I worked specifically with the teens in playing the objective, speaking out, and using the sensory realities to create reality. In addition we covered, over the last few weeks, how to prep a scene and how make the reality of the play believable and personal to the individual actor. Exercises included – The Surprise Birthday party (entering to find an expected surprise party canceled unexpectedly ), as well as various improvisations including, Brother & Sister scene, brother had put to sleep the family dog before the arrival of her younger sister. As well as various scenes from films that we improvised. I’m working on having the teens learn to really live in the conflict and fight for their actions. With advanced students we are doing a lot of inner monologue work and relaxation.
We have covered in the classes, Relaxation, Sensory work, personal object, sensory overall sensations, improvisations and objectives, substitution work, place work and script work, thus far. 
All younger acting classes start with physical and vocal warm ups and then into checking in and a warm up sensory exercise of some sort. We’ve done everything from recreating pouring rain (after a real Los Angeles rain) to making a toaster waffle. More and more I stress that the real life person is in the physical reality of the scene and NOT saying a line a certain way. The orange light and heat coming from the toaster and the smell of the waffle cooking is what creates the desire to eat the waffle. If the students actually start to crave the waffle and enjoy the exercise then they know they were in it and not just pretending but believing to a certain extent as well.
We also did more and more substitution work- taking a real life person for an improved character. Great stuff happened. Also I worked strongly this last week on place work. We had students pick a real life place that they can use in the scene. Next, I video taped them and they had to block out the camera with the pretend place and stay in the scene.
Class went well this past week. We began with scene study this week, and the real focus was getting the voice out. Sometimes the student’s emotional work is really lovely, but it is incredibly difficult to hear them. So we worked on a few exercises that brought out the voice, while also maintaining the personal emotional work the students were doing. What the students found was that sometimes the performances had even more personal resonance for them when they really worked on getting the voice out. In the technique portion of class, we did the studio favorite “Madman” exercise. This exercise is straight out of Stanislavski- it basically involves students rehearsing for a play, and a madman tries to come inside. The focus of this exercise is the “magic if”. Students do not have to access something scary in their life or anything, rather all they need to do is perform the actual circumstances of the scene and then the real fear will come out of it. We ended with the Mirror Exercise which is a really good way for students to get in touch with their scene partner, and to also strengthen their level of observation. Sometimes we can take the littlest detail of somebody else to help build our character for a scene. So the students had to really focus on every last detail- and perhaps there’s some aspect that can be incorporated into their performance. Good work.
This week went well. We began with an imagination exercise involving personal objects. The exercise involved imagined being in a boarding school, and being able to take a few personal objects with them. The focus of this exercise was to emphasize place work (recreating their own bedroom, and then an imagined dorm room at boarding school), as well as using personal/real objects in an imagined circumstance. The work was generally solid- and there was some real nice emotional honesty. The trick with exercises like this is that you can’t over think what is supposed to happen; rather, the key is to just be as specific and observant and then it’ll start to have an effect. The next thing we worked on was obstacles. We explained how in most scenes, plays, etc. characters face a series of obstacles to getting what they want. We worked on a revised key exercise where there are three children- one who wants to steal the keys, another who doesn’t, and then a third who’s on the fence. The goal of this exercise was to introduce a variety of obstacles to the kid who wanted to steal the keys (i.e. the good kid doing different things to wake up the dad sleeping in the other room, moving furniture around to make it difficult to leave, etc.). Finally, we broke up students into groups of three or four to create short scenes that had to include a character with a specific want, and 2-3 obstacles that get in the way of their want. Scene study went fine- we’re still working on getting the blocking(staging) settled, and making sure lines are 100% memorized. The other big thing is we really want students to do some place work prior to working on their scene or monologue, so there’s a level of comfort in looking all around- and not just at their scene partner.
7-12 year-old groups all worked on physical activity work. They did cold and snow and built an imaginary snow fort. Once the reality was believable to them, I gave a story around the place that they had to act. In addition, we worked with secret improvisations around character objectives. Next I shared with the class my performances in my play and the importance of substitutions for the characters that are mentioned in the play. Next I had each student act out a scene about hating a particular teacher. They were asked to substitute someone from their lives that the disliked as a substitution for the scripted teacher. The instant fullness of this exercise is just amazing and is ALWAYS there for you at an audition, set, or in a run of a play. It’s so important for actors to really look at the people in their lives and the relationships they can use for the work. Next they will be working on a best friend.
We also continued with place work.
Advanced Sunday class, started more intensive improvisations with Animal work. The animal work I’m doing is very advanced and detailed oriented. I’m really working them to get the muscular and emotional essence of the animal. A lot of the class needs work on this. BUT Joshua was ASTOUNDING. He was working on a chicken and I swear, you could see the animal. Really cool work was done by him. The next step is to choose the qualities of the animal and turn it into a human with the chosen qualities of the animal. The purpose of the exercise is to discover how to play characters that are different from yourself, either vocally, physically or both.
TEEN CLASS-
Technique – We started with an improv around a place and this week it was at an art gallery showing. All the students were givin’ different characters with different agendas. E.g. – an artist showing the work, a art dealer, a waiter, someone wanting a job, etc. This plus last week’s hotel lobby improv is to show the effects of place work on the characters and how the behavior gets influenced within it. Next we did Sense Memory acting around scene work. I’m having certain students add song or monologue work to their place exercises to break vocal habits and self consciousness. Advanced students are adding overall sensations with place work or are beginning private moment work.
TEEN Play project on Sunday-
I have asked students to write and perform a song OR take a song already written and put their own words to it regarding an issue of bullying or something that they feel strongly about. I had some great music, real-life monologue and improv work happening simultaneously. We are going to weave the exercises into the text of the new original work.
Welcome back everyone! So sorry, it’s been a long time since I’ve updated our blog. I’m in a play with a lead role, so it’s been hectic. That said, my working as an actor always feeds into my work as an acting teacher. We have covered all of the following in BOTH the teen/adult and the younger classes.
1. Wants/problems and through-lines…. We’ve worked on exercises specifically designed to teach actors to trust their inner thoughts and use them to achieve what the character may want in the scenes.
2. Sense Memory – Week one, introduction to the five senses and relaxation.
Week Two, Personal object work with endowing prop objects with a life.
3. Place work- using real life place work in place of or in addition to in the play.
4. Secret Improvisations– Improv work without knowing the outcome of the scene.
5. Imagination work around senses for film.
Our advanced Sunday classes are involved in developing class work with a gifted writer and creating a unique play especially made for the students enrolled. I had my advanced kids write their own lyrics to a popular song and sing it as a performance piece. Then we had students sing to other students and do monologues to other students and add music as well. It’s a new approach that was quite exciting because it taught the teens that you can get to the reality also through an external form. (A big No-no with Stanislavski work) BUT IT WORKED! This was actually taught to me at NYU through Liz Swados who produced RUNAWAYS on Broadway, using this VERY EXERCISE.
It was great fun!
Jeff
We did 45 minutes of warming up and then worked diligently throughout on scene work. The big issue that I’m stressing with the teens this term is using and interacting with the place, and even more importantly creating the reality of the scene and what you choose individually as humans to make the character’s life become your life. I had teen actors work on a moment alone as the character with an activity or activities that they do. They had to think about their scenes and make personal and imaginary choices. Specifically these choices were to help them with everything in the scene that was NOT real in their own life. We had some miraculous breakthroughs on Saturday. Shayna Jackson in particular, was extraordinary. Her entrance was great! Because she had worked so hard on where she lived, what she does and her relationship to her sister, we were engaged into her world. When she entered she saw her sister sitting in the dark, holding her Mother’s coat. We could see her trying to figure out if the sister was asleep or not. She went into the other room, behind the curtain grabbed some of her things (perhaps to sneak back out), when she discovered that she was awake, she went to the closet to take off her scarf and jacket. What is so extraordinary about that work was she was no longer acting but living and interacting with a place that was real for her (Shayna). Because of that, the audience or the class, was drawn in to the place. We felt like we were watching someone in their home on specific day, a day that was very dangerous for the character. All this was achieved without words, only behavior. It was a great piece of acting and I was very, very proud. Jack Sinnot made a breakthrough in interacting with the place as well and with his relationship to the bird AND his father in the scene “Speckled Birds.” I hoping that the discoveries and the amazing work will happen in performance. Which is truly the test for actors. Can we get this work into the film or play with the time demands of the industry? I think we can. Have a great Thanksgiving everyone and thank you for your trust, enthusiasm and bravery in the work you do each week.
-Jeff
We worked on technique that we are going to prepare for the performance day. It’s a select group of improvisations, Sensory work and exercises to show. My Sunday advanced class will be working on Private Moment work and the other groups will be doing the Bird Exercise and Improvisations. The great thing is that the work in the improvs is very heart felt by all the students. We really focused on using the place work and allowing yourself to pause in a scene to gather your thoughts, to check in with your self personally and what your feeling and using that feeling to adjust the character’s need to achieve the action. More and more, I’m finding that speaking out helps the kids to really be honest in what they are doing in the scene. The acting is getting very very personal and very dynamic. There is no acting school anywhere who do what we do with young actors. The class work has been extraordinarily impressive and each week I’m enthralled by the results.
This past week we delved a bit more into prior circumstances. Students who had not previously done the bear exercise were given an opportunity (this was briefly covered in Week 3). The next exercise we did focusing on prior circumstance was the surprise birthday party. Basically the exercise involves it being a student’s birthday and no one remembered, they had a really rough day, and at this point they enter the studio and everyone is there to greet them in a big surprise. Or not. Basically the point of the exercise is to show how what the character has already lived through is going to affect the way they receive the surprise (or lack thereof). We also did a really nice improv about students looking for a new pet to replace the one that just passed away. We ended this technique with focusing on status. Students focused on how they could change physical aspects to maintain higher or lower status in a scene, and how these relationships affect the outcome of a scene.
Today, we did voice, movement and fun sensory warm ups and did a fun exercise which I plan to show on our performance day. The students were asked to come up with a real life out door place that they find beautiful and also a bad day from their lives. I won’t tell more here because I want to perform this exercise on the show day at our acting school. Next we continued work on improvisations – we did the “Opening Night” improv where one student is terrified to go on stage and the others are trying to get him/her to go on; in addition we worked on the orphanage improv, stealing the keys, trapped elevator, passing the note, and abuse scene. The students are getting more brave with their choices and are starting to really use the place work. I’m looking forward to the performances at the school. Great week everyone. Please be off book and ready for next week end. Parents, please run their lines with them and call if you have questions about the work or exercises we are doing.
-Jeff
