Acting Tip from the Los Angeles Acting School Michelle Danner
Accessing Emotions at Your Finger Tips!
Actors face a lot of different emotions; Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness, and Surprise (to name a few). Emotions have to come from somewhere. They are a result of something happening to you at any given moment in time. Emotions are also a result of your collective past. Emotional recall exercises or the ‘as if’ exercise can help the actor walk in to any emotional space needed. It’s also a very effective way for the actor to get in touch with their five senses, while being more emotionally free and available upon, ‘action’. <p>
1- For example for (Emotional Recall) Try writing in a journal, and see if you can recall any experiences that you have had about ‘love’ or ‘happiness’ or even dreaded feelings of ‘shame’. Explore these emotions using your five senses to write and describe a certain event from your past that may give you a sense of a very specific and detailed experience or memory. These vivid and complex experiences can be used to develop emotional triggers for the actor. eg) Maybe it was the perfect wedding, a birthday, or a recent death of someone meaningful for you. Whatever your experience or circumstance is, journaling and detailing an emotional recall experience may be used as an effective tool for the actor as a way to inform and invigorate any scene quickly and spontaneously. Use what you know and learn to substitute experiences that are both familiar and unfamiliar to you in the script with this exercise. Either way, the actor must always find their way in to a scene emotionally. However you choose to get there is your acting technique!
2- The (‘As If’ Exercise) Can effectively develop an experience that may pertain to your character, circumstances, and relationship within the context of the scene. This exercise can also be used to strengthen your imagination as well as personalization. This is an important exercise to develop your acting technique because you, as the actor, have to substantiate everything in a scene and make it personal for you. For example, you carry yourself as a prominent attorney that specializes in drunk driving arrests that has just been arrested for a DUI. As the actor, using your imagination, try plugging in an emotion such as ‘shame’ or ‘guilt’ to see where that emotional expression takes you. Does it inform your physicality in any way? The way you speak? The way you walk, stand, or sit? Check in with yourself to see what these types of suggestions do to and for you. Try creating circumstances ‘as if’ they are real, using your imagination and see what kind of emotional discoveries can be made or inferred. What connections are drawn or strengthened to your own sense of personalization? You have the capability within yourself, as the character, to bring about unique choices- drawing from your own well of interpretation, creativity, and inspiration.
3- The character’s emotional life is also a direct result of preceding circumstances and ‘why’ you are saying something and to whom. Emotions are never found in the ‘how’ you are saying something. The actor must not try to push for an emotion or the result. Emotions will take you, you don’t take them. If something moves in on you, allow it to affect you! It may surprise you as something that was completely unexpected. The actor shouldn’t try to measure ‘how’ much of something is there or try to push or force an emotional result from some preconceived idea of what it should be in a particular scene. The acting student shouldn’t try to play the ‘idea’ either. Whatever arrives emotionally, is more truthful than pushing for some result or worse- indicating emotional behavior that isn’t authentic. The more the actor can load in through personalization and imagination, the stronger your choices will be. Trust in the ‘why’ I am doing or saying something rather than the ‘how’ when it comes to playing emotions. They will occur naturally for the actor if you have done your homework and are committed to moment to moment acting.
4- A great way to explore these emotions is also tied in to your character’s overall and scene objectives (What action or verbiage is driving the scene). If the stakes are high enough, and the actor is going immediately for what they want in the scene because they are prepared, they care, and are truly invested, the emotion will always be there! You can also use an endowment exercise to grant an object with a certain characteristic that will elicit a certain emotional response or trigger. Explore both inner objects (images) and physical objects and make them personal to you. Emotions will arise and they will become more available for you with practice!You’ll discover a multitude of emotions in acting coach Michelle Danner’s Script Analysis and Scene Study Class.
Welcome to the Michelle Danner Acting School
This Los Angeles Acting School’s philosophy is that artists can draw upon all different acting techniques and form a toolbox of their own, their very own Golden Box. Our actors develop a comprehensive set of “acting tools” when approaching a role or a scene whether it be for film, television or theater.
Michelle Danner’s Los Angeles acting school specializes in the techniques of Meisner, Strasberg, Adler, Hagen, Chekhov & the Stanislavsky Technique
Meet with Michelle Danner and learn about the acting classes
To meet with her in person at her Los Angeles Acting School
please RSVP for the free informational session
call 310-392-0815 or email us at [email protected]
To sign up for acting classes and to meet with acting coach Michelle Danner in person at her Los Angeles Acting School please RSVP for the free informational session in the contact form on the left. You may also call 310-392-0815 or email us at [email protected] for up-to-date information on all acting classes and workshops. ACTING SCHOOL IN LA, THE MEISNER TECHNIQUE ACTING CLASS.