Time for classes . . .

This was clearly one of my goals for the year, but it hasn't been until now that I've had the $$ -- or the need.

One great guide to "acting" is Harold Guskin's (paradoxically titled) "How to Stop Acting." I've found the application of his technique quite useful for cold reading and for initially approaching material. It forces me to work from my intuitions, instincts, and impulses, right off the bat. It's advantage -- when it works -- is that I think (I hope) what I'm doing is interesting, surprising (at least to me), and unique (i.e., working from myself), and I think it's a very good way to train and get used to working.

However, during these cold readings, I've been flat lining.

I'm not sure why, but I know I can do better.

Two things need to happen:

1) I need to add to my technique, and I think I know at least what to try:

        First pass through the material: don't read through it -- just silently take-it-off-the-page, go moment-by-moment, seat of my pants, and see what structure/shape (i.e., beats, tone) emerge. Also, this can sometimes give me a surprisingly good feel for the character, what he wants without trying to 'figure out' before hand what he wants. This step can help personalize the character for me, engage my imagination, intuition. But -- it's not enough (or it certainty hasn't been lately). Again, remembering to breathe and simply take my time is still a problem, so keep practicing daily.

       Second pass through the material: NOW read it, and here Tony Barr's advice ("Acting For The Camera") is very good-- he writes about preparing for a film role, but I think his techniques can be applied during the time before a cold reading, which can be anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour, or more. Anyway, his advice, which I think is excellent, is to pay allot of attention to the other persons lines looking for the triggers that cause my character to say what he says (p. 60, 68, & chapter 14). David Ball's "cause & effect" -- Meisner's "reactions;" My goal, right or wrong (at least for now) is to really react -- not act. The goal of this second pass is to find the main BOTTOM LINE (Barr, p. 66). What does the character BASICALLY want. Breathe that in.

      The audition: LET IT ALL GO -- Breathe in the BOTTOM LINE, but don't try to do anything: it'll all be Meisner at that point: listen, breathe, and react without thinking. Follow the moments, stay connect to my partner and what's going on while I'm picking up the lines (when I practice, work for this).

2) I need to get into a good cold reading class where the teacher/coach is willing to let me work this way, or work with the way I like to work (or at least the way I feel I need to work). Anyway, this would be great, if I could find it.

I guess I've been reluctant to take a class, to work with anyone, because I'm afraid it'll be:

    a) too much head-driven script analysis, similar to my "second pass" above, but too disconnected from the script, in my opinion, or

    b) too much emphasis on "emotion," trying to find the character's "emotion" by "thinking" or "reasoning" about what that character is feeling and then using emotional recall or some other (to me) heavy-handed approach at personalizing the character

OK, what else do I need to be doing? Practicing sight-reading daily (or as much as I can): this, at least, is seems to be paying off: the raw physical mechanics of cold reading is getting easier, e.g., I'm able to just move my eyes rather than my whole head from the page to my (imaginary) partner (i.e., a point on the wall), and I seem to be better able to rapidly extract meaningful phrases from the text, picking up meaningful 'chunks,' rather than a certain number of words that may or may not comprise a phase. Anyway, the mechanics of cold reading seems to be getting easier, and that's actually a big help.

Do all of this daily, or at least as much as I can (in addition to working on monologues). And just pace myself -- it's not a race. Just an hour a day -- that's plenty, and if I can do this 4 times per week (but sight-read for 10min each day), that would be great.

Man . . . I cannot believe how goddamn hard I'm working at this . . . but I really love it when it all goes well (& I'm not even thinking about how it needs to go well if I ever want to get cast in something again), and I hate it when it doesn't. Blowing a cold reading -- it's like missing that wonderful opportunity, that special, magical moment when you could have kissed someone you're crazy about, but you chicken out or got nervous and botched it. I hate that.

Also -- I don't think till now I realized just how proactive (and brave) I need to be if I work with a coach or teacher -- they can't really teach me anything in the traditional sense. I really need to go balls-out, take chances, take risks, don't back away from anything because of fear when I'm working with someone. . . my instincts tell me that if I can do this -- if I do this -- I might grow as an actor, which is what I want, more than anything . . . maybe this, what I just wrote, is what I really need to learn, one of the most important things I need to learn how to do.