Acting Is... » Notes on Acting

In a recent interview Andrew Garfield said that in preparation to play Spiderman, in The Amazing Spiderman, he worked with his movement teacher from drama school to study spider’s movement and characteristics. This is a wonderful, outside-in approach to acting, even if you aren’t playing an animal or a human infected with animal DNA.  Animals can inspire great characterizations; so animal studies and exercises are tried and true approaches used by many different acting schools. So, consider adding animal studies to your acting. How do you incorporate animal work into your work?  The first thing is to study a particular animal that seems appropriate for the character. Notice how they move.  Notice their tempo-rhythm and how they respond to things around them. Notice their faces and how they watch, listen, and communicate. Then begin to move like the animal.  Stand up and try to personify the movement by embodying it on two legs. Find the animal’s movements and characteristics that seem appropriate for your character and begin to build a human based on the animal.  This is working from the inside out and you’ll notice that as you move, you’ll actually begin to feel certain emotional responses triggered by the movement. It takes study-time to really get a sense of the animal and practice to integrate the movement and make it your own.  By performance time, the animal movement and characteristics might be just hints of the animal, but you will find that using an animal image to build a character will be a wonderful addition to your acting.  And it might be just the key to getting inside a character that is eluding you. Links:           Spiderman           Andrew Garfield          Lee J. Cobb          Arthur Miller          Death of a Salesman          Year of the King          Anthony Sher

About 10 weeks ago I had open-heart surgery to repair my aortic valve and to replace a portion of my aorta.  I am delighted to say that it turned out just fine. Naturally I began to wonder what this experience had to teach me about acting. Then I realized that the surgery and my recovery were teaching me to be patient. Now patience doesn’t mean not doing anything.  Patience means doing everything you can to aid and move a situation along and understanding that all things take time and move at their own speed. So if you’re building your acting career, it is important for you to have patience.  You need to do everything you can to be prepared for when opportunities present themselves to you.  Take classes and practice auditioning. Network and create projects with friends.  Put yourself out there and don’t get angry if things don’t move at the speed that you want them to. The hardest part of learning patience is giving up control.  We tend to think that we have control over how things work and turn out.  But that simply isn’t true. Patience is hard lesson to learn and an essential virtue for actors.  Life provides us with many teachers, if we’re only willing to listen. So don’t wait until you’re a patient to learn patience.  Take the time now to learn this important life-changing lesson and it will serve you in your acting and in everything you do. Thanks to Dr. Bruce Lytle, cardiac surgeon, and all the doctors, nurses, and staff at the Cleveland Clinic. Links:  Cleveland Clinic:  Sydell & Arnold Miller Heart & Vascular Institute     Dr. Bruce  Lytle

Summertime and the living is easy.  At least it is for students who have the summer off. I suspect that every working person still gets shivers of expectation as mid-June approaches.  The child inside remembers the break from school and the freedom it allowed.  And then reality strikes and we head out the door, back to work. So what’s a person to do?  Plan some time off for the things that are important to you. If you can’t afford to go away, plan and make sure that you take some weekends off with no work, no cleaning, and no responsibilities. Go to a museum or street fair. Go to the ocean, a lake, or river.   Go to a botanic garden, a park, or a wilderness area and bring a picnic lunch Remember, your experiences inform your acting.  If all you do is work and stay at home, then your acting is going to get boring because you aren’t replenishing your library of experiences, you aren’t feeding your creative soul.  Getting out in the summer and taking time for yourself is essential for actors.  So don’t feel guilty for not working, just get out there.  Making time for yourself and what’s important to you will invigorate your acting and make it more interesting for you, your acting partners, and your audiences.