Working off the other actor - what is it? In performance you focus on what the other actor is doing and respond accordingly moment-by-moment. Your performance is created in-the-moment. This is very different to the 'acting-as-presentation' model, where the actor maps out every gesture, every inflection in...
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Marcello Mastroianni possessed the rare ability to work his moment-to-moment impulses in concert with the dramatic structure of a scene. Many actors lose their shape in search of 'naturalism', while others are overly technical and lose creativity. With Mastroianni however, his performances are seemless. It is...
Read MoreActing As If is when you take the action you have chosen for the scripted scene you are to perform, and use it in a fictional scenario you create from your own imagination - 'It's as if...
Read MoreAs rehearsals for my new feature film, Distracted, progress, here are the seven acting questions we've been asking of the script. After all, if the actor does not understand the script correctly, then he cannot act it correctly - this questioning is the process for...
Read MoreOnce we've answered the question; what is literally happening in the scene?, the next step is to determine what the essential action of the scene is, the action we are actually going to do in the scene. Note that the literal action in the scene, is...
Read MoreYou've always got to know what you're doing. That means having a concrete, controllable, repeatable acting technique which enables you to deliver the goods in any situation. It means understanding why you got the results you did and knowing how to change those things you...
Read More... This will enable you to organise your mind and your energy, and focus entirely on the task ahead, ensuring that everything you do works for your performance. This is all part of having a controllable technique that stands up under pressure and enables you to...
Read MoreBeware the flamboyant chest beater, all cocky bravado and big mouth. These people behave this way simply to masque their fears, to conceal the fact that they don't know what they're doing. They fake confidence by displaying bullishness but the fact is they are insecure...
Read MoreI used to think that the quality of our performance was determined by how hard we had worked. That is, the harder we worked, then the stronger our performance would be, it couldn't be good if it wasn't stressful*. But now I'm not so sure....
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