Projection Part 2: Essential Breathing
For the first follow up to my Projection series I want to focus on breathing as an actor. There’s a lot to go into when it comes to the mechanism of breath, but there are a few basics that I want to cover today. We’ve already talked about getting rid of your misconceptions about breathing […]
Filed Under Articles, The Body, How To, Projection
Projection Part 1: Projection for the Actor
When I first started acting, projection was a problem I just couldn’t seem to master. It seemed the notes that I got the most were to “project!” and “be louder!” I hate notes like that because they did me no good as it was obvious that I didn’t know how to be any louder. Over […]
Filed Under Articles, The Body, How To, Projection
Mental Acting Exercise
A few years ago, a study was done by Dr. Denis Waitley Ph.D on Olympic athletes testing something called Visual Motor Rehearsal. It was also used on NASA astronauts in the Apollo program. In the study, athletes were hooked up to bio-mechanical feedback and told to run their particular event in their head, visualizing as […]
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The Neutral Actor
Today we’re going to discuss the notion of neutrality in an actor. Many times, actors find themselves needing to react to everything that’s happening on stage. They’ve been told so many times that they should never turn themselves off while another actor is talking that they’ve taken it to mean that they must always be […]
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Hand Placement and the Actor
There is one very easy way for an actor to distinguish himself on stage; to stand out from everyone else. There is one thing that will, every time, make an actor’s work look immediately more polished and professional. What is this one thing? Those of you who read the title already know. It’s hand placement. […]
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Rid Yourself of Speech Modifiers!
I won’t lie to you; this is a topic that drives me crazy. Speech modifiers are about the most annoying things in the world when they’re coming from actors. When I say “Speech Modifiers” I don’t mean adjectives and adverbs, I’m not even talking about any particular words, I’m talking about particular usages. Those vague […]
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