUS) you can have ongoing access for 12 months to this ever-growing list of tips – emails will update you as new tips become available. Enrol for the tips here. Or purchase "Creating a Character in 10 Seconds - PREMIER" and you will immediately have access to "Tips to Inspire" for free for 12 months.
IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS EMAIL …
Richard@rehearsalroom.com (put “Online Question” in the subject line)
TIP 1: An Important Difference
The key foundation of this approach to acting is to be able to separate a character’s conscious and unconscious impulses. No other process makes this important separation so clear. ACTING TECHNIQUE CHARACTER
FREE EXERCISE INCLUDED WITH THIS TIP. Some instructions and a scene to enable you to test out these concepts. If you wish you can send them to The Rehearsal Room for personal feedback.
Tip 2: The Importance of the Story
Understanding the Importance of the Story – acting techniques focus on lots of specific processes but none of them focus on how to deliver the story – that’s The Rehearsal Room difference. STORY TECHNIQUE
Tip 3 Being Totally Real
The key to being totally real is connected to managing the relationship and conversation as separate entities. ACTING TECHNIQUE CHARACTER
Read the blog "I Got the Job"
Tip 4: Beginnings and Endings
Relaxation – is a big deal for any performer but so are beginnings and endings.
ACTING TECHNIQUE
Tip 5: Instigating and Responding in a Conversation
Keeping an audience engaged through the middle of a scene is the next important step once you have engaged them with the beginning of the story. ACTING TECHNIQUE
Tip 6: Conversation Structure
Understanding that conversations have a structure and how that structure works is a fundamental skill for an actor. Conversations always have an ‘Instigator’. ACTING TECHNIQUE
Tip 7: The Importance of Listening
Listening is the key to being real. ACTING TECHNIQUE
(This tip was recorded in 2017 in a different format)
Tip 8: The Key to Great Listening
Actors often confusing hearing with listening. This tip clearly defines the difference. ACTING TECHNIQUE
Tip 9: The Importance of Owning the Space
A simple fundamental of acting can be easily corrupted if the actor doesn’t understand how their mind might works. ACTING TECHNIQUE
Tip 10: A Professional Choice
Never stop a take if you can keep going. The professional choice is to keep going. Your feeling that a performance isn’t going well is notoriously unreliable. ACTING TECHNIQUE
Managing the actor’s mind.
Tip 11: Mind Management
There is a problem with overloading the mind with too much information. For the actor, stoking the fire too much can mean you block up the chimney. ACTING TECHNIQUE
Tip 12: A Fundamental of this Technique
The importance of managing the actor’s mind when making acting decisions is important territory that is often overlooked – this is the focus of The Rehearsal Room technique. ACTING TECHNIQUE
Tip 13: Making the Best Choices
Psychologists tell us how our minds function in life and when actors understand how our minds make decisions then they can work at applying those processes to their acting. ACTING TECHNIQUE & STORY TECHNIQUE
Tip 14 The Reading Problem
The actor’s reading skills can sometimes be more of a hindrance than a help. One important tool to manage this problem is to move away from literary intuitive choices and get specific with the details. ACTING TECHNIQUE & STORY TECHNIQUE
Tip 15: Fear Vs Logic
Fears and self-doubts run our lives. Don’t let fears or self-doubts tell you there is a problem. Use your logic. It might tell you there isn’t a problem at all. ACTING TECHNIQUE
Tip 16 Measuring Your Success
Acting is such an ephemeral task that no one offers specific ways of measuring your achievements – if the audience says they like it that’s the best you are likely to get. But MEASURING SUCCESS is an essential skill for the actor. It can only be done by understanding the practicalities of the actor’s craft. ACTING TECHNIQUE
If this tip makes sense to you but you want more specific information about how to measure your performance success then Tip No 20 will give you some additional food for thought.
Tip 17 Patterns are a Problem
Many of the techniques actors use for learning lines or movement result in them getting locked into patterns. The result is that the acting looks controlled rather than spontaneous. This tip evolved from a very successful application of this technique to a production of Shelagh Stephenson’s “The Memory of Water” which I directed in 2017. ACTING TECHNIQUE & STORY TECHNIQUE
Tip 18 Playing a Three Hander
The way people behave in groups is fascinating. The challenge for the actor is creating group behaviour in a logically organized way. ACTING TECHNIQUE
Tip 19 A Challenge for You
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman in his book “Thinking fast and slow” tells us that in life we “We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our own blindness.” So … how good are we at assessing our choices?
ACTING TECHNIQUE
& STORY TECHNIQUE
Tip 20 Measuring Your Performance in an Audition
The greatest moment of uncertainty for any actor is as they walk out of the audition room. How do you know how you went?? Here’s a simple checklist that achieves a very clear performance assessment
of your audition or any performance. It works!!
When you come out of an audition you can assess how you went.
ACTING TECHNIQUE & STORY TECHNIQUE
TIPS TO INSPIRE 2:
Tip 21 A Path to Being Real
Understanding the core elements of what you are doing provides the foundations on which true achievement is built. A core process element is that acting isn’t about what you are doing, acting is all about what the other person is doing.
ACTING TECHNIQUE CHARACTER
Tip 22 The Importance of Listening to Relationship
This is one essential skill area that has traditionally been left to chance in every acting process until now. The Rehearsal Room’s analysis of how we listen and the development of techniques to generate skills that parallel the way we actually do it in life are unique.
ACTING TECHNIQUE CHARACTER
PROMOTION ONE: Learn more about this acting process
An opportunity to find out more about the nuts and bolts of this approach to acting and what makes it so unique and so practical. Sophia who was doing “Creating a Character in 10 Seconds” explains a discovery she made. She found, to her surprise, that she could completely change the focus of her listening.
Tip 23 19.9 What Makes a Good Audition
Understanding what makes an audition good is the key to being able to put the elements in place to make sure your next one hits the spot.
AUDITION SKILLS
Posted 12/7/2019
TIP 24 Making Your Character Real
It is very easy to over-complicate simple tasks. A simple reality is that Constantine Stanislavski, for all his genius, is too complicated to manage effectively. This is a brilliant simplification of Stanislavski process to make it actionable in a modern world.
ACTING TECHNIQUE CHARACTER
Posted 14/7/2019
TIP 25 A Great Lesson Via Uta Hagen
I often see actors refusing to follow their natural impulses because they are waiting for their ‘cue’. An actor who is waiting for a cue is dysfunctional. A script is only a graph that lays out the dialogue it isn’t a description of how the character should listen and behave. This great thought from German actor Alfred Bassermann (1867 – 1952) comes from Uta Hagen’s experience of working with him.
ACTING TECHNIQUE
Posted 16/7/2019
Tip 26 The Choice to Look Away
Often Casting Directors are heard to say “Don’t just stare at the other character, look away, the way we do in life.” But do you know why you look away in life? Do you understand what impulses drive your choices in a conversation? There is a simple way to decide if you should look away or not.
This tip also explores the challenges of learning acting from books.
ACTING TECHNIQUE
Posted 17/7/2019
Tip 27 How to Action Your Script
'Actioning’ your script with an appropriate verb is a long-standing technique that has been taught in major tertiary acting academies around the world. This is an incisive analysis of its value and a very powerful tip on managing its deficits.
ACTING TECHNIQUE
Posted 5/8/2019