Context

Escaping the life of being forced into an unwanted marriage, the Jailer’s daughter has fallen madly in love with Palamon and has now busted him out of jail and left him in the forest. She has bravely decided to head back to the jail to get some files to cut off his shackles, and on her way there she finds the audience and tells them everything that has just happened! She’s confessed her love for him and worryingly for her – he has not echoed her sentiments. And unfortunately during this monologue as she tells the audience all that has happened, she sees Palamon running away in the distance. Determined to keep the flame of her passions a-burning, and optimistically undeterred by this setback she announces her grand plan to the audience to run away with him and
follow him through the forest until he falls in love with her. She throws herself head first into this plan and exits the stage. She’s not to be seen again until act thee scene two – lost and alone in the forest, not having eaten, drank or slept at all for two days straight. Still determined and still only just holding on.

Original Text

Let all the dukes and all the devils roar,
He is at liberty! I have ventured for him
And out I have brought him; to a little wood
A mile hence I have sent him, where a cedar
Higher than all the rest spreads like a plane
Fast by a brook, and there he shall keep close
Till I provide him files and food, for yet
His iron bracelets are not off. Oh, Love,
What a stout-hearted child thou art! My father
Durst better have endured cold iron than done it.
I love him beyond love and beyond reason,
Or wit, or safety; I have made him know it;
I care not, I am desperate. If the law
Find me and then condemn me for’t, some wenches,
Some honest-hearted maids, will sing my dirge
And tell to memory my death was noble,
Dying almost a martyr. That way he takes,
I purpose, is my way too. Sure he cannot
Be so unmanly as to leave me here;
If he do, maids will not so easily
Trust men again. And yet he has not thanked me
For what I have done, no, not so much as kissed me,
And that methinks is not so well; nor scarcely
Could I persuade him to become a free man,
He made such scruples of the wrong he did
To me and to my father. Yet I hope,
When he considers more, this love of mine
Will take more root within him. Let him do
What he will with me, so he use me kindly
For use me so he shall, or I’ll proclaim him,
And to his face, no man. I’ll presently
Provide him necessaries and pack my clothes up
And where there is a path of ground I’ll venture,
So he be with me; by him, like a shadow,
I’ll ever dwell. Within this hour the hubbub
Will be all o’er the prison: I am then
Kissing the man they look for. Farewell, father!
Get many more such prisoners and such daughters
And shortly you may keep yourself. Now to him.

Unfamiliar Language

Ventur’d – Abbreviation of ‘ventured’. Old form – run a risk, or take a chance.
Hence – From this time. (Or in this context from this place)
Fast – (In this context) Firmly fixed or attached. Secure; firmly established.
Plane – (In this context) A plane tree. Any tree of the genus Platanus often growing to great heights.
Files – (plural) A tool with a roughened surface or surfaces used for smoothing or shaping wood. Or in this case, cutting through shackles.
Stout-hearted – Courageous or determined
Thou – (In this context) You. Second person singular pronoun.
Art – Are. Second person singular, present tense
Durst – Archaic past use of ‘Dare’
Endur’d – Abbreviation of ‘endured’
For’t – Abbreviation of ‘for it’
Wenches – (plural) A female servant, typically young
Dirge – A lament for the dead
Thank’d – Abbreviation of ‘thanked’
Kiss’d – Abbreviation of ‘kissed’
Methinks – It seems to me
Scruples – 1. Regard to the morality or propriety of an action. Or 2. A feeling of doubt or hesitation caused by this. In this case I prefer to use a mix of both definitions to make sense of the line. (I think; suspicion, misgiving, doubt.)
Whoobub – Hubbub, confused yelling.
O’er – Abbreviation of ‘over’

Modern Translation

Let all the dukes and all the devils roar,
He is free! I took a risk for him,
And out of the prison I have brought him to a little forest
a mile from here. I have sent him where a cedar,
The tallest one aprund, spreads like a plane tree
Right next to a brook, and he’ll stay right there
Until I bring him some files and food, as
He still has his shackles on. Oh Love,
What a courageous child you are! My father
would rather dare to be put in jail (or meet the end of a sword) than do this.
I love Palamon beyond love and beyond reason
Or good sense, or safety; I’ve made sure he knows it.
But I don’t care, I’m desperate. If the authorities
Find me and convict me for it, some wenches,
Some honest-hearted maids, will sing my dirge,
And tell the story that I died a noble death,
Almost achieving martyrdom. He’s going the same way
I’m going too. Surely he cannot
Be so unmanly as to leave me here.
If he does, young women won’t trust men so
Easily ever again. That said, he has not thanked me
For what I’ve done, no, not even a kiss.
And that, I think, is not a good sign. I could barely
Even persuade him to become a free man.
He expressed so much doubt
To me and my father about his crimes. Yet I hope
When he thinks about this some more, this love I have
Will just fix itself within him. I’ll let him do
whatever he wants with me, so he’s uses me lovingly,
because I know that this is what he’ll do. And if not I’ll tell him that he is,
And straight to his face, not a real man. Right now,
I’ll go and get some essentials, and pack all my clothes up,
And I’ll go wherever the road leads me,
So he’ll be with me, and by him like a shadow
I’ll forever follow him. Within an hour the hubbub
Will be all over the prison. I will then
Be kissing the man they’re looking for. Goodbye forever father,
If you get any more prisoners or daughters like this,
then sooner or later you’ll be jailing yourself. Now, to Palamon.

Notes on Performance

Ultimately the beginning of the end for her, whether you were performing this piece stand alone orin the play with its full context, this is the beginning of what will ultimately end in a horrible journey of The Jailor’s Daughter becoming consumed with grief in isolation, which in turn leads to her trying to drown herself in a river and (without pathologizing her too much here) having an episode of sorts, or however her journey in the forest until she is found reads to you. Similarly to her soliloquy in act two scene four which I’ve broken down here(insert link here). This piece has gear changes that actor can only dream of. Notably, and possibly one of my favourite tragicomedy moments to ever play or watch, is the moment between:

“Dying almost a martyr.”
and
“[…] That way he takes
I purpose is my way too. Sure he cannot
be so unmanly as to leave me here.”

There must be a very clear moment in this, where you see Palamon literally running away. Exactly what you see here is up to you; Palamon awkwardly running away still in his shackles looking over his shoulders and disappearing into the woods, or having already cut his shackles off somehow and bolting into the darkness of the night. You can imagine Palamon running however you’d like but how this looks to the audience is super important. It’s a helpful idea to pitch that line ‘dying almost a martyr’ right out there to the second circle, pitching your eyeline just above the furthest audience member away from you so your face already up and out, and it can be a slight shift of your eyeline or direction of your body slightly changing angles so that the audience sees your thought process stop, shift and see something else that ultimately is the first thing that bursts her reality and dreams
of love in her own world. This all sounds hyper technical but in short, that moment just has to be super clear in order to tell the story effectively. The next significant gear change we find here;

“[…] Yet I hope,
When he considers more, this love of mine
Will take more root within him.”

Similar to act two scene four, you can really grab that ‘yet’ with both hands. Phrases that start with a, is ‘caesura’d’ by a or enjambed with a; yet, but, however, moreover etc. I really use those words to change the gear from one place to the next. Sometimes I even over emphasize it while rehearsing to really get it in my body, and pair it back over time (unless I’m directed to keep it as a choice.) So here Jailor’s Daughter is taking us down a garden path in her mind, figuring out what she’s going to do, and sorting out her game plan right up until…..

“[…] I’ll presently
Provide him necessaries, and pack my clothes up,
And where there is a path of ground I’ll venture,
So he be with me.”

Here she’s mobilised back into action, stating exactly what she’s going to do right now – rather than ruminating. The audience is very much on the journey with her now and she’s directing them to the next part of the story. She’s also providing the audience with important exposition here, so the next time they see her, there won’t be any logistical or narrative blanks for them to fill in. Keep that energy and pace going and you’ll absolutely sail through to the end and off the stage with a game plan and a purpose. Really place that final thought that final thought in the space and hold that energy with you as you exit. There’s a lot of hope, purpose and determination that is overriding and delaying the inexorable heartbreak that is to come later on in the play.

Some Notes on Style

Something that helped me amplify this piece significantly was understanding what category of play the Two Noble Kinsmen fell into which is: The Romances. It allowed me to view the piece and the whole play outside the categories of; the comedies, the tragedies, the histories, and even the plays I personally categorise in the ‘fantasy realm’ (The Tempest and Midsummer Night’s Dream). Understanding the style within the style is how I would put it. The Romances don’t explicitly imply courtships, but rather literary forms written in the romance languages. The heart of the romance plays are tragic, all whilst resolving themselves as comedies and neatly tying up all the strings. Knowing where the Gaoler’s Daughter fits in this world of fast paced plot and action driven by love both opened up opportunities to play and equally crystallized . It gives you a lot of opportunities to play with completely improbably stories that are ultimately resolved by the gods. For the romances, think tragi-comic, fantastical, melodramatic all the while being grounded in empathy as you are after all portraying a living breathing human on either the best or worst (or both) days of their life. Circle your keywords, count out those beats, run around the room a few times, get properly puffed out and go for it!

The post Jailers Daughter Monologue (Act 2, Scene 6) appeared first on StageMilk.

Context

Theseus and Hippolyta marry, and shortly afterwards three widowed queens arrive from Thebes. They beg Theseus to go to war with the tyrant Creon so that their husbands’ bodies can receive proper burial. Hippolyta and her sister Emilia also plead for them, and he agrees to go off to fight. His friend Pirithous later leaves to join his campaign. Two Theban friends, Palamon and Arcite, decry the evil in their city, but out of loyalty stay to help defend it. Following Theseus’ victory, they are recognized for their prowess in battle. Almost dead, they are brought to Athens and given care, though imprisoned. In this very prison the Jailer has tried to set his daughter up with a guy simply named ‘Wooer’, but this goes as well as you’d expect when someone’s Dad tries to push a potential suitor before his own daughter – not well at all. The Jailer’s daughter falls for Palamon hard when she sees him, disregarding Wooer completely. In this monologue the expresses her deep love and misguided devotion for Palamon, nonetheless these feelings for her are completely real. Her first love completely smashing down the walls of her young, sheltered, and so far – grim life tending to the jail cells day in and day out. After this monologue, emboldened by these powerful, new feelings of love and lust she busts Palamon out of jail. She confesses her love for him and worryingly for her – he does not kiss her in return. Bravely, she heads back to the jail to get some tools to cut his off his shackles she celebrates her huge and dangerous achievement with the audience and as she celebrates she sees him run off into the woods without her. Determined to make her dreams of love her reality, and optimistically undeterred by this setback she announces her grand plan to the audience to run away with him and follow him through the forest until he falls in love with her. She wanders the forest, loses Palamon and also her wits. The schoolmaster, rehearsing the country people for the dance, finds he is a woman short, but the Jailer’s Daughter supplies the place. They perform the dance in front of Theseus and Hippolyta. The Jailer and his friends despair over his daughter’s madness. They consult a doctor, who instead of providing her with proper care, ill-advisedly says that the Daughter’s wooer should pretend to be
Palamon. Taking complete advantage of Jailer’s Daughter’s compromised and traumatised mental wellbeing, they do this. Wooer impersonates Palamon to ‘win her’, she of course falls for this ploy, and they go off to be married.

Original Text

Why should I love this gentleman? ’Tis odds
He never will affect me. I am base,
My father the mean keeper of his prison,
And he a prince. To marry him is hopeless;
To be his whore is witless. Out upon’t!
What pushes are we wenches driven to
When fifteen once has found us! First, I saw him:
I, seeing, thought he was a goodly man;
He has as much to please a woman in him
(If he please to bestow it so) as ever
These eyes yet look’d on. Next, I pitied him;
And so would any young wench o’ my conscience
That ever dream’d, or vow’d her maidenhead
To a young handsome man. Then, I lov’d him,
Extremely lov’d him, infinitely lov’d him;
And yet he had a cousin, fair as he too;
But in my heart was Palamon, and there,
Lord, what a coil he keeps! To hear him
Sing in an evening, what a heaven it is!
And yet his songs are sad ones. Fairer spoken
Was never gentleman. When I come in
To bring him water in a morning, first
He bows his noble body, then salutes me thus:
“Fair gentle maid, good morrow. May thy goodness
Get thee a happy husband!” Once he kiss’d me—
I lov’d my lips the better ten days after.
Would he would do so ev’ry day! He grieves much,
And me as much to see his misery.
What should I do to make him know I love him,
For I would fain enjoy him? Say I ventur’d
To set him free? What says the law then?
Thus much for law or kindred! I will do it,
And this night, or tomorrow, he shall love me.

Unfamiliar Language

Tis – Abbreviation of ‘It is’
Base – Of inferior quality or value
Upon’t – Abbreviation of ‘Upon it’
Wenches – A female servant, typically young
Morrow – The next day, or in this case used as ‘Morning’.
Goodly – Fairly large
Bestow – To present
Look’d – Abbreviation of ‘Looked’
Maidenhead – Hymen/virginity/maidenhood
Dream’d – Abbreviation of ‘Dreamed’
Vow’d – Abbreviation of ‘Vowed’
Lov’d – Abbreviation of ‘Loved’
Thus – As a result or consequence. Used where ‘….as such’ and ‘And so…’ would be used
Thee – Objective form of ‘thou’. ‘Thou’ being when you address a person as ‘You’
Ev’ry – Abbreviation of ‘Every’.
Fain – Gladly or willingly
Ventur’d – Abbreviation of ‘Ventured’
Kindred – Relative or a person related by blood or marriage. In this case, blood.

Modern Translation

Why should I love this gentlemen? He most likely
will never fall in love with me. I am low class,
My dad is the person who runs this prison,
And he’s a prince. I’d have zero chance in marrying him, and
I’d be out of my mind to be his (booty call/side piece). Forget about it!
What extremes us poor servant girls are driven to
once we turn fifteen! First I saw him:
I, seeing him, thought he was a decent sized man;
he is as well-endowed to please a woman
(if he wishes to present himself so) as ever
my eyes did see. Then, I felt sorrow for him,
as would any young woman in my current state
who’s ever dreamed about, or is hell-bent on losing her virginity
to a man as smoking hot as he is. Then, I fell in love with him.
Extremely in love with him, infinitely in love with him;
he has a cousin, he’s smoking hot too;
but Palamon is the one in my heart, and there,
God, what a chokehold he has on me! Simply to hear him
singing in an evening is heaven!
Despite his songs being sad ones. No other man can speak
as beautifully as he does. When I come in
to bring him water in the morning, first,
he, a nobleman bows to me, then he greets me like so:
‘Good morning to you, beautiful, kind young woman. One day your kindness
will get you a very lucky man!’ Once he kissed me –
for the next ten days I loved my lips more than ever before.
Imagine if he did this every day! He is suffering so much,
and I suffer just as much to witness it.
What should I do to make him understand how much I love him?
I would gladly enjoy him. What if I, the Jailer’s Daughter,
set him free, what are the laws around that?
So much for the law or my dad! I’m going to do it,
And tonight, or tomorrow, he will love me.

Notes on Performance

This monologue is a gift from the gods. It is the true definition of *Big Shakespeare Feelings* Jailer’s Daughter already has the disrespect of not having a name, so I implore you to do her the justice of observing the state she’s in from a place of humanity and empathy. We can all remember what it’s like to have your first sexual awakening, and what it’s like to fall in love for the first time.
Think of how all-encompassing those life changing moments are and then imagining experiencing both of those at the same time. Yeah, it’s a lot. And then think about the first time you experienced unrequited love, maybe you have, maybe you haven’t. And then imagine experiencing that with the pure full body and soul ecstasy of falling in love and lust at once. That is what’s going on for The Jailer’s daughter here. She cops a lot of undue criticism for her actions, but when you look at the grim reality of her given circumstances and the bleakness of the future being forced upon her: her determination to change her reality is incredibly bold, brave and truly admirable for someone of such a young age. She’s fifteen! Living and working in a prison for – what one can safely assume – her entire fifteen years of life, you can imagine entails very limited contact with the outside world and with people her own age. You can imagine this sheltered and back breaking existence, coupled with the existence of being viewed as property to be given to another man by her father would form a low self-esteem, and warped understandings of how other humans, and their feelings work. So to see her exhibit the courage and fortitude to break free of this shows what an incredible, albeit tragic, character she is. Now, to the structure. Shakespeare and Fletcher have crafted a monologue with a very clear and monumental journey, with some seriously juicy gear changes throughout. The overall journey is from despondent questioning: Why should I love this gentleman? ‘Tis odd’s He never will affect me, I am base, my father the mean keeper of his prison, and he a prince to determined and decisive. Thus much for law of kindred! I will do it, and this night, or tomorrow, he shall love me. Remember to keep in mind how you’re going to show this overall journey she goes on and how this makes the scene before and the scene after makes sense. The scene before is her Dad attempting to sell her off to a literal random wooer he’s found, so she no longer is in his care. And the next time we see her is another soliloquy to the audience – high off the adrenalin of very much risking her life to break the love of her life out of jail. So think of how you set that up to take the audience on that journey with you. They will be on side! This monologue takes us on the journey between those two places.

Speaking of soliloquies – consider placing all of your different thoughts on different parts of the space. For those memories she’s recounting, pitch them out to the back of the playing space, just above the audiences heads. So they can see right into your eyes and see you reliving those moments that have embedded themselves deep in her soul. When she’s asking the questions, it’s so useful to place them on individual audience members and really ask them, she is genuinely trying to work through the problem she’s placed in the first line. And then comes the gear changes, milk them for all they’re worth. Particularly: What pushes are we wenches driven to when fifteen once has found us! First, I saw him. Use that “first” literally, let it take you from first to second gear. (If he please to bestow it so) as ever These eyes yet look’d on. Next, I pitied him;

There’s a natural build here that you can feel as you read it. Let that “Next” take you from second to third gear. With these gear changes, it helps to find them by literally moving your body and the section of the audience it’s facing. I think of dividing the audience into three sections and giving them a gear change each. To a young handsome man. Then, I lov’d him, Again, use that “then” and you’re off to the races. You can see how fast she has fallen from lust into love and the ride it is taking her on. And then the monologue takes you from not just how fast, but how deeply she has fallen in love.

Again, remember to root this in reality. The prolonged feeling one kiss gives, and the level the depth and which she feels the pain he feels. Play around with what feels right here: play with leaning in to the power of how intoxicating the sheer experience of Palamon is for her. And if this feels completely out of alignment with the action and character for you, no problem. Then play with
resisting the poetic language and try stating these lines as complete and pure fact. Still not it, try shooting for somewhere in the middle of this, or as far away from poetry and her state of being as possible and see where you land! And finally we have her find a massive solution to her problem. Mobilised action;

Somewhere between “then?” and “Thus much” she finds the solution to her problem. When she asks that question, the audience needs to believably see her go through some sort of mental gymnastics to arrive at that – for lack of a better phrase – “F**k it, I’m doing this!” moment. It doesn’t matter what that realisation is, all that needs to happen is for you to actually think it, realise
it and let it drive you through the last two lines and then off the stage with the momentum of someone about to do something absolutely wild all in the name of love. All of these structural breakdowns of the monologue are here solely to aid you should you feel stuck. You will find a million other colours, thought changes, comedic moments, tragic moments and textures throughout. This article is by no means here to tell you how to interpret the character, but rather to help understand her choice of actions and the journey she goes on should you find yourself every thinking; ‘What the hell, why does she do that, or why is she saying that now?” Remember that your unique interpretation of this character will always be the best one, play with the millions of thought changes peppered throughout these thirty-two awesome lines of verse and feel the erraticism, energy, beauty and sheer force of the narrative.

The post Jailers Daughter Monologue (Act 2, Scene 4) appeared first on StageMilk.

1. See if You Can Get the Scripts Beforehand

Sometimes, in commercial voice over, your employer might not have the scripts ready until five minutes before you walk in the door. But if you want to get your head around the content prior, it never hurts to ask your agent to enquire on your behalf (or the employer directly, if you’re freelance). Because you never know when they might have things ready the day beforehand.

If you can get them, awesome! But try not to get married to exactly what’s on the page word for word. Particularly if it’s a voice over for a commercial – they’ll tweak those scripts right up to the minute before you record and sometimes even after your first few takes they’ll change things around. Flexibility is the key, so the script is good to use for a reference but be prepared to completely shake it up as you go.

2. Do a Few Warmups on the Way

If it’s a morning session, do yourself a huge favour and start your warmup at home before you head in. Don’t feel like you have to go full on and blow the doors right off doing sirens or anything, but just start really small and gentle:

• A few hums up and down the vocal scale while brushing your teeth.
• Really simple lip and tongue trills.
• A few quick and effective tongue twisters.

And for me, if I’ve got five/ten minutes to spare, I’ll fill a bowl with boiling water from the kettle, hold my face 10 cm above the surface of the water, put a towel over my head to trap the steam in and inhale the steam deeply and directly onto my vocal chords. And then exhale on an mm, nn or ng.

If you’re taking the bus or train there are heaps of de-voiced exercises you can do to wake up the muscles and fine articulators on the inside of your mouth. Writing your full name with your tongue really slowly on the inside of each cheek. Twisting the tongue around holding it in place for a few seconds before releasing it. Rolling through the ‘P, T, C – B, D, G’ and back and forth a few times. Try whichever calls your name, and add your favourites.

If it’s an arvo session, your voice should already be pretty warm and ready to go for a commercial or corporate voice over sesh. But if it’s an animation gig where you seriously have to stretch your voice across a few different pitches and accents, do yourself a huge favour and make time for a good thorough warmup before you head in, regardless of whether it’s an AM or PM session. You’ll thank yourself later.

3. Be Prepared for a Bigger Audience than You Thought

Weirdly, the thing that surprised me the most at my first voice over session was how many people were there. There’s always the sound engineer, of course, but there were also marketing people, legal people, their assistants, the head of marketing, and even the company manager. And sometimes, they’re all on zoom, so you’ve got a lot of different voices coming through those headphones.

But don’t let it throw you at all whether there’s two people or ten sitting on the other side of the glass – they’re all listening to your recordings for very different things and sometimes what they’re listening for doesn’t have a lot to do with your delivery per se. They just all want you to smash it!

4. Pack Your Bag of Tricks

Every studio has water, but you just never know, so bring your own anyway – and plenty of it. Keep those vocal cords hydrated as you go! Are you someone whose body seizes up when the AC is set to arctic? Same. Your muscles seizing up does not help in delivering a great voice over, so bring a jumper. Even in summer, I’m dead serious – they really pump that AC, man! If you’re prone to sinus blockage, bring that vix stick or nasal spray, or whatever clears your nasal passage fast. Does dry throat get you on the reg? Bring those lozenges. Pack your bag and don’t let anything restrict you from getting the job done right. Which brings me to… 

5. Wear the Right Threads

For some voice over sessions (depending on the content) you will be standing in the one spot for a long time. Moving and physicalising on the line helps your vocal quality so much, but even something as simple as changing your physical position between recordings in any way (no matter how subtle) will help reset your body and keep it free of tension.

Wearing something that keeps your shoulders, back, and hip area free from restriction and free to move is the ticket. Even if you’ve got a quick 10 to 20 seconds between recordings, stealing a super quick stretch, squat, spinal roll or whatever unlocks your body makes the biggest difference.

6. You Can Offer Solves!

If you know the reason why a sentence feels clunky and everyone on the other side of the glass is trying to figure out why – offer a suggestion! It took me a while to feel like I was allowed to offer a solid suggestion if I felt like I had a good one.

But also know that if a sentence isn’t working and marketing people or the legal people are nutting it out, then it’s got nothing to do with your delivery of it. And if its got nothing to do with your delivery, do not stress it’s absolutely not your job to figure out the solution.

7. Scoring Your Script

Sometimes you’ll put one down and just nail it. But more often than not, you’ll get some notes and adjustments to make for the next one. Write them down wherever is best for you on the script as you hear them. And if a particular note doesn’t make sense, that’s ok! Just ask them to clarify it or put it in other terms. This saves so much time down the line, especially when you…

8. Create Your Own Shorthand!

This is something that you will inevitably hone with practice. But there’s no hard and fast rule here; you’re the only one looking at that script, so use whichever symbols and notations make sense for you!

You’ll end up creating your own symbols for: half a pause there, big pause here, half a breath there, big breath here, cheekiness on the first half of the sentence, smile on that word there, upward inflection here, hit the T there, more warmth in the voice – whatever you choose just make sure its crystal clear to you, and easy to see on your script. The directions you’re given can range from the very vague, to the hyper specific, but having a visual shorthand for them on your script means you don’t have to remember all of them at once when you’re delivering the line.

9. Ask if You Can Keep Your Scripts

Those scripts are gold and holding onto them for reference is about optimising your next session. If it’s an ongoing gig there can be a little or a lot of time between sessions, and having them as reference is a lifesaver. A quick look over the last script can help you get back into that headspace, remembering the tone you gave them, the placement, the breath control on each line – everything.

If it’s a NDA situation, then naturally it would be unlikely for the employer to let you keep the sides. But if it’s an ongoing gig then nine times out of ten they’ll let you keep them. It never hurts to ask.

Red hot consistency with your placement and tone right off the bat is a real pro move. But also, asking them to play back a recording from the last session as a reference is so ok too (especially if it’s been a while in between recordings).

10. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

Or at least try your best not to. I know as much as anyone how chronically overused this phrase is, because if not sweating the small stuff were that easy then we just wouldn’t do it. But if you’re heading in for your first or second session, take it as a reminder that if you fumble a line every now and then, centre yourself, acknowledge it and go for another one. This will happen no matter how seasoned you are and it’s a part of the process of getting there. Do not apologise for tiny human error like tripping over a word. Just rock up on time, warmed up and ready to work and remember that they love your voice. Go for it and have fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun!

The post 10 Ways to Optimize a Voice Over Session appeared first on StageMilk.

Updated 8th September, 2022.

Before Building a Character

In my opinion, creating a character is hands-down the best part of the acting process: experiencing someone else’s life, being in someone else’s head and finding out what makes them tick. Whether the character I’m playing walks on for five seconds, or they’re the lead in the story, I will make sure I’ve decided everything about them: what they had for breakfast, their political affiliation and who their third cousin is. I just can’t help myself!

To begin your process, there’s the usual ABC’s you might do for a project that uses a script: script analysis, finding your objective and actions, plotting your beats, mapping out your story arc, etc. You might work out your given circumstances, apply some Stanislavski Method or the like… These are the “non-negotiables of our craft”, dare I say (and I do).

But once that ground work has been laid you can really get your paints out, get up on the floor and start building your character. Storytelling is inherent to all of us—and acting is an art that extends on that primal impulse. In creating characters to tell a story, you get to put your own personal stamp on how the story might best be told. And while that may be informed by words on a page, those choices belong to you. I’m not talking making big, crazy oogly-boogly choices in your work for oogly-boogly’s sake. You have to make conscious choices (even through trial and error) that help you tell the overall story in the best way possible.

1. What are the themes of your character’s story?

Trust me, here: every single time I work on a new script, I tend to underestimate how profoundly having the theme of the story at the front of my mind informs creative choices. It helps eliminate the things we don’t need and keeps us in the same story as everyone else we’re performing with. 

At the end of the day, everything comes back to theme. What are some of the big ones? Death, power, money, corporate corruption, the pursuit of happiness, ambition, racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, the universal longing to belong… Whatever the theme is, keep it at the forefront of everything you do: try to understand how your character serves the story you’re telling in their individual relation to that theme.

2. What does the writer say about your character?

In a character breakdown, sometimes you’ll get nothing more than the character’s name. Sometimes, you’ll get their age, occupation and even the details of their relationship to other characters in the story. Write all that down! The character bio that a screenwriter might give you can vary wildly, from the most in depth-description of a character you’ve ever seen, to something like this:

SALLY. Works at the mechanics, has known SIMON for three years. Suspicious. 26.

Or even this:

WOMAN–any age.

In terms of characterisation, the amount of detail the writer gives you reveals how much creative license you have to use. It shows you whether you have to turn a square, a dodecahedron or a singular line into a three-dimensional, living, breathing human. If you are given that singular line of ‘WOMAN–any age‘, I feel the writer is saying to me: “Go for it, I have no idea who she is yet.” What a gift!

3. What does your character say about themselves?

Get your face back in that script and go through it with a fine-tooth comb. If your character says anything about themselves, then get your notebook out and write it all down—no matter how big or how small it may seem.

What do these things reveal to you about your character’s self-awareness? Are they a good judge of their own character? Are they modest about their capabilities? And if so, why? Are they being truthful about themselves or are they lying? If they are lying, why are they lying? What’s at stake for them? Isolating these things and asking these questions will bring you closer and closer to understanding how your character perceives themselves. Most importantly, you’ll begin to notice the difference in how they present in public to others and privately to themselves.

As an extension to this: think about how your character speaks—about themselves or others. Do they speak with confidence? Do they fill a page with dialogue? Maybe they don’t say much at all. Why not? Do they use a ten-dollar phrase when a five-buck word would do? What’s their level of education? Writers often give us all sorts of hints about characters hidden in plain sight as dialogue. Remember that every single word has been agonised over: work to discover the reason behind each individual choice.

4. What do other characters say about your character?

This one’s similar to the previous exercise, but now you’re only looking for what other characters say about yours. Once again, question and deduce whether these things are accurate or not. Are they observations or judgements? Are they telling a story from your character’s past? Is your character present or not present when these things are said? Do these things ultimately help your character or not? I like to think of it as though you’re a lawyer representing your character in court and you’re combing through the evidence you’ve been presented. Advocate for them—defend them: even if they’re a monster! Especially if they’re a monster.

The power you gain from these discoveries gives you the ability to decide whether to actively play into, or not play into what’s being said about your character. Or do a blend of both. You can test out things in rehearsal to see what it does to the dynamic amongst the other characters, how it adds friction and how it can roughen up the edges of the characters relationships a little bit.

5. Discuss with your director

It’s always a good idea to approach the work as a collaborative effort. The best directors I’ve ever worked with have given me free reign from the beginning and haven’t told me too much of what they want the character to be. But they can always help steer me in another direction if I’m heading too far down the wrong path, or if I’ve hit a dead end. I have any major queries about characterisation at the very beginning, I bring them up on day one, or even beforehand if possible. Don’t waste a single day of rehearsal feeling lost or unsure.

These could be specific character bio queries, how realistic or stylized the world of the play/film is and how much they want that to affect the performance style. If the character has a physical feature, an ability or way of moving that is significant to the story, ask what will be done to show that. These are all good things to decide early on to help make good foundations: to build your character on from the start. They can make your time spent working in the rehearsal room and the homework you do as efficient and effective as possible.

6. What don’t you have in common with your character?

Whether or not there’s a big leap between the character’s life experience and my own, I write down a list of everything myself and my character don’t have in common. These can be as simple as:

• I didn’t grow up in an urban environment like my character.
• My character grew up in a family of 7 people, whereas I grew up in a house of 4.
• We have different accents.
• We were born on and live in different continents.
• I am not an assassin, whereas my character is.

Or as complex as:

• My character knows how to give someone first aid in a crisis, I don’t currently have those skills.
• My character has had a near-death experience which affected the trajectory of their life, whereas I have not.

7. What do you and your character have in common?

Once you’ve finished that list, get out your notebook and write down every single thing that you and your character do have in common. Once again, it doesn’t matter how obvious or obscure they may be. Every time I do this, it completely surprises me to discover how many things myself and my character have in common. It often helps me understand and connect with the character on a human level. Think of this as building a bridge between yourself and your character—even if it looks like there’s an enormous space between yourself and them. Here are a few examples of the kinds of things I might take note of:

• We are both women.
• We were both born in the same era.
• We both have siblings.
• My character mentions that she like zucchini, I also like zucchini.
• My character says she is not afraid to talk about death. I also feel this way.
• My character talks a lot about her cousins, I also do the same.
• We both received an education.

8. What do you respect or admire about your character?

Even if your character is a tyrannical dictator who kills everyone, I find that writing a list of things I (at the very least) respect, or (at the very most) admire about the character helps me find some sort of empathy for them as a person. Even if you consider their actions immoral or unjust, you still have to be your character’s biggest advocate in the rehearsal space—and, eventually, in the story itself. It’s our job as actors to understand why people are what they are and do what they do.

Let’s go with the tyrannical dictator example. The task here is not to try and condone your character’s actions, exerting a moral high-ground over them or excusing them for any beliefs they may have. But rather: to strive for finding a place of impartiality or neutrality to play the character from. Or at least as much as you possibly can. Playing from a place of emotional judgement can result in instructing the audience to feel about them that same way you do. If you play the character with all their faults as they’re written, free of your own personal judgement, the audience will respect that.

This task can always help you to pinpoint why the character behaves a certain way, has a certain world view, a perception of other people or of life in general that is unique to them. What have they endured, witnessed, battled or been taught/subjected to that has made them who they are? Do you respect these things or consider certain attributes they’ve developed admirable? There’s always a reason, and I’m always up for finding that reason, no matter how dark, macabre or insidious the character’s actions and worldview may be.

9. What is your character’s relationship to every other character in the script?

Depending on the script, I prefer to start simple and build on it as I go: “This is him, this is her, she likes him, he likes someone else, that’s her uncle, he’s so-and-so’s brother…” Just so I can keep tabs on the various character relationships. From there, I simply keep adding and writing down details as I discover them.

But you can go absolutely nuts with this one if you like. Draw a family tree, do a graph, make a Venn diagram, create a series of dating profiles. The sky’s the limit, here. Whatever it is you need to help you see the overall picture and where your character fits in relationship-wise, go for it. 

10. What is your character’s relationship to the targets in the story?

This is a technique that I picked up from the book Declan Donnellan’s The Actor and The Target. Scene by scene, break the script down: what are the targets your character needs to hit, and what do they mean to you personally? Your specific target list all helps build your character and identifies another aspect of what makes them different to everyone else in the play. 

11. What is your character’s relationship to the world, the universe and beyond?

These are a slightly more in-depth list of character questions. If you like, you can go back over the lists you’ve already made about how you and your character relate to each other for reference. Ask yourself:

•     What are their politics? 
•     Are they hopeful or pessimistic about themselves and their future?
•     Are they an existential thinker?
•     What are their beliefs?
•     How do they respond to their beliefs, politics, spirituality or world view being questioned or debated?
•     Do they have any obvious or specific spirituality?
•     Do they believe in another dimension running alongside their own?
•     Do they believe in a spirit world?
•     Do they believe in a higher power?
•     Do they think laterally or literally?
•     What’s their relationship to authority?
•     Are they a sceptic?
•     Are they a conspiracy theorist?
•     If it’s not specified, would they buy into conspiracy theories or not?

Do any of these things change for your character throughout the story? And how do these attributes then inform your character’s motivations and inner drive as the story develops? Some more things to question are:

•     Have they always been told predominantly yes or no throughout their lives?
•     How many major obstacles have they faced in their life thus far? 

Consider how these things might affect their reaction to achieving or not achieving their objective throughout a scene. What is their sense of expectation looking like, and how hard have they had to fight for what they needed in the past? Has it made them develop tactical or strategic thinking? Knowing these things helps me make decisions about my character that I can experiment, subvert and muck around with in the rehearsal room.

12. What is your character’s voice?

Get specific, get local, get regional! The more specific you can get and the earlier you can start, the better. It’s a lot harder to layer on a brand new accent or a vocal affectation in the late stages of your rehearsal process than it is working it into your scene work from day one. This can ensure you have time to properly embody the character’s voice, so the work is done and you won’t have to actively think about it. 

There are so many secrets about a character that can reveal themselves through an accent or voice, not just geographical origins. If you have access to this sort of information about your character, consider how the way they speak can be influenced by:

• Their parents’ heritage.
• Whether they grew up speaking more than one language.
• If they grew up around hills, canyons or concrete unit blocks.
• Whether they grew up in the endlessly repetitive mazes of suburbia, or with wide open spaces and endless plains of wheat stretching out before their eyes.
• Whether they’ve lived in multiple geographical locations and set-ups.   
• Whether they were always told children should be seen and not heard, or they were given licence to let their presence be known vocally any time they pleased.
• Whether they grew up amongst nature, the ground beneath them irregular and uneven—where sound seems to reverberate out and then disappear into the void ahead—or the hard blunt surfaces of a concrete jungle, where the sound of a million beeping cars bounces and echoes into a cacophony around them.

Your character, just like you, has a uniquely specific sound to compete with or in response to their immediate surroundings, their heritage, their social conditioning. It forms their vocal patterns, habits, cadence and then level of freedom they feel to express themselves vocally.

Also, consider your character’s opinion of how they sound: 

•     Does your character slightly alter or feel a need to formalize their accent in social and professional settings? 
•     Do they need to differentiate themselves vocally amongst other characters in the play/film? 
•     Are they embarrassed by, proud of or neutral about their accent? 

The discoveries you make and choices you cement from specifying your character’s way of speaking don’t need to be commented on or pressed onto your audience. This sort of investigative work and consideration is all there to add nuance and another layer to add to the acting work you do on the floor. A different accent won’t be relevant to every character you play, but when you do get that opportunity, curiously pursue the depths of how much voice can define a human as they move through the world, strive for what they need and forge an identity.

13. Your character’s walk.

This one’s notorious for a reason. Layering on a stylised walk purely for the sake of being different or to draw the audience’s attention never ends well. Most of the time, people will immediately say ‘Why’s Steve walking like that?’, rather than taking in the story. Stay curiously creative, be respectful and have fun physically exploring how your character moves through the world and why. 

Some things to consider:

•     Where is their centre of gravity?
•     From which body part do they lead when they walk?
•     How does it differ to yours?
•     How does this shift influence their inner world, or not? 
•     Is the story in a stylised world?
•     In what environment do we see your character?
•     Does it affect how urgently your character needs to move from one place to the other?
•     What’s their occupation, if any, and does it influence the way they move?
•     Is their walk affected by their age?
•     Is their walk affected by past injuries?

You don’t have to go big and bold to convey anything to your audience. You’ll find that something as simple as a subtle shift of your centre of gravity can affect your gait dramatically. Do some homework on it before a rehearsal, muck around with it at home with some big bold offers, distil it down and see what could work and what will help you. I always underestimate the power of just knowing where my character’s centre of gravity is, and how their inner motor differs to mine. The knowledge, alone, can drastically affect a scene.

14. Your character and gesture.

Never underestimate the power of gesture. Again, know exactly how stylised the project is on the scale of naturalism right up to avant-garde absurdism. Does your character have a repetitive or habitual action? Or a nervous tic that they are always trying to hide from those around them? How are they publicly-private on stage, or in front of the camera? Do they stand suspiciously still or have a hectic energy when under pressure? Do they have a tell? You have the power to decide how good their poker face is, and when they reveal what’s churning on the inside. What a cool thing.

Think about their relationship to props, if that’s relevant to the scene (and we’ll talk more on this later). What does your character hold in their hands and how does that inform their gesture? Are they someone who always holds and flicks a lighter, or always has a pen in their hand and uses it to punctuate things in the air as they say them?

15. Write your character’s inner monologue.

It’s rare to receive a character who only ever means what they say, and says what they mean without a contrasting inner-monologue, drive, or agenda. If you’d like to read more about the inner monologue, we have covered it in more detail elsewhere. 

Exactly how much your inner monologue influences your character development is up to you, but know that it can be significant. It allows you to take everything you know about your character’s past/present/future wants/needs/desires and boil it down into a rich, inner life. It informs your character’s actions, and then is either affirmed or challenged by what then happens next in the scene. And it keeps shifting and changing in response to the outside world.

Creating a solid inner monologue for your character is an awesome thing. It ensures the ever-present running commentary going on in their own inner world, keeping them engaged in pursuing their objective—both super- and in the present moment.

16. Stan the Man’s 3 Psychic Movers: Mind, Will, and Feelings.

What does your character give a damn about? What, exactly, propels them forward? Stanislavski distils it down to a triumvirate of:

• The Mind.
• The Feelings.
• The Will (Motivation).

Check out our complete breakdown of Stanislavski’s methodology if you want to learn more. For myself, certain words within the text (including what other characters are saying) spark images in my mind. This then creates a by-product of emotion which propels me forward into the next line, or into an action for the next mark I need to hit. Identify these ignition words, sentences or actions that might propel you forward to the next moment in the play with clarity and drive. Imagine you’re skiing down a hill and all those moments are the flag poles you’ve gotta reach and weave around.

Identifying these catalysts for action are super helpful in developing your character’s inner world. Usually they’re things said by another character in the scene, and a lot of the time they’re the key word in a sentence or key moment of action. We have a full breakdown on key words and how to find them here. Once I’ve written them all down I like to see if there’s a common thread that runs through them all. Does that collection of keywords themselves tell a story. Does it then reveal anything about who my character is and what they give a shit about?

17. Write a character backstory.

This is, hands down, my favourite step. I will take every liberty in creating the longest, most convoluted backstories you could possibly imagine. And nobody can stop me. Nobody! Whatever the writer hasn’t already given me about the character’s past, I will happily fill in on my own. Get all ‘Who Do you Think You Are?’ and ‘This is Your Life’ on that shit…

Decide everything about the character that gives the story meaning for you and gives you a whole person to play with. Write it all down! Or, better yet, get a friend to do a ‘hot-seat’ interview with you and improvise it. Decide where they were born, who their parents are, who their second cousin is. While you’re at it, decide why they stabbed someone in a K-Mart car park in 2012 and what that has to do with their purchase of a boat on page thirty-seven. No one has to know this backstory except you. 

Write down every single hilarious and traumatic thing that has ever happened to them in their life, small things that they’ve done that no one else knows, the secrets they hold, the good and bad deeds they’ve done, the moments that shaped them and the moments that didn’t. Backstory not only fills in the blanks for you, but gives you a stronger connection to who this character is at the time you’re portraying them. For me, it makes the whole process one hundred times more fun.

18. Diary entries.

If backstory isn’t your thing—or the writer has given you an in-depth backstory already—then diary entries may be a more helpful tool. The diary entry is a more personal, private admission of the innermost thoughts and feelings of your character’s experience, day-to-day. 

You could write diary entries for your character’s days before, during or even after the events of the story—that last one’s if you want go hardcore with this exercise. Writing diary entries really helps me differentiate between my character’s social and private identities. It can help you find if there’s a significant tonal shift between the two. If so, take note of what it sounds and feels like.

19. Your character’s clothing.

You can do all of the above work—backstory, diarising, inner-monologuing, physical exploration, objectives, motivations—and still feel like you’re at square f**king one. Then, you put your character’s shoes on for the first time and you go:

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, here she is.”

It can simply be where the pockets are placed on your character’s jacket that make you hold your arms differently. Or how you have to pull you shoulders so far back that your shoulder blades are almost pinching together; or the tight, restrictive lines of poorly-tailored professional wear informing how trapped your character feels in their own life. How much does the weight of the crown on your head feel like the weight of responsibility over an entire nation of people: does it make you push your chest out? Curl your shoulders forward? And does this shift throughout the story? 

Sometimes, the clothes can do half the work for you. I wouldn’t suggest depending entirely on your character’s costume pieces to inform all of who they are, but it can sometimes be the missing piece of the puzzle—something that helps make your character feel lived in and allows an outside impetus to add to what’s going on inside. There’s a lot of inside-out work that needs doing, but don’t underestimate the power of the outside-in.

Which brings us to… 

20. Props.

There many things your character may need to hold in their hands that are integral to the story. Most of these will be written into the script, such as: a revealing letter, a cigarette, a key, a gun, a baby, a jester’s skull. But in the spirit of building a character, I’m interested in the objects that your character would subconsciously reach for—and yet are very much conscious decisions by you, the actor. I don’t know the science behind it, but I do know that props help me a lot. In real life, I’m almost always holding something without even realising it: hair ties, a pen, my bag, (detangling) my hair, bits of paper, a lipstick–something. Anything!

How does your character hold a given object? What does it add to the scene, or how does it muddy the scene? What inner state are they successfully hiding with object manipulation, or perhaps even revealing? Use whatever props you might find around you in the scene, bring in options if you’re working in a space that allows it and have fun with your exploration. But remember: always make sure you link your discoveries back to the story and see how they aid you in your telling of it.

21. Archetypes.

Archetypes—classic, ‘stock’ representations of character types—have a great power to steer you in the right direction if you feel like you’ve gone too far off course. Locking down choices, or even knowing where to start building your character from, can feel really challenging at times, particularly if you’re not given a whole lot to work with in the text. I find that understanding which archetype my character is helps me to understand their dynamic with the other characters in the scene/play/film/story, and offers start to flow from there. 

Is your character:

•     The sovereign?
•     The warrior?
•     The sage?
•     The mystic? 
•     The lover?
•     The jester?
•     The wildcard?
•     The child?
•     The orphan?
•     The castaway?
•     The rebel?
•     The creator?
•     The caregiver?
•     The mentor?
•     The seducer?

Or perhaps a blend of two or more? Realistically, everyone is a complex blend of archetypes all the time. And a character written with a fantastic arc will usually start as one and develop into another. Anakin Skywalker is a great example–beginning as a child and developing into a warrior. Each archetype has its own strengths, weaknesses and motivations. You can even use it to break down scene you’re doing to something as simple as: 

The seducer tries to get intel from the castaway, but the jester is the obstacle.

Or:

The mystic advises the sovereign at the expense of the child, and then the caretaker loses their power to protect.

What options can that open for you? How does that help develop an understanding of a character’s powers and limitations in the scene/play/their whole life?

TV series and films such as Friends, The Nanny, Seinfeld, Game of Thrones, Saving Private Ryan, Ocean’s 11 and Killing Eve are great examples of archetype work. In theatre, the examples are almost too numerous: The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Medea, Antigone, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The View from the Bridge, The Blue Room. It’s always a thrill and a joy to watch the actors establish their archetype, utilise it and subvert it.

22. Linklater’s Five P’s of Characterisation.

Kristin Linklater’s entire approach to voice in her book Freeing the Natural Voice is a brilliant read, but for the sake of this article we’ll just focus on her Five P’s of Characterisation. To answer the Six Q’s (who, what, when, where, why, how), she recommends answering the Five P’s:

•  Personal – Who are you?
•  Psychological – What’s your inner world?
•  Professional – What’s your position in society?
•  Political – In what political context do you live?
•  Philosophical – What’s your character’s spirituality? Are they spiritual? How do you see the world?

This is another way to help provide a base for you to then build your character from in a more formulaic way. Even if you’re already halfway through your own process, I find that answering these five questions about my character/s before a rehearsal is a really valuable exercise. 

This exercise can shift your focus to see the characters through a particular lens that you hadn’t yet considered. And at the very least can give you something new to bring to the table. Remember not to generalize with your answers, here: due to the simplicity of the five P’s, specificity is integral to its effectiveness.

23. Create a playlist for your character.

Listening to music can sometimes be the missing puzzle piece that helps complete your characterisation process. And making a playlist of songs relevant to your character is both a fun exploration exercise, as well as an effective tool to help you get into your character’s headspace and emotional state.

How does the music your character listens to inform how they see the world, their politics, how they express themselves or even how they move? If your character is from a different time or place, what music were people listening to where and when they’re from? What kind of music would your character have had access to?

Even if your character isn’t the kind of person who’d actively listen to music for the pleasure of it, what would be the running soundtrack of their world? Is their soundtrack beeping car horns, people yelling out of windows, music that spills out of a nightclub as they walk past? Or, if they lived on a wheat field in Nebraska in 1975, what would that sound like? The wind rushing through the wheat, an endless drone of insects and perhaps a plane flying overhead once in a blue moon? A soundscape playlist can give you a sense of what it’s like to sit in your character’s world with nothing but their thoughts.

You could choose songs (or sounds) that you feel emotively inform the character, or even music that now resonates differently with you as an actor/person. Maybe you’ll find a song with one particular lyric that never resonated with you before, but now it hits you like a lightning bolt. Save that song and whack it in the playlist. Whatever helps you along in the process!

24. Animal work.

The last on the list, but certainly not the least. Animal work is one of those things that never ceases to bring me back to the point of what we do. It’s creative! If animal work for you makes sense as:

‘If my character were an animal, they’d be a snake because they are sneaky’. 

That’s great! I’m definitely not going to stop you from doing that, but I reckon there’s a lot of untapped potential to be had using animal work for deeper character development. I find it really useful to ask the following questions: ‘If my character were to morph into multiple animals for each their personality characteristics, which animals would they pass off best as?’ I find this a great way to start, as it usually opens my mind up to a few options rather than sticking to just one. 

Every single animal has its own unique way of moving, way of seeing the world, social capabilities, survival skills, hunting tactics and, if it’s a pack animal, its own social standing in the pecking order. And the idea here is it could be a personality trait, gaze, physical gesture, or way of getting from point A to point B that could inform your character from the movement signature and personality of the animal. You don’t have to spend an entire week physically pretending to be that particular animal to get a grasp of how it could help your character development, but you can use it as a more abstract approach to how you find your way in and out of character, how they relate to others, or how they respond to provocation.

Anthony Hopkins famously used a tarantula to inform his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, Marlon Brando used various apes as inspiration for his work in A Streetcar Named Desire, Jake Gyllenhaal took inspiration from a coyote for his work in Nightcrawler (that definitely came through strong) and Jim Carrey used “The smart bird at the end of the pond.” for his work in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. 

Whether you use a macro or micro approach, don’t underestimate the power of all creatures—great and small—as inspiration for a character. 

Conclusion 

Wow. That was a flippin’ lot of stuff and I’m sure as hell there’s even more that can be added to this list! But remember: there is no definitive way to do what you do, and you’ve probably already got your own process already. That said, I feel that being rigorous with the process of developing a character helps me know exactly where the character ends and I begin. Not only in how I get into character, but also how I get out of it. The lines can get somewhat blurred when I’m less thorough and that’s never a place I want to be.

Above all, it’s a sensational and fortunate thing to get up on stage or in front of a camera—so leave no stone unturned in the curious pursuit of discovering who this character could possibly be. Stay curious, stay creative, get off book and, most of all, have fun!

The post 24 Ways to Build a Character appeared first on StageMilk.

I’m an actor by trade and I’ve had both positive and negative experiences working with Emotional Recall, and it’s all dependent on two factors: the acting teacher or coach who was running the room, and my level of experience with the technique at the time. I’ll take you through an actor’s perspective (rather than an acting coach’s perspective) on what it is, when I’ve used it, and when I think is the right time to use it. I’ll also go into a little bit of the way the world looked at emotion and mental health around the time of its creation, just to give you an idea of its historical context. Buckle up for an emotional recall bonanza!

What is Emotional Recall? 

Emotional Recall, also called affective memory, and not to be confused with Sense Memory, is an essential part of Constantin Stanislavski’s method. Stanislavski’s pedagogy is tight and was the backbone of the acting training I undertook for three years at drama school. Almost everything I know and rely on to help me break down a script, understand given circumstances, subtext, character motivation – the works – stems from the Stanislavski method in one way or another. Emotional recall, specifically, is the process of recalling a personal memory similar to that of your character in a particular scene in order to help you empathise on a personal level with the character.  

What is Sense Memory?  

Sense Memory was developed by Lee Strasberg and focuses on recalling the senses surrounding a memory from a particular moment in your life. What did you see, smell, hear, taste or touch/feel at the time? Thereby inducing a sensory state similar to that of your character, and in turn, depicting ‘real life’ on stage. Strasberg recommends using memories that are more than 7 years old. It’s also not noted as to exactly which year it was created but is likely to have been sometime between 1931 when he formed the Group Theatre and 1948 when he became Artistic Director of The Actors Studio in 1948.

Why Do Actors Use Emotional Recall and Sense Memory?

When we use all of our senses, the work appears to be much more lived in, embodied and responsive. It just looks great. Whenever I see anyone working from the head only and ignoring the wealth of creative expression and storytelling that comes from the body, it’s not always their best work. We’ve all heard it before; acting coaches since time immemorial have been saying ‘get into your body’ and ‘get out of your head’. And they’re not wrong, and emotional recall and sense memory for me have been some of the best tools to help me get there – when done properly. And when I use these techniques, not only does the work feel easier to do, it also becomes a hell of a lot more interesting and exciting to perform. And my theory is when a performance looks at ease and lived in, the audience feels more relaxed. When they see me ‘working’ they’ll feel tense. I swear to god you can feel it in the room.

When trying out Emotional Recall for yourself, remember there is a wide scale of the intensity of emotions you can choose to delve into. Recalling a time you felt genuine loss and injustice could be as simple as remembering being three years old and being told you have to leave the park when you don’t want to go. Have you seen that before? It’s huge. Their entire world as they know it falls apart and it’s quite something to behold. A common act of defiance, yes, but it’s an experience and feeling of deep loss and injustice nonetheless. This example exists more as a ‘Magic If’ when applied to a scene and most-likely not very emotionally traumatic for the rationality of the adult brain.

I’ll outline some exercises that I have worked with to help me use these techniques later.  

But first…

A Bit of Historical Context

The exact year that Stanislavski’s system was created is also not known. But there’s evidence of its existence as early as 1905 in Stanislavski’s letters to actor Vera Kotlyarevskaya. Let me give you a brief idea as to where-the-blinking-hell the world was at with psychological knowledge around that time. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, had just published his book Studies on Hysteria in 1895. Spiritual wellbeing was hugely important, but mental health was not part of the general lexicon or a fundamental element in the formation of our overall well being. 

Psychological study and analysis were not even considered legitimate research in the medical world, but more a woo-woo type of European hippy smack-talk. Depression or Melancholia was still considered a form of insanity, and asylums had only just decided to start addressing people as patients instead of inmates. We were yet to discover the full effects that shell shock was to have on military personnel returning from WW1 – and the subsequent PTSD that would define a generation of men and women alike. The Stanislavski method was created at this time. And we were still roughly 80 years off formalizing cognitive behavioural therapy as a supplement for, or to complement, psychiatric drugs. 

We still have a long way to go, but compared to the turn of the 20th century our understanding of ourselves and our emotional health is vastly different, and we are thankfully in a much more enlightened era for it. We have advanced to a better understanding of human psychology, and we should use that to modify these somewhat dated practices.

This is not to deter you in any way from exploring Emotional Recall and Sense Memory for yourself with your work, quite the opposite. Rather this is for you to be fully aware of exactly how far we’ve come in understanding how our emotions connected to memory can have a direct effect on our mental wellbeing – if not used with consideration, caution and a deep awareness of oneself. If you are using Emotional Recall and Sense Memory to help you explore a scene, you must mindfully choose which parts of your own life are worth using. And equally, when enough is enough for you.

Onwards!

When to use Emotional Recall and Sense Memory

There are times where you’ve hit the pace of the scene, you’ve hit beat changes, you’ve got a strong inner monologue, you understand the stakes but there’s just something missing. I feel like this when there are just no guts to it, or I haven’t yet broken the back of the scene or I’ve hit the bones but I’m not yet down to the marrow of it. These are the moments when I’ve used sense memory and emotional recall effectively I’ve been able to find that marrow. And the scene begins to feel slightly more electric and alive.

For example; there was a time when I was rehearsing a play and I had a particular scene that my character was driving, and I had to give another character some horrific news that would affect the course of the rest of their life. The run we’d done before was fine, it was ok and the shape was there. But I knew in my bones that I could be giving my fellow actor who had to receive and respond to the information a lot more to work with. This in turn would make their job a whole lot easier, and we could both exist in the scene in a more exciting way. 

We had time for one more run so I asked for a moment before we began again. I went to the side of the stage, closed my eyes, took four deep breaths and recalled a memory where I had to break news to my own friend that would in turn change their life. I remembered how long I thought about it that day, what my breathing was like walking to their house, the feeling in my chest, the smell of the ferns in the front yard, and the jelly-like feeling in my knees (where the anticipation accumulated), the dryness in my mouth, the anxiety about how my friend would react and if I would then react appropriately, the actual feeling of not knowing what to do with my hands, and then the weird sense of calm I tried to exude that only went one layer of skin deep. I stopped there, opened my eyes and started the scene.  

This took all but 20 seconds, I embodied these sensations and focussed on the other actor: curious as to how their character would respond. The shift felt subtle, yet enormous at the same time and after that, we agreed we could call it a night on that scene. Myself, the other actor and the director all agreed that we’d now broken the back of the scene. 

Purists would argue I was using a bastardized blend of both emotional recall and sense memory here: but this is the best example of when these techniques have worked for me. In rehearsal, tailored to what I needed at the time and in the spirit of exploration.

When Not to Use It: Safety

If a director, acting teacher or coach is asking you to access an emotionally or physically traumatic personal memory that you don’t want to delve into, even a little bit, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO IT. and if you start and don’t feel safe midway through something you
Can
And
Absolutely
Should
Stop.

No if’s or no but’s. There should be no questions about it. The person running the room should never put any pressure on you or anyone else to continue with the exploration or scene. And that should be the end of it. All that is required from you is to say “I don’t want to go into that today because I don’t feel safe doing it. I’d rather find another way into this that requires more imaginative exploration today. Thanks”. If you don’t feel safe, you don’t do it. And I’m all about people feeling safe while they work in any job, end of story…

Let’s say for example you’ve been tasked to recall a feeling of loss and injustice attached to a memory that is extremely similar to that of the character we’re playing. The memory you’re recalling is recent, unresolved and was a deeply traumatic experience – then my friend we’re headed into a dark cave. And if you’re going in there with not a lot of battery left in your torch, then you run the risk of your torch going out when you’re in the depths of that cave. And should that happen, you’ll find yourself stuck in a place you really don’t want to be. Trying to find your way out on your hands and knees in total darkness is scary and can take a long time. It can take hours, days, weeks, months in my experience, and even years for some people.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s no play or film in the world worth experiencing that very insidious place for. And from a punter’s point of view, that experience is not accounted for in the ticket price. The pursuit of emotional truth is a worthy one, and an important one for our empathetic development as people in a world becoming increasingly polarised in our views. But also, at the end of the day, that pursuit is not. Worth. Wrecking. Yourself. For. There’s also a financial risk there. I very much doubt this director or coach will be fronting the money for your psychology bills. 

I won’t stand for a coach, teacher or director telling any actor or even insinuating to them that they’re not a brave performer for refusing to dig into their personal trauma. If anyone tells you that, then that person is speaking from the voice of an outdated stigma attached to mental health. It’s insensitive, it’s bullshit and unprofessional. If that happens to you in any setting, professional or not, that is called shaming someone for not wanting to work in a capacity in which they feel unsafe. If that happens to you, report that shit as soon as possible to the right person.

All of that aside: you’re an actor with a job to get on with. And I’m here to tell you there are millions of other ways to get from A to B in your work that are; creatively stimulating, safe for your mental health, and effective – regardless of the subject matter at hand. 

A Sense Memory Exercise 

I want you to get the biggest piece of paper you can find and draw a single line along the length of it. This line represents the span of your life from zero until the present day. I want you to find the spots along the line at the age you were when you first remember experiencing very specific emotions that expanded your understanding of life’s complexity. These may not actually be the very first time these things happened to you, but rather the first time you can remember truly experiencing it. I want you to try and avoid the primary colour equivalents of concepts or emotions such as joy, sadness, grief or happiness. In the same way our character’s journey is unique, it’s useful to have easy access to and memory of the moments in your own life that are an interesting blend of colour, tone and complexity.

Here’s are just a few examples: When do you remember the first feeling/realise the existence of the following:

• Injustice
• Ecstasy
• The impermanence of life 
• Powerlessness
• Powerfulness
• Emotional control or manipulation
• The solar system
• The endlessness of time
• Class difference
• Religious difference
• Cultural difference
• Awe
• Wonder
• Deep respect
• The power of nature’s ability to destroy and rebuild itself
• The limits of your body
• The limitlessness of your body
• Your dependence on someone
• Someone else’s dependence on you
• Independence
• Discrimination of any kind
• A need to lead
• A need to yield
• Instability
• Not having enough of an essential recourse
• Responsibility
• The spirit or soul
• The fact that everything is just atoms and molecules, even your own body
• Existence
• The speed of sound or light
• Politics
• Defensiveness
• Defenselessness
• A need to be protected
• Protectiveness
• Emotionally moved by music
• Emotionally moved by an image
• Emotionally moved by a stranger 

These are a few of my favourite examples and you can add as many as you’d like. It’s very important to include as much detail as you can about where you were, what happened, and the story and subsequent sensations surrounding it. Did it happen to you or was it something you witnessed that happen to someone else, and in turn make you empathically understand a feeling or realised something’s existence? What did you see, smell, touch/feel, taste or hear at the time?  

When you start doing this exercise, you’ll be amazed at the memories you’ve stored in different parts of yourself. These memories are what makes your experience of life different to everyone else, and at the same time universally connected. These are all of the gifts you can bring to your work that helps you colour and flavour your work and helps you steer away from cliche choices. You can add to this timeline for your whole career, or even make more of them if you run out of space.

Why I Prefer Sense Memory

Emotional Recall is just as effective when drawing on positive emotions and memories you are in control of, as it is when accessing deeply traumatic memories. A great teacher once told me that it takes an hour of work to get one minute of truth on stage, and I live by that. Yes, emotional memories are very strong. Yes, they’re intense. And yes, they’re genuine. But there is a limit to the effect my emotional memories can have on my performance. I will admit to once doing a full run of a show using the same emotional memories until they were a blunt instrument and had no meaning for the text anymore. Because I hadn’t put the work into embodying the emotional states in the present, merely recalling them for effect, my work was all up in my head. Remember, emotional memory is a rehearsal tool and not a performance style. And quite frankly the audience is paying to see the story advertised on the poster, not my personal memories.   

An audience cannot discern any substantial difference in the quality of your work when you’re committing to a memory of a lived experience or committing to the workings of your imagination. It doesn’t matter what you use to get the job done, the quality can only be discerned when you’ve done enough homework or you haven’t. 

But I know from my own experience the best part about working from a place of imagination is:

1.   It hasn’t actually happened to me and therefore carries no trauma.
2.   The imagination is limitless. 

When I use the right combo of using my own personal experiences to help connect with the character, use sense memory work to help it get into my body, and then commit to the power of my imagination to bridge the gap between my world and my character’s world then I feel completely limitless and free in my work. I also need a director that trusts that I will get there eventually. I find I can throw away an imagined experience as easily as a kid stops playing an imaginary game in the schoolyard and picks up where they left off the next day. I’m not saying that a child will be doing brilliant acting, but they have a healthy detachment from what they’re doing – they’re playing. And our job is no different.

And now to wrap it all up…

I want to encourage any actor reading this to feel empowered to step out of your comfort zone and try this technique if it’s new to you. If you’re in training, at work or just in the mood to make your technique feel more personalized – after all, we have to try as many acting techniques as we can to decide what really works for us and what doesn’t. All I want you to do is to really check yourself before you wreck yourself. Rather than using emotional recall to prove the depths of my intensity, I can put into my work, but approaching it from a place of curious exploration of my character’s arc puts me in good stead. And I hope I hope it does for you too.

Know your limits, know your rights, know what the story needs from you at each specific moment – and enjoy the discoveries you make along the way!

The post Emotional Recall vs. Sense Memory appeared first on StageMilk.

But the biggest point of difference from the other kids was exactly that: I was still very much a kid. I wanted to play games during lunch and recess. I don’t mean sports – there was plenty of that – but there were way fewer kids playing games that required your imagination. At my first school, there were a lot more kids just pretending to be other things during lunchtime and recess, playing cops and robbers, hide and seek, pretend we’re all tigers, pretend all the locusts are lava, pretend the playground is the Death Star, pretend all the lawn is lava, making secret societies, running into things at top speed, impaling ourselves and falling off various things we shouldn’t have been mucking around on.

This was the world I’d left, the world that shaped me and I was proud of it. It was a bit of a circus – and it was my kind of circus. But in the big city school, I just remember that for the first time in my life I felt acutely aware that I was behind a lot of the other kids my age, in grades sure, but also a huge difference in how I wanted to spend time during the break. And man did it make me a shy, hyperaware-overthinker way too concerned about what other kids thought of me. The other kids wanted to grow up and I wasn’t buying it. 

A few mere months after the move, my mum found out through another mum at school that there was a town hall a few suburbs away that ran a two-hour drama class on a Saturday. I didn’t know what a drama class was but I went in (somewhat reluctantly) because I was told it was nothing fancy, just a lot of games and such. We went in that Saturday, mum left me with about ten or twelve kids in what looked more like a scout hall than a town hall. All the kids are rowdy and excited for the class and excited to see each other. And the first thing our kooky looking teacher called out was:            

“Ok, everyone! Let’s all be WHEELS!”

And immediately every single kid started running around the room. They didn’t look like they were trying to be wheels, they just *were* wheels. Some kids spinning, some doing cartwheels, some doing the train-arms thing, a backstroke-while-running thing. Didn’t question it, didn’t roll their eyes, didn’t laugh at anyone else – just did it. I’m sure we all looked hilarious but that was beside the point. These kids understood the point of it, the point of the task and the secret to getting max enjoyment out of the most seemingly pointless things in life.

The point was: questioning it = no fun.
Overthinking it and hesitating = no fun.
No questions and just do it (even at the risk of it being bad) = more fun. 

Never had I been anywhere where a grown adult asked me to just simply be something else. Not only that, but there was no right or wrong way to do it. However, I interpreted it was fine as long as I committed to it. And I immediately thought:

“Yep. I still don’t know what this place is, but I like it.”

But at that moment there we all were – a bunch of kids who just liked to play pretend, pretending to be wheels together, in a town hall in the middle of the most isolated city in the world. As far as I was concerned I’d found my new circus. I could do all the pretend stuff my heart desired and then some. I wasn’t self-conscious at school anymore because I found a place where the stronger your imagination was the better. Thinking about yourself just gets in the way of Space Jump, ‘What are you doing?’, Zip Zap Boing and Bus Stop, Gibberish and later on – the scenes. Our teacher encouraged us to commit, fail and try again and you really could do no wrong – you either committed or you didn’t. This in turn made me try and answer questions at school because I wasn’t too shy to just give it a red hot go in front of everyone. Slowly but surely my grades started to catch up a bit and the acting bug was deep in my bones. 

This brings me to the present, and what I’ve observed is that there is a lot of BS out there about what it takes to be an actor. That you need to be some sort of extroverted, well-spoken, witty charm-machine in all social and professional settings. I’m here to tell you that that is a complete load of tosh. Even if you’re a shy person you should never ever let your shyness stop you from starting or continuing acting. Because there’s a distinctly different motivation behind the performing one does in social settings and the performing that you do on stage or screen for work. When you perform as an actor, you temporarily put your shyness away to help yourself tell a story. It’s not easy, but it’s simple and gets easier with practice. You begin to realise the story you’re telling is much bigger and more important than your fear of making a fool of yourself. Every single kid in my class was a shy kid when they first walked in the door (some cripplingly shy) and they all walked away more confident than when they arrived. And even now on the journey of learning and working as an actor: shy Emma is still on that road trip. But she’s never allowed to drive. Sometimes she leans over and mucks around with the radio and gives unsolicited advice on navigation, but I don’t listen to her. She’s got a terrible sense of direction and always suggests the most boring route to wherever I’m going in my work.

As each year goes by, I get to know more and more actors properly through work and just through the community I’m a part of. And here’s a fact: I know just as many actors who are shy people as I know actors who aren’t. Not all are cripplingly shy, some just a tiny bit and some a lot. But nowadays tend to use more generalised terms of ‘introverted’ or ‘extroverted’ to describe our level of shyness. But I find even those adjectives are becoming tired in their overuse and ineffective in accurately categorizing people I know and meet. You dear reader are also far more layered as a human, and I feel it would be a disservice to put you into a over-simplified label of introvert or extrovert. Actors just so happen to be people who work in a complex industry, doing work that requires them to be vulnerable. I have never seen any correlation between the level of shyness an actor possesses and the quality of their work. Only the amount of work they put in determines quality at the end of the day. 

Ultimately I believe that acting as a profession actively attracts people who possess shyness in some capacity. What I’ve deduced from my own experience is the more I commit to the given circumstances of the character (or wheel) I’m playing – the more my shyness dissipates. Even if it’s just for a moment. 

If you’re a beginner and you’ve found a wonderful drama class or theatre group that is a positive and encouraging environment – Excellent! All classes that involve performance of any kind should be a space that allows you to feel completely uninhibited to just play. I would strongly encourage you to get up there on the floor as much as possible to discover your full capacity as a performer. When you feel even a second’s hesitation in your work, listen to that voice and discern whether it’s ‘shy you’ speaking or not. If it’s shy you then tell it to bugger off, because you’ve got a story to tell. Then get up there and give it a red hot go! Our shy selves like to protect our performer selves from going out on a limb, doing something bold, brave, interesting or fun. And without a brave move, we have no growth. Whenever I tell shy Emma to bugger off for a second I always discover something new in my work and my capacity as a performer.  

*But* if the drama class or theatre group you’re in is a discouraging environment, makes fun of people for work they’ve performed in earnest, shames people for “getting things wrong” or is a generally negative place to be then it is time to find a new class or theatre group. And you should never blame yourself for not wanting to be completely vulnerable in a space like that. Babes, that’s not on you. 

Now let’s say you’ve already been bitten by acting the bug and/or completed studies. Now you’re at the point where you want to work towards making it your career. Buuuuut you still consider yourself quite a shy person.

THAT’S.
SO.
OK. 

 Your shyness is not a shortcoming, it’s who you are and that’s fine. There is definitely a social aspect to the job and that can help you make friends in your industry for sure. But you don’t have to after rehearsals, after a show or after a shoot. Really, at the end of the day, all that matters is how you deliver in the audition, on stage or screen, the respect you display for others while you work, your generosity, preparation, punctuality, listening skills and how much enjoyment you can get out of it in the process. And shyness sits in the backseat or even the boot for all of that.

And just between you and me, it’s sometimes the shyest of performers who’s work tends to blow me away the most. They keep me guessing and they catch me by surprise in their work, like some sort of stealthy warrior getting me off guard and quickly assassinating me while my back’s turned. And that my friend is a superpower that cannot be taught.

There are so many actors who consider themselves to be incredibly shy people or at least we’re shy at one point in their lives. And they’ve not only made a living out of an acting career but have excelled at it. And after all this if you still don’t believe me when I say that you can absolutely be a shy person and a successful actor, then just have a look at the list below and you’ll see that you’re in some pretty good company. 

Viola Davis: “My confidence took time. It really did, to come into myself”

Robert De Niro: “Yeah, part of me is shy, I guess. You know the old story that actors are shy, then they get behind the character they play, you know? There’s truth to that.” 

Jessica Chastain: “Yes, I’m so shy.”…… “It’s a strange thing, acting for me has never been about wanting attention or wanting to be seen… it’s funny that I’m in a profession where that’s where I am.”

Kerry Washington: “I tend to be very self-reliant and private. And I have this history of wanting to work things out on my own and protect people from what’s going on with me.”

Tom Hanks: “I was horribly, painfully, terribly shy. At the same time, I was the guy who’d yell out funny captions during filmstrips. But I didn’t get into trouble. I was always a real good kid and pretty responsible.”

Steve Martin: “I am fundamentally shy and still feel slightly embarrassed at disproportionate attention.”

 Nicole Kidman: “The one thing I struggle with is [getting] through my shyness, because if I’m willing to speak up and not be obedient all the time, then I’m free and I do much better work. But if I haven’t worked for a long time, my shyness comes back and I’m a little rigid and scared. So it helps me to work a lot because it frees me.” 

So there we have it guys; whether you’re completely green, just starting training, your career or you’re even mid-career and worried about how your shyness and acting work will interact, know that a whole lot of actors experience the same thoughts and push on regardless and even find great success and sense of belonging in their work. If you see it as an obstacle in your way know it’s not a fixed thing, but rather something you can just walk around for a moment on your way to getting your work done. And who knows, one day, it could even be your superpower as an actor. 

The post In Defence of Shyness appeared first on StageMilk.

“For me, acting is not about showing my presence or displaying my technique. Rather it is about revealing, through acting, ‘something else’, something that the audience doesn’t encounter in daily life. The actor doesn’t demonstrate it. It is not physically visible, but, through the engagement of the onlooker’s imagination, ‘something else’ will appear in his or her mind. For this to happen the audience must not have the slightest awareness of what the actor is doing. They must be able to forget the actor. The actor must disappear.” – Yoshi Oida – The Invisible Actor

I can only describe it as a certain feeling or sensation when, mid-performance; the research, the rehearsals and the imagination seem to fuse symbiotically. And it feels just that – sensational. I feel as though I can let go of everything and lift out of myself and see what’s happening from outside of my body. It’s a feeling I keep chasing because it’s a peculiar and liberating state to be in, yet its presence is fleeting and unpredictable.  

This is why ‘The Invisible Actor’ floored me when I first read it. The concept of invisibility on stage spoke to me with absolute clarity that no other acting book had thus far in my life. It encourages you to get out of your head and into your body with a holistic approach rather than a stringent set of rules. Instead of a dogmatic approach to his process, Yoshi uses analogies about samurais, ninjas, battles, martial arts training and nature to describe our practice as actors. This book shows how an actor’s place in the theatre is no different to a ninja’s place in battle or a monk’s place in the temple – and there is a point in which each of these overlaps and intersects in theory. 

It seems contradictory to say, but I’ve seen invisible actors before. I’ve seen them on film and on stage and they’re the kind of actors that are as reactive and powerful as water in all its forms. An invisible actor can be as still and calm as a millpond, as erratic as the rain and then as powerful as a tsunami all within one show, one scene or a mere moment. Yoshi Oida, with the running commentary of Lorna Marshall, describes how an actor can make embodying and shifting between the most extreme ends of the human experience seem invisible.

But first…

About Yoshi Oida

Yoshi Oida’s career began in Japan, the country of his birth. As a child actor, he explored classical Noh Theatre and continued his studying and performing in Noh, Kabuki and Gidaiyu storytelling as he grew up. He also engaged in experimental theatre with the playwright Yukio Mishima.

He left Japan and travelled to Europe in his late thirties where he met the acclaimed theatre director Peter Brook. Peter’s ideas about theatre intrigued Yoshi so much so that he packed his bags and headed to Paris to work with Peter, despite having no experience speaking French or English. Over the years in Paris, Yoshi became a force to be reckoned with – working in shows that would become the cornerstones of his career; The Ik, The Conference of the Birds, The Mahabharata, The Tempest, Fragments and The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. He has also acted in French, Japanese and American films, directed plays and now runs workshops all over the world.

Why is his approach so unique?

His technique and practice were forged in the fires of two major Japanese theatrical styles: Noh and Kabuki. Noh being minimalist in its style, utilising masks and formalised gesture – this creates a distanced sense of tragic atmosphere for the audience. And Kabuki uses more dance, singing, movement and costume to create dazzling spectacles for the audience. In these forms of Japanese theatre, performance is either; singing, dancing or speaking – rather than the western style of theatre where acting exists as a separate skill. In Japanese theatre, a performer needs to use a wide range of vocal and visual expression to help tell the story. Both styles steeped in centuries of tradition are the worlds in which Yoshi’s love of theatre was born.

Yoshi’s approach is a unique fusion of eastern and western theatre-making that encourages the performer to get out of their head and more into their body. Lorna Marshall explains “When Yoshi uses the word ‘mind’ he is not referring to the brain or the intellect. There is a single word in Japanese, Kokoro, which can be translated as either ‘mind or ‘heart’. Probably, it is best to think about it as your ‘inner self’.” Rather than thinking that our choices as actors come exclusively from our head, he wants you as an actor to know that you can make decisions from any part of our body if you really tune in and listen to it. His book provides exercises that aid you in subtle and effective ways to shift your attention exactly to where it needs to be in rehearsal and performance. 

Why should I read this book?

Whether you’re starting out, in the middle of your training or the middle of your career, The Invisible Actor is accessible and enlightening regardless of where you’re at in your practice. Yoshi draws on the lessons he learnt from all stages of his training; from his formative moments playing pretend as a child right up to working and performing in Peter Brook’s company in Paris as an adult. He draws inspiration from the combination of joy and power he felt in becoming ‘invisible’ when he put on a ninja costume as a child. He wants to help any actor discover that same sense of freedom he experienced and how it can be worked into your practice. 

If you feel as though you’ve hit a roadblock in your training, or your technique needs a refresh for a new project, or you simply want to feel freer as an element of theatre in the storytelling process then this is the book for you. Yoshi Oida and Lorna Marshall boil down their wealth of knowledge and skills into a lean 125 pages resulting in an approach that is unique, simple and powerful.

The Fundamentals 

Yoshi breaks down his approach into 5 sections: beginning, moving, performing, speaking and rehearsing. I’ve distilled some key fundamentals from each category that have helped me in my own work, and what I feel encapsulates each of them respectively.

 #1 Beginning

Cleaning:

One of the key things that can be taken away from this section is the importance of cleaning the space before rehearsing. It’s a Japanese tradition used in theatre, religion and martial arts which ritualistically prepares the mind and body for work. Clearing and cleaning the space prior to rehearsal should not be treated any differently. Treating your workspace with respect endows it as having the existence of ‘something more’ than just any old room. It can be an act as simple as clearing all the coffee cups and rubbish out of the room, sweeping the floor, or making sure there are no unnecessary objects in the space. It is a small conscious act that can make a profound difference to the approach and quality of your time in rehearsal.

The nine holes, the spine, the hara and the hands:

In Japanese tradition each orifice of the body requires attention. Yoshi gives you simple exercises to work into your practice that brings focus to the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the ears, the anus, the spine, the hara (our physical core and core of our entire self). He considers these our most powerful energy channels that need to be cleared and prepared in order to use your whole being effectively in your work.

These exercises are great to work into your own rehearsal prep or pre-show warmup. Even if you’re yet to acquire any sort of warmups you do on your own to get into the zone, these are a great place to start in order to bring awareness to your body as a complete sensorial instrument.

#2 Moving

Standing and Practicing: 

Yoshi wants you to see yourself as a puppet onstage “held up and manipulated by the strings of your mind”. He explains that if your concentration wavers, the strings become slack and the performance isn’t interesting anymore. But “when the ‘thread’ remains taut yet invisible, the performance will look truthful and unmechanical: completely alive”.

In order to help this ‘tension of the thread’ on stage, Yoshi encourages you to keep the ‘tension of the soul’ through full consciousness of your whole self in daily life. This he explains, is aided by using active imagination in everyday physical tasks no matter how mundane or laborious. Active imagination and visualisation make almost any task easier as you have a separate focus for your inner concentration. I see it as working your imagination like a muscle at many points throughout the day as possible. That in turn means this muscle will be fit and strong and ready to go when you need it for rehearsal.

Directions of Movement:

Keep your 360-degree awareness on at all times.

“[…] the actor’s body exists within the unique space of the theatre, and it needs to ‘expand’ in order to fill it. As well as being aware of your skin and bones, you must be able to sense all of the directions around your body. Just stand somewhere in the performing space and ask yourself the following questions. Where is the front, the back, the side, up and down? And in relation to the audience, are you facing directly towards them, or are you standing on a slight diagonal?”

This 360-degree awareness of your body in space will give the impression you are filling the space and you belong in it rather than the space feeling like it’s swallowing you up in its cavernous size.

Sitting:

In Japanese theatre, the floor is commonly used as a place to act from in a position of seated readiness as it creates a greater visual field for the audience. As an exercise, he encourages you simply to spend time exploring how your body functions in the act of moving between sitting and standing. Try it extremely fast, extremely slow, which leg takes more of the effort, thinking of your balance, where you shift your weight and importantly – where that string of tension is.

Relaxing:

Like they do in the Noh Theatre, think of channelling all of your tension into your little finger, or the arch of your foot. When you focus your tension to these two small places it frees up your entire body to move with strength and ease. Not being one to argue with tradition I tried this the next time I got up on stage after reading this book, and I have to say this act of visualisation helped me immensely. It gives me a clear point of focus to channel my energy towards on days where I feel as though there’s so much going on that my attention is completely shot, or days where I have felt it almost impossible to drop tension I’m holding onto in the body and it’s affecting my work on stage.

Walking:

In performance, even when simply walking from one side of the stage to the other always stay in tune with your hara (centre). Oida explains:

“When you study Noh, you are constantly reminded about the importance of the hara, and this area is held open. As a result, internal energy can accumulate, which in turn keeps you physically centred and well balanced. A good actor is comfortably stable; not rigid like a tree, but soft like water”.

Tasting:

When I can’t look away from a certain performer on stage, I get the sensation that they’re ‘tasting’ each movement rather than being the most coordinated person up there.

“It is important to understand that acting isn’t only emotion, or movement, or the actions that we commonly recognise as being ‘acting’. It also involves on a fundamental level: the basic sensations of the body. One of my masters said, ‘As an actor, you shouldn’t be a theorist. Don’t be too logical or rely on intellectual understanding. Learn through the body.”

#3 Performing

Jo, Ha, Kyu and Time:

“Six hundred years ago, the Japanese Noh master, Zeami, said ‘Every phenomenon in the universe develops itself through a certain progression. Even the cry of a bird and the noise of an insect follow this progression. It is called Jo, Ha, Kyu.”

Jo, Ha, Kyu literally translates to Jo – beginning or opening, Ha – Break of development and Kyu – the sense of fast or climax. Lorna Marshall explains that Jo, Ha, Kyu is a natural rhythm different to the western ‘beginning, middle and end’ as Jo, Ha, Kyu is a smooth acceleration to a climax rather than a set of three even steps. When you feel like the pace of a play is slowing down you tune back into the Jo, Ha, Kyu. The rhythm is always there and always present, it’s up to you as an actor to keep in tune with it, the same way a singer stays constantly aware of the beat of a song. Lorna explains:

“From the audience’s point of view, there is a real sense of being constantly carried forward. There may be a variety of surface rhythms within any given performance, but the audience will never sense that the action has ‘slackened off’.”

Space:

In rehearsal, our physical choices can sometimes result in a complete lack of expression in order to keep it feeling grounded in truth or for lack of a better word, realistic. I am definitely guilty of this, and when it’s a bit off you know it immediately in your bones. But the following concept can really help you understand the effect your body has in the space onstage when you truly can’t see it for yourself.

“In daily life, you work with real distances. The chair is two metres away, so your intention is simply to walk those two metres. When you sit, you take the easiest way down. But on stage, you are playing with the full breadth of life, and so your actions have to be something more than just ‘walking two metres’ or ‘sitting down’. You don’t ‘demonstrate’ or try to make the audience see that these actions are somehow ‘Deeply Significant’. You simply imagine that the space you are working with is bigger. When you walk across the stage, in your imagination, you go to the horizon.”

Interior/Exterior:

Yoshi believes there are two elements in good acting: technical mastery, and the free and easy movement of the mind/inner self. Having these fully present in performance end up manifesting as your inner and outer expression. With attention and skill if you can find a creative contrast between your inner state and your outer expression, then we start to find the interesting, rough and frayed edges of a human’s presence. Yoshi explains:

“Balancing inside and outside. Moving without moving. Quiet but not quiet. Like riding a horse. A good rider can move very fast and cover a lot of ground, but he or she never seems agitated. The horse might be running across fields and ditches, through the forest, over the stream, and yet the rider remains tranquil and almost motionless. The actor’s mind is the rider, the body is the horse”.

Repetition:

Nourish your internal energy! How? Repetitive action. Much like those of spiritual and cultural practices; bowing, praying and chanting – repetitive movements have the effect of stimulating your internal energy which in turn tunes your sensitivity and awareness as a person. Yoshi draws this comparison with spiritual practice not at all with the intent of signalling the virtue of the task, but rather by stating the accidental discovery humans have made in seeing the effects of repeated physical action on the inner self. This can feed you as an actor. He says to be careful not to choose something that causes physical rigidity but choose a practice that encourages physical fluidity. A Yoga or T’ai Chi sequence is never a bad idea. As one of my movement teachers in drama school always said: “Supple body, supple mind.” And Yoshi’s belief is no different. Keep the movements dynamic and fluid and when you get bored, do not stop. Pushing through the boredom of repetitive physical movement can push you into a new space you’ve never been before. It is there in this new space that you can grow.

Human Energy:

Staying in connection with nature keeps you in connection with the unique human energy that makes you, dear actor, incredible to behold on stage. The more you are in connection with your unique human energy, the more you have to bring to each story you have to tell. Oida explains;

“Feeling happy or sad has an equivalent in the natural world, and human energy is linked to the energy of the physical environment. Today people imagine that they are independent of nature, and that what happens in the physical world has no influence on them. As a result, when you see the human being portrayed on stage, there is no connection to nature. But anyone who lives in an earthquake zone knows that we are very much a part of the natural world. Not even the highest technology can protect you if the earth decides to shift”.

Note each emotion that is the by-product of the scene you’re in and draw your own equivalent to a phenomenon of the natural world. Is envy the deepest hottest, bubbling lava pit of the volcano, is relief the softest mist off the top of a waterfall, is loss or love the deathly bolt of thunder striking the ground at your feet? Whichever references you conjure up in your mind are at once: unique to you as an individual artist and relatable to all who have walked this earth and have ever experienced a feeling of wonder and awe of the natural world.

Self-Observation:

Always have someone else present to observe your physical work in rehearsal, and when the performances start let the audience be your guide.

“In fact, the audience is the true mirror. I don’t really know how to act my part until I get in front of an audience. At that moment I discover my role. The rehearsal room is just the preparation that enables the discovery. The audience tells me how to play. I believe that the actor’s job is not to show what he or she can do, but to bring the audience into another time and space. A place that the audience does not encounter in daily life. The actor is like the driver of the car that transports the audience somewhere else, somewhere extraordinary. I want to serve the audience in this way.”

Body and Emotions:

Faking it til you make it is ok. As actors we are usually told that the goal is to work from the inside out, an inner state moving outwards dictating our outward appearance. But Yoshi says working purely from a place of emotion to start from is risky and unreliable. But bodily shapes on the other hand are very reliable no matter what sort of day you’ve had.

“As an actor, if I look for emotion first, I tend to panic. I think, ‘yesterday I felt genuinely sad. So today I must find that same sadness again.’ But when I try to think I am feeling sad, sadness never comes…. You take a big risk when you depend on your emotions as the basis for reproducing a scene when you have a long run. On the other hand, you can repeat a body detail in exactly the same way every day. Working from the body is useful for actors”

Try this theory with the game ‘Fake Laugh Til We Real Laugh’. If you get a room full of people to physically conjure up laughter and pretend to laugh it will always descend into actual uncontrollable laughter, and the same can be done with a scene on the opposite end of the emotional scale but in more nuanced ways.

Details:

Spend time exploring the range of your physical possibilities to ensure your body is closely linked to your interior being. And be careful not to broadly characterize your character as a general state of being too early on in the process, just so you don’t end up playing a description. Rather you want to be presenting a character full of detailed work and allow the audience to judge your character for themselves. Try a million different cues to start from and choose them wisely for your performance. Try to work with colours, images, physical cues on a macro and micro scale, imagination cues (As If’s come to mind there) as your kick-off points. Yoshi encourages you to try them all to bring as much detail and texture to your work as possible.

Tai and Yu:

When you rehearse, try to keep in constant dialogue with the Tai and Yu. We’re going back to Noh master Zeami with this one “One of Zeami’s more difficult but beautiful ideas were the division of learning into ‘fundamental structure’ and ‘phenomenon’…In poetic terms, tai is the flower, while yu is the scent. Tai is the moon, while yu is the moonlight. If, when you study acting, you concentrate on the fundamental structure – the inside – the ‘phenomenon’ – the outer expression – will emerge automatically. Very often, actors will see an ‘effect’ and decide to imitate it, but this will not produce good acting. Instead, you need to understand where that ‘effect’ originates, and what causes it to come into being”. As Yoshi explains, this will in turn bring more meaning to your work – and which actor doesn’t ever want more of that?

Relationships with other actors:

Don’t forget where joy is to be found with your fellow actors. The joy you can create with another actor is sometimes unexplainable. It’s another form of the ‘something else’ Yoshi is always describing and is something I’m a huge believer in. It doesn’t even have to be joy in each other on a social level or with each other’s persona, but joy in the fact that we are two or more people playing together on stage in.

“Actors always enjoy themselves on stage. Even when they are murdering each other, or in desolate grief, actors enjoy that situation. This in turn permits the audience to ‘enjoy’ the performance, despite the possibility that they may be in floods of tears…. In front of an audience, actors must find ways of making their ‘exchange of words’ appear believable and natural in terms of the situation of the play. The words have to make sense logically and emotionally. And since it isn’t easy to make the words of a text seem completely natural and inevitable, actors spend a lot of time understanding the psychological roots of the character or scene. But if the actors simply look for this aspect of the work and ignore their enjoyment of playing together, there is. No deep pleasure for the audience.”

And don’t we all want our audience to experience nothing short of deep pleasure when watching a show? Of course! Foster a space that is respectful to each other, respectful to the nature of the work, safe to work in, encourages play and welcomes constant offers and you’ll see just how much the audience will feel the vibe you’ve created for each other.

Our relationship with the audience:

Be ready nice and early, get into the wings and listen to the audience as they head to their seats. Really try and feel for what sort of audience they are. Every audience will be different, and a truly great invisible performer will feel that audience and make the subtlest of changes to bring the audience to where they need them to be to start the ride. It’s the job of the actors to balance out the audience with the sort of energy it requires, more yin or more yang.

“In the Noh theatre, they have a saying: ‘You must unify one thousand eyes.’ This means that the fundamental points of your performance should have the same impact on all the onlookers. Everyone should basically agree on what they’re seeing.“

#4 Speaking

Breathing:

A ballet dancer knows where they need to take in more breaths between movements before a mammoth variation, or an opera singer knows where to steal an extra snatch breath before a big final note. They map out exactly where they need to breathe to execute their work. An actor’s work should be no different, especially on text-heavy material. Once you know that text inside and out, and you’ve mapped it with breath, Yoshi suggests a focus technique to help make your breathwork appear invisible.

“There is an old saying: ‘Ordinary people breathe through the chest, wise people breath through the hara, and the skilled person breathes through the feet.’ The ‘wise person’ refers to the practice of meditation; if you do this, concentrate your breathing in the hara, the area just below your navel. The ‘skilled person’ is someone who uses their body in a highly developed way, such as an actor, or martial artist. People in these fields use the image of getting energy of the earth to help them”

He encourages you to imagine that air travelling up through your feet and when you exhale the air it exits through the tan-den (the core point of your hara about three centimetres below your navel). This is keeping the focus on the breath where it needs to be: away from your neck, chest and upper back. But utilising your legs, pelvic floor and core muscles helps you breathe onstage supported and without damaging your vocal cords.

*In this section, there’s an awesome story about how Yoshi, one day, whipped a flying somersault out of absolute nowhere while doing a Peter Brook workshop in the Sahara. It’s well worth the read for that story alone. Just an FYI!

Sound:

In this section, Lorna and Yoshi run you through some simple and effective vocal exercises that help you to feel vowels and consonants on a vibrational level and to help map and understand where they resonate in your body. They’re what I call ‘pre-warm up warm-ups’ and are excellent for getting the engine going before your ride or die vocal warm-ups. As they’re very simple, and require you to feel more than listen, I find they also work as a sort of meditation (of which I’m feeling I need more of before performing these days). “According to Japanese esoteric Buddhism, when you are born, you make the simple clear sound ‘aaaah’ like a god. As time passes, and you become ’educated’ and skilled in responding to the demands of society, you become a character with an appropriate vocal style. The open clear ‘aaah’ is gone. And then you spend the rest of your life, working to recover the first pure ‘aaah’, hoping to retrieve your innate divinity.”

Text:

Yoshi doesn’t want you to focus on having a ‘nice’ voice. But rather to focus on the logic and sense of the line itself. As he’s usually performing in English or French these are not his first languages, and he doesn’t consider himself a strong linguist so he doesn’t usually get big parts – which is frustrating for him, naturally. But it means he has to focus so hard on the grammar and logic of the line that it gives his work a certain edge compared to actors who speak English or French as a first language. He suggests to just try and keep your vocal range as open as possible by not locking into one emotional possibility when learning your lines, try experimenting with arbitrary offers first and see what sticks. “In Japan it is said that a good storyteller won’t have a particularly beautiful voice. if you have a beautiful voice, you feel safe, and as a consequence, you don’t work hard enough at getting the story across”

Reflecting Reality:

As a tool to help you understand the structure of a play, Yoshi suggests working backwards:

“Like a mystery novel it has structure. And like a mystery novel, it is sometimes helpful to look at the ending in order to work out the beginning. If the ending is like ‘that’, then the beginning needs to be ‘this’, and the next step ‘so’. It’s like a puzzle. But you can ‘cheat’ by looking at the end in order to find out how to solve it. from end to start to middle is a good way to proceed.”

On emotional truth, sometimes we as actors need to reckon that fact that how we feel while doing a scene doesn’t not always accurately reflect what the scene requires. In my case, this can be – hilariously – a lot of the time.

“Before you think about generating an emotion, you should examine what you need to do in terms of rhythm and timing. In fact, if you construct your tempo properly, the emotion will arise quite easily.”

Yoshi doesn’t want you to shy away from novelty! Rejoice! But he means this in a way that connects acting back to nature. Nature never stays the same and neither should our performance.

“I would like to make it clear that the concept of ‘novelty’ does not mean that you search for weird, shocking, bizarre performances. It is not ‘change for the sake of change’. Rather, it is finding ways to keep your work fresh and alive. From the audience’s point of view, a play that has true ‘novelty’ won’t necessarily appear strange and shocking. Instead, they will be so absorbed and moved by what they’re seeing, that they will be unaware of the fact that they have seen a good performance.”

Anything that keeps the audience focused on story and not specifically you and your craft should always be the way forward.

#5 Learning

Stay curious, try other skills and embrace your hana (we’ve all got one). Lorna Marshall explains the hana:

“Zeami called this quality hana, ‘the flower’ of a performer, and included the sense of ‘charm’ and ‘novelty’ in its meaning. This ‘charm’ is not the same charm that we see in daily life, which is a type of social ease. Nor does it mean physical beauty. It refers specifically to a particular quality of the performer on stage.”

Understand your unique hana, and then do everything in your power to not fall back on riding that charm alone. Don’t be seduced by it, constantly work on developing your technique physically and vocally. Keep a balance between the skills you have been taught and the hana you withhold that cannot be taught. 

In your pursuit of learning and service to a story just be ready to “… destroy previous methods of performing, in order to create what is needed here and now. When you are actually on stage, you must forget about all the theories, all the philosophies, all the interesting techniques. Just do it.” 

Be honest, be open, be generous….be a plate: 

“A Chinese sage was answering his student’s questions. One of the questions was, ‘What am I?’ The sage replied, ‘You are a plate.’ In eastern religious ceremonies, a special pate is used to hold the offerings made to the gods, the plate supports the precious objects…. In describing his student as a plate, the sage was reminding him of this deeper level of existence. In the same way, the invisible part of the actor is the plate that gives rise to and supports the visible action of the performance. you don’t notice its presence, only its absence.”

Some Final Words…

Like myself and every other performer/writer in this world who offers suggestions and advice to other performers, Yoshi finishes by giving you the freedom to go against what he says. And in some ways, I do. There are some stances he takes on the life span of an actor, at what age you ‘peak’ and when you should give up pursuing it as a career if it’s not going according to plan. This is something I actively disagree with. I believe anyone can act, and everyone has a certain amount of mongrel within them that refuses to take another rejection as a sign they should stop pursuing what they love. And in turn, can constantly search for technical improvement and finding a way to fall back in love with the craft when the hustle clouds what they loved about acting in the first place. 

But despite this, The Invisible Actor spoke to me like no other, and I have immense respect for this book and the approach to acting it endeavours to foster in its reader. Sometimes when you know, you know. And right now, what I do know in my bones is that it’s worth any actors spare time on their commute. Until then, I hope that this article can be your gateway drug into the real thing if it’s currently on loan at your local library and/or you’re hesitant to buy it. And just when you thought I’d run out of quotes, I thought I’d leave you with one of my top ten quotes to ponder on your way to wherever you’re headed in your craft. 

“There was a famous Kabuki actor, who died about fifty years ago, who said, ’I can teach you the gesture pattern that indicates “looking at the moon”. I can teach you the movement up to the tip of the finger which points to the sky. From the tip of your finger to the moon is your own responsibility.”

When you get yourself a copy, I hope you enjoy learning how to become invisible on stage and screen. And when you’re in full flight, use those powers wisely!

The post Why ‘The Invisible Actor’ is my Ride-or-Die Acting Book appeared first on StageMilk.

Listen to the audio version of this article

Well, here it is.

Here is that line.

There is no hidden secret to a one-person show.

There is no magic key required.

The stage is yours. YOU DON’T NEED ANYONE’S PERMISSION. NOT EVEN FROM ME.

NOW GO DO THAT WONDER OF A ONE-PERSON SHOW THAT’S BEEN HIDING IN THE BACK OF YOUR MIND!

Brilliant. Now that that’s done let’s get down to some practical hot tips and suggestions, and also some tidbits to ruminate on while creating your show. Some of these I’ve mined from my own experiences of putting on two solo shows, and some I have acquired from a couple of one solo show aficionados, whose work blows my mind again and again. And again. These hot tips are a smattering of things I wish I knew before doing my first one-person show and could only learn by blindly throwing myself into the ether. In this approach some things felt right, some things felt wrong and some things all over the hugely sliding felt-right-felt-wrong scale. But I’ve done it so you don’t have to.

Some of these hot tips I’ll genuinely be utilizing when making my third, fourth, fifth or one-millionth one-person show —who knows when I’ll stop! But what I do know is that I love one-person shows. I love performing the darn things, writing them, performing them, talking about them, performing them, watching them…. seeing someone conjure up a whole world with nothing but themselves and perform it with complete joyful abandon. Like a painter throwing their paints around the room, creating a one-of-a-kind piece right before your very eyes – but that painting is made with the elements of theatre…. I mean don’t even get me started. Utter joy.

One side note before we get down to the guts of this; one person shows sometimes get a bad rap. Sometimes it’s tall poppy syndrome (it’s very real), or the person saw a solo show they didn’t like and decided for themselves that all solo shows sucked. Or deep down the person really reeeeaaallly wants to do one themselves but doesn’t think they’ll ever have the courage to do it, and channel that pent up energy into dissing what they truly desire. But you, lovely reader, do have the courage, and that’s why you’re reading this article. But enough psychoanalysing! On with the tips!

Making it

Know your Creative and Professional ‘Why’

If it suddenly goes dark while you’re making your way through the tunnel of the creative process, your ‘creative why’ will be your torchlight. There will be times when you have to make big decisions about the script, or provide some solutions on problems in the storytelling; That is when your ‘creative why’ can bring a whole lot of clarity. For some people the ‘creative why’ is the fun part; it’s defining the real essence of why you’re doing what you’re doing. E.g. You’ve written a great story and your ‘creative why’ is to just get up there and tell this damn good story in an entertaining way. Done.

Or, “I want to make a joyful experience for the audience by showing a character’s unique life story.” Beautiful.

Or, “I want to put an untold story under a theatrical microscope to enlighten and thrill an audience.” Brilliant!

But the ‘professional why’ is a different sort of goal; one that deals with your self-development as an artist. Sophie Joske is a ground-breaking fringe circuit performer, theatre-maker, and Melbourne Comedy Festival regular and she introduced me to the concept of the ‘professional why’. She’s the creator of multiple award-winning fringe shows, including three solo shows, and as we spoke about this unique theatre-making process, she broke down the ‘professional why’ further: “If your answer is to make money then no; do something else. Let’s say for example you want to push yourself further in your physical work as an artist – which was one of my own goals for my last show – or you want to experiment with more tech, or even to try and sell out a bigger festival venue or build an audience for a longer-term. That’s all great. Whatever it is professionally you want to achieve, just know why”.

Book yourself into a festival

There is nothing in this world that gets me off my ass quicker to write a show than just straight-up booking myself into a festival. When I did this for my first show, I had five minutes of it written and a title – that was it. And if I hadn’t booked that festival slot, I would never had made the show at all. As various fringe festivals start announcing their admission deadlines once again all I’m going to say is – do it. Book yourself in and you can channel all of that magic holy-shit-what-have-I-just-done energy into writing the script. Welcome to the very first of many addictive adrenaline rushes you’re going to experience while making your show.

Honour your own taste in theatre

You can try and figure out what an audience wants to watch until the world turns into a flaming ball of lava. But the only thing you can truly know for sure is what *you* want to see. Your taste in theatre is as true as the sky is blue, and if you really want to see it, and you feel there is a space for you to create it, there will be other humans that want to see what you’ve got. If you’re building this bad boy from the ground up, mate, it will be a whole lot of work. Stay true to what you like and boldly move forward with it mind with each aspect of the decision making along the way. Your financial, professional, and artistic planets need to align for it to happen, so when it does just take that deep dive to create something that is unique. The rare privilege of truly owning your own space on stage will pass you by if you’re constantly trying to mould your work into what you think everyone else wants to see. Stay present in the process, stay true to that ‘creative why’ in the decision making, and let it fly!

Cast your audience

Knowing that I could cast my audience as characters within my own show was somewhat of a eureka moment for me. Everything else flowed from the idea that as long as there’s more than one audience member then the show will make sense. This also takes an absurd amount of pressure off the thought that you are the only person in the show. This in turn can also take the elusiveness and why-am-I-talking-ness out of the equation. When you start brainstorming it’s so cool to list how many different situations there are in which a person holds court, uninterrupted, for 50 minutes straight. A judge or a lawyer can talk to a courtroom for nearly an hour straight. A work colleague can give a boringly hilarious safety talk, complete with instructional videos, uninterrupted for an hour. A stranger spoke to me at the bus stop for 50 minutes while we waited for a delayed bus, which made me laugh and broke my heart all in just under an hour. Someone in a nursing home gave me their life story unprompted for nearly an hour, and I walked away as a different person.

Forget what anyone tells you about audience participation, people love being a part of the story. For the audience to be engaged it doesn’t mean you have to make someone’s nightmare come true by getting them up onstage with you. At the realisation that they’re, members of the tribunal, at the station with you, a part of the staff meeting in the nursing home, or are going to be jumping out of the plane with you, they won’t get a chance to think about what they’re having for dinner afterwards. Dial the stakes up to 11 for them and make them the jury in your courtroom solo show!

Rehearsing it

Give it the space it deserves

The beauty of a solo show is that you can rehearse it wherever your director is prepared to travel. This is what I feel significantly differentiates it from the process of rehearsing with a huge cast. In the dramaturgy phase of shaping the script, this can be done just about anywhere. You can get that done in a park, weather permitting. But once you’re ready to get it on its feet and throw spaghetti against the wall, then you’re going to need some walls. There are so many places that are willing to give you space if you promise to leave it as clean as it was when you arrived. Hit up your local council, hit up your mate with that giant back shed they just use for self-tapes, hit up a local dance school, hit up your old university to see if they’ll lend space to an ex-grad. If you’re working on a shoestring budget – as is generally the case – I would highly recommend making some cold calls. Not all, but some local councils are willing to offer discounts on venues that are a bit further out but barely anyone books for 9 am on a Tuesday. And you’ll be amazed at how many people are willing to help out a local artist if you take the time to explain where you’re at in the process.

Being able to rehearse your show in a multitude of different spaces is great training for getting yourself on a festival circuit. If you’ve booked yourself in for venues in other cities, you sometimes won’t be granted access to that space until you bump in or tech the show the day before it goes up – and sometimes even the day of opening. Learning how to adapt and work with what’s around you will play to your advantage. You’ll sometimes just get a few awkward photos of the venue, and trust me when I say this, the roof will be lower than it looks, the acoustics will be worse than they seem, and the chairs will be packed a lot closer to the front of the stage than you expect. A great solo performer will be able to work these things into the piece and adapt themselves and the show ever so slightly to fit the venue. Whether its vocally or physically adapting, changing exits and entrances around, or sometimes even cutting them out altogether – be ready to work with what you’ve got. You can make it seem like you built the show for that very venue all along.

Oh, and you might get weird carpet, or a door in a weird place, or a huge power outlet in the playing space right where you don’t want it to be…. always with the weird power outlets.

Set goals for each rehearsal

As it’s only you performing, you form an especially focussed working relationship with your director by virtue of the fact that there’s less people in the room and a lot less distraction. It’s just you, the director, and the story – 99% of the time. There’s also a lot more onus on you as the creator to stay in communication with the director to set some rehearsal goals. They can be as big or small as you like; from making sure the whole first half of the show flows thematically, right down to ensuring the music fade-ins and outs aren’t too clunky, or that expositional bit on page 10 sets up the reveal on page 36 clearly enough. Whatever it is you need to achieve with the time you have (especially if you’re paying for the space that day) ensures you don’t waste your own time or your director’s time. 

Jane Watt is an actor, solo show creator, and a force to be reckoned with who also loves to break down the process as much as possible. “Always have an outsider direct your work to. Set yourself smaller deadlines that all lead to the massive deadline”. Her show Gate 64 was critically acclaimed at multiple comedy festivals in Australia, then toured all the way up to the United Solo Festival in New York, then to Edinburgh and back. “Know that you’re going to fucking hate it through the process. But trust your gut and keep going” Jane explains. Which leads us to our next point….

Respect your own writing process

Having a full script on the first day of rehearsal is major goals but is not always the reality. Even if your story has it’s beginning, middle, and end on day one, that script you start with will be many edits away from what you will perform on opening night. And then the opening night script may be different again from what it’ll be on closing night. Your beast of a show will continue to morph and evolve at each stage. It’s thrilling the nth degree.

But let’s rewind back to the rehearsal room. Jane Watt explains: “Don’t feel the need to write chronologically and be ok with showing someone something that’s half baked”. You won’t scare the bejeezus out of your director showing up on day one with a half-baked script, but you will scare the bejeezus out of them by presenting an early stage draft and harbouring resistance to develop it any further. “You can just start with the idea and know the beginning and the end of it, that made me feel a lot safer” Jane continued.

It’s 100% ok having a million different scenes across a million different journals, google drive docs, and phone notes that you stitch together and form into a solo show. As long as you have a clear idea of the story you want to tell when collating them all. There’s no right or wrong way to do this and there’s definitely no CEO of solo shows who’s going to tell you off, so trust yourself and your process. Always know that it doesn’t have to be Shakespeare to begin with or end with – or at all. I reckon Shakespeare would’ve had a million google docs for a show on day one anyway, and not a single scene in chronological order.

Lots of money does not good theatre make

You, lovely performer, are a disco ball. Get a light on your show and look at how many directions you can shine in! To get it done you need lights, you need a space, a legend techy and that’s pretty much it. There’s no limit to what story you can tell with just yourself in an empty space. For sure, big-ass sets, crazy lighting, pyrotechnics, and AV can be mad cool, and I would never stop anyone from incorporating any of these into their festival show. But, when I’m making a solo show, the boundaries of a tight budget push me as a performer to think outside the square a little bit. I have to hone in on making the elements of story and character rock solid before thinking of any other theatrical element. When I see a solo show that has put these two elements above anything else, the satisfaction level is second to none. Take Fleabag by Phoebe Waller-Bridge as an example. It started as a 10-minute sketch, then developed into a solo show, before being adapted for the screen. The solo show version involves a performer and a chair in an empty space, and is just a mind-blowingly good story, executed flawlessly. That’s all you need and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. Your show may be small in budget, but yeesh, can it be mighty in scale.

Give the show a test drive

Doing a preview for a handful of people a week out from opening (or even earlier) will be the most awkward, yet safest, run of it you’ll ever do. Use a rehearsal space you’re familiar with as you may be nervous AF. I’d recommend getting there well early, sorting out your tech, warming up, and setting the space exactly how you want it to be for your first full run for an audience.

Like any preview for any show I’ll ever do, the doubt will be amped up to the point that it’s almost crippling. It can be the most exposed you think you’ll ever feel, and you’ll probably get laughs in spots you never expected. Just let it be the stickiest run in the history of theatre, and don’t even try and iron out the kinks. Let them be there for all to see because who knows, they could be the gold. Or they could be a huge gaping sign that that bit doesn’t quite work…. yet. But that’s cool! Your respective theatre-makers watching will be able to give some great outsider feedback which you can take or leave. I find that having those fresh eyes on it so close to opening can be exactly what the show needs. 

The creative solves I’ve gotten that close to opening have completely transformed my work into something I never could come up with on my own. Or as Joske puts it “Know, understand and nurture your critical creative relationships”. They’re worth their weight in gold and then some, because one tiny suggestion from them can solve something you’ve been trying to fix, re-block, or re-write for months! Months I tell you! Doing the necessary evil of an awkward test run before tech takes precedence over everything; it’s a lot harder to focus solely on story after that shift in priorities happens during tech.

Bringing it all together

Get yourself a publicist

When I say publicist, I don’t exclusively mean consulting a company specialised in publicizing independent theatre productions. If you’re just starting out that can just mean a buddy who can take charge of the socials for the show. Having someone who can post about ticket deals to spruik a few hours before the show, or someone who can photoshop a review quote onto a production shot and post it the day after opening to get a few more ticket sales, just anyone who’s good at building up some hype. I have huge respect for performers who can spruik their own work as well as they con spruik someone else’s. I’m just terrible at spruiking my own stuff, even if I love the show I’ve created.

Life and work problems don’t care if you’ve got a show on, and every hour of your time before getting on stage each day can be completely filled. This is assuming that like me, you don’t have the luxury to afford time off work during your performance week. Bills still have to be paid. If you can afford that time off, wicked! But I’m only interested in giving you an extreme scenario here. Imagine you’re about to perform your solo show, you’ve just started a new job and you can’t take a huge amount of time off yet, so you’re at work all day, your techie has to leave the state suddenly, you have two hours before you need to be at the venue after work and you also have to print off your programmes because you didn’t print enough at the beginning of the week, you have to brief a fill-in techie when you get there and fix a light that has just decided to break. This will leave you 20 minutes to throw your costume on, warm up and then gather yourself before the audience comes in. You do the show, then rinse and repeat all of that the next day. Present-you will thank past-you for getting a buddy to post about the discount code for tickets for the Thursday night show that isn’t selling as fast as you’d like.

I could be a lot better in this regard and I definitely don’t take self-promotion as seriously as I should when I’m performing, so naturally I’d prefer publicity done badly over having to do it myself. It’s not my strong point but that was my first lesson in handballing jobs around work, or rather – asking for help. Sophie Joske concurs; “Sometimes you want to hold everything close [with a show]. Always ask for help and accept help”.  

For some people, this is easier said than done, for some people they just like to know it’s done even if it means doing everything themselves and then collapsing into a heap at the end of it all. Save yourself that burnout, after all, there’s no show in the world worth sacrificing your health for. There are plenty of people who can help you if you just ask; delegate early so you can really enjoy more than a few minutes of the performance week when it’s on.

Remember “It’s bigger than you” Jane Watt – 2020

Smart words from a wise performer. This quote can be unpacked and applied to so many aspects of the performance week. It’s something Jane tells herself before every show she did of Gate 64 and also before her stand up shows. It means that the story you’re about to tell is bigger and more important than every ounce of fear that will no doubt be coursing through your body in that hour before you step onstage. Just look after yourself, stay well, warmup that voice and body before the show, and let every doubt go. Remember you’ve just worked your ass off and rehearsed this solo show to within an inch of its life, you’ve got this!

Put it in writing

Before you get a mate to tech for a night, or a mate to design your poster, or a neighbour’s friend from tango class to do front of house (FOH) for a few nights, make sure you’ve clarified that both parties know what the deal is. And even better, make sure it’s in writing – even if it’s just in an email. Get all that nitty gritty on there; duration you need the person’s services, deadlines, percentage cuts and fees. And if it’s not in your budget to pay the person make sure they’re fully aware of this. I can’t give every person helping me out on my solo fringe show a million dollars each (which is what they’re worth), but I can promise a decent cut. I can also offer artistic barter. In exchange for someone’s expertise helping me for a day on my own show I can always; rig lights, do some flyering, do FOH for a few nights, help with a bump in or bump out, tech on other nights and even promote someone else’s show after my own. There’s so much you can offer someone for helping you out for a short period of time.

“Treat your techies like gold, because they are” Sophie Joske – 2020

Without our techies we’re just another geezer in a bar telling a long story in bad lighting. Nothing wrong with that, in fact, I love hearing someone’s life story at the pub. That actually sounds like another good premise for a solo show ‘A bar fly’s life story you didn’t know you needed’. But I digress, back to the point…. I’m not seeing your show for that, I’m seeing you for some ThE-Atre maaaan. And it’s your techies that put that hectic lighting on you, make your sound cues crispy perfection, and, a lot of the time within a fringe setting they also get your audience seated quick smart. They’re always the first ones to arrive and the last ones to leave, and they don’t get anywhere near enough recognition. So please please, I beg of you, treat your tech like the MAGIC GOLD that they be.

Some Final Words

Well hey-o that was a whole lot of info and now it must draw to a close. I want you to know you have all the agency in the universe to see everything I’ve scrawled and take anything that resonates with you. And also, the full freedom to actively go against everything I’ve written, except the last one which is the only non-negotiable dot point for obvious reasons. I’m going to get out of your hair so you can get on with writing that masterpiece.

But wait!

Here’s one final musing from the wise Joske; “There’s actually no such thing as a one-person show”. I know. Let that sink in. There are so many people who can help you get it from your brain to the page and then to the stage. It’s a huge team effort putting on any show regardless of how many performers are on stage and you’re never on your own. Now go let your freak flag fly and shine like the disco ball that you are.

The post How to Put on a Solo Show appeared first on StageMilk.

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Whilst I was studying acting, I truly knew what I loved about the work I was doing, the community within it and my own strengths but I had no other specific goals within the overarching goal of ‘work as an actor on stage’ to break down and work towards – and boy, did I know it. At drama school I was (and don’t get me wrong, still remain) very much a citizen of dreamland. When considering my future in this vocation I liked to journal, draw, and imagine. I thrilled in analysing the stories, plays, monologues, performances, shows and films that truly inspire me, boiling it down to their very essences and then pouring these discoveries into a journal where the ephemeral dreamscape of my mind could materialise right before my very eyes. 

This exercise of creating an actor’s manifesto is one I would strongly encourage as it opens the gate for you to take a plunge deep into the well of your inspiration, pull out what you find and henceforth see what sort of work you want to put out into the world. Creating your own manifesto is a deeply personal, fun, and enlightening acknowledgement of everything that has formed your inner creativity over your whole life since you can remember. And it can be completely unbridled in its form. It can be a journal, a corkboard, an exercise book or even a giant piece of butcher’s paper you can roll up and put it away. Whatever vessel you chose to hold your manifesto should have an enormous amount of space to be filled. Because trust me when I say this: when you start it’s truly hard to stop. 

This brings me to the five-year plan, which I see as a completely different entity altogether. It’s a similar concept but is much more laser-focused on its intent. Think of it as dipping a thin paintbrush in exactly the colour you want and drawing a very thin, precise line between point A and B on a piece of paper. As opposed to putting all of your favourite colours in a paint tin, swirling them together and ecstatically throwing the whole tin in a giant and colourful splash across the page. Definitely a mood, but not what I’ll be showing you in this article. I wanted to outline the difference between (and the importance of) a manifesto and five-year plan so we don’t accidentally build a playground when we need to build a railway. You feel me? Alright, enough analogies let’s get down to business:

Step 1: Write your goals down

Ok, you’re probably thinking “Well nuh-derrr captain obvious”. Captain obvious is obviously obvious but also critical in her obviousness. I want you to see your goal like any company sees its mission statement when setting a five-year goal. Forbes.com explains it thusly: ‘It guides employees to make the right decisions that are in line with helping your business achieve its mission’. You run a small business with your agent called ‘(Insert your name) – Actor’ and I believe there’s not a huge difference between how any other business grows itself and your own business with the decisions you and your agent make as a team. If you’re still studying or freelancing, you could consult a teacher, a mentor or even a trusted colleague on these goals and help in holding you accountable. It’s not all up to them for accountability, a lot of that is on you. But the invisible pressure I feel after sharing my professional goals with people I trust and admire definitely helps me keep myself accountable. 

Is this MY goal, or someone else’s? 

When approaching your five-year plan, you need to write down exactly what it is you want to achieve as precisely as you can. Reflect on your goals and consider; will this make other people happy, or will this make me happy? Will this make other people proud, or will it make me proud? And just as importantly; is this someone else’s dream for me, or is this my dream for myself? I say this because I’m aware of how many other people’s dreams have lived rent-free in my head before. And it’s important to decide whether it’s truly what you want to do with your career or if you have adopted other people’s ambitions purely because everyone’s doing it. Before you embark on a course to achieve said dream, I want to make sure you’re beating your own drum. You’re an authentic, unique specimen of an actor and I want you to honour that.

Make sure they are WORKABLE

Focus on the goal you’re setting is actually workable in a five-year stretch. Who knows, you might achieve your goal in a lot less time, and then it’s time to create another! A lot of the work we go for has so many variables other than how you deliver on the day. We all know these variables and I understand how sometimes it feels like all that happened when you booked a job was that the planets aligned, you felt good ju-ju, the reader wore a mauve shirt and you had Weetbix for breakfast instead of toast that day. But the goal you set in a five-year plan as an actor has to be something you yourself can break down, work towards and not be reliant on The Force to make happen. ‘Work as an actor on stage’ is quite broad, but ‘Produce my own work that will push me greatly in my skills as an artist’ is breakdown-able and workable. ‘Get voiceover gig’ I’ll admit is specific, but ‘Greatly improving my chances of getting into the voiceover world’ is doable – definitely within 5 years. Other ones could be ‘Set myself up as an actor in London’, or ‘Improve my chances of working in animation’ or ‘Create my own theatre company that specializes in touring contemporary theatre to regional places’. It’s all in the wording which will affect how you then plan out your steps. Clear and concise wording makes it much easier to navigate your goal and to make sure you’re staying on track. And more importantly, it helps you stay on track with your improvement in areas that need more focus and attention. 

Step 2: Strengths and Areas Needing Improvement

Now that you’ve laid out your goal I want you to write down what you’ve already got going for you and what areas need focusing on. This helps you to; 

1. Identify the best opportunities to pursue in achieving your goal
2. Understand the areas you need to work on in the near future
3. Be aware of what strengths and skills you need to foster and maintain along the way.

As a demonstration I’m going to imagine I’ve chosen the goal ‘Set myself up as an actor in London’ and I’ll do a quick ‘strengths and areas of improvement’ list as an example. 

Strengths:

• Good friend contacts in London
• EU passport (which I won’t be able to use soon but who knows)
• Eligible for a 2-year visa
• Good sense of contemporary London accent and regional dialects
• Have studied there before and know the companies I want to align my work with

Areas of Improvement:

• Need to build work contacts in London
• Need to find a UK agent
• No UK showreel or voice reel yet
• Need to build more savings
• Need to have a better understanding of the market

This is a brief at-first-glance breakdown but a good example of how I would lay it out before step 3.

Step 3: Work Backwards

Now you’ve got your goal, you know what you’ve got going for you and what needs working on, you’ve imagined yourself with you in your goal; getting more voiceover tests (or even going to the studio to record), going to auditions in your new home city of London, LA or Vancouver, or closing night of your independent theatre piece – whatever it is, you’re there. Now break it down into smaller one-year goals, lay them out, and work back from your first one-year goal into quarterly goals and then monthly goals. For the sake of demonstration again, let’s go back to the goal I set out in step 2. 

•  5-year goal – Set me up as an actor in London
•  4.5-year goal – Auditioning for work that aligns with me creatively and professionally.
•  4-year goal – Have put on a show I am proud of within an independent season, have made good working relationships within the independent industry in London.
•  3.5-year goal – Have put on an independent show I am proud of on the fringe circuit
•  3-year goal – Have set up a solid side hustle that I enjoy and have signed with a UK agent that aligns with the career I want to create.
•  2.5-year goal – Have moved to the UK.
•  2-year goal – Re-hash accent work again. UK Voice reel and showreel are done
•  1.5-year goal – Have accumulated enough savings for the move, bond and enough time to sort out my side hustle. Have enough savings for a voice reel and showreel. Now keep saving.
•  1-year goal – Wouldn’t hurt to start re-hashing accent work. Keep Saving
•  9 months from now – Have organised VISA. Continue Saving
•  6 months from now – Have an idea and outline for an independent show you want to stage. Continue saving.
•  3 months from now – Have an outline from friends who’ve lived/live in London about living costs, where to live, where to work, what they wished they knew or what they would do differently moving over, what they would do again moving over there.
•  1 month from now – Have had the conversation with my agent about the move. What this means. Market analysis, examples of clients they’ve had do this before, possible agents/casting agents they could get me in contact with, any hot tips and advice they have. Run the professional goal breakdowns by them and seek their advice on the game plan.

Again this is a loose example of how I would map this out and break it down, there’s definitely a lot more that I would find to add to my monthly and yearly goals once embarking on that journey. The important thing is if you don’t get a particular one done by a particular time, that’s ok! Add an extra two weeks onto your deadline. You get one done before the other, no problem! Swap it around with another. Just make sure you’re holding yourself accountable and ticking those things off the list. This breakdown will change again and again the further you progress, the more you learn about this new area you’re jumping into, and the more the world/market changes. These targets will be ever-moving so stay focused, soldier.

But let’s say you’ve chosen a goal where the yardsticks along the path are not as clear and concrete as it is with moving your whole life overseas within five years. Let’s say you’ve chosen to greatly improve your chances of working within the voiceover industry. It’s crucial that you measure out for yourself what your metrics of success are. Is it to walk out of a test feeling proud of your work instead of feeling shitty? Is it to get more voiceover tests? Or is it to get your first voiceover test? These are all incredibly important for yourself to determine and will be specific to you individually. Everyone would be approaching this goal from a different angle so understand those metrics of success in relation to your goal, set them out, and work backwards from where you want to be. And then figure out exactly what you need to get there. That could be doing more workshops on technique, seeking out specific voiceover representation, doing a voice reel you’re super proud of and stoked to spruik around, setting up off the wall VO tests for yourself as you would do with practising self-tapes, investing in your own gear (not essential, but could be what you need where you’re at), getting on top of who all the big players are and where to main studios are and what sort of VO work they do – the list is endless, and I could go on with that one forever. 

Step 4: Go for it Tiger 

You’ve planned, you’re focused, and you’re motivated so fling yourself down that path today. Hold yourself to it every day you’ve got some precious spare time on your hands. Go back to that five-year plan and think ‘Is there something I could be doing to tick things off the list right now? Could I be adding things to the list? Could I be updating it or changing it?’ 99% of the time and 9/10 dentists would agree, there is. I want to pull you out of any feeling of inaction, or that you’re out of control of your destiny as an actor, or relying too heavily on The Force. You can achieve the goals you want if you set out your game plan into these doable, achievable tasks.

The inevitable thing is life will happen: taxes need doing, pandemics may occur and lightbulbs will need changing. Life in general likes to oscillate wildly between boredom and chaos – and to just about everything in between. Life simply doesn’t always like to stick to your five-year plan as you want it to. But the beauty of all of this is you will end up either achieving your goals or will be somewhere completely different to where you’d be if you’d done absolutely nothing at all. And you’ve had some sort of say over your own destiny. If you do end up somewhere you’d never dreamed of down the path of this five-year plan I mean come on – what an absolute gift. Besides, I believe it is our deep attraction to seeking the divine unexpected possibilities in our craft and our lives that drew us to this thrilling work as actors in the first place. Stay authentic, stay open, check your blind spots and I’ll see you in the future!

The post How to Set Goals as an Actor appeared first on StageMilk.