An Actors Guide to: Breathing
This is a huge topic, and I must qualify my remarks. I am by no means an expert on the subject of breathing. I do not teach voice nor have I been trained to teach it. There are some superb voice teachers out there. I am not one of them. There are many breathing techniques drawn from the Yogic and Buddhist canons. I have found the breathing techniques born of the Zen tradition more useful to the actor than the ones born of the traditional Hatha and Raja yoga techniques. This on its own is its own blog. Once again,...
Have the Courage and Desire to Know Yourself Better: Part One
If the goal is to be authentic then the only way to be authentic is to be authentic. Therefore, an actor needs to learn how to do consciously what they are doing unconsciously anyway. The underlying premise of what follows is rooted in the belief that standing or sitting on the mark is no different than anywhere else. You are always here. It is always now, and you are always some aspect of yourself under different conditions. If you accept this premise, then what follows should hold true. If you don't it will crumble under its own weight. PART ONE:You cannot bring to...
Have the Courage and Desire to Know Yourself Better: Part Two
Another banality of the coaching/teaching industry that needs to be addressed, is the mind-numbing cliché that in order to act, you have to “use yourself.” My question is, “which of your many selves are you using?” We are multiples who have multiple relationships with other multiples. Although few of us can lay claim to (or would even want to lay claim to) being like Sybil, we all have many sides to our “personalities” – it’s our multiplicity that makes us interesting and unique. Using 19th century concepts rooted in Freudian psychology as our main source of relationship analysis is as...
Hard Work: Why It's Such an Important Virtue
Elaboration of Step 5 in "The 12 Things You Must Do to Become a Better Actor" Develop discipline and a capacity for hard work. Continue to train regardless of success. There are so many books, lists, and quotes telling us the secrets of success, how to empower ourselves and change our mindsets. People are getting rich off peddling their secrets with TED talks, YouTube videos, books, webinars, and top ten lists. We could spend our lives researching, reading these books, attending these webinars, hiring life coaches to help us concentrate better, searching to find our “giant within”, etc. and not have...
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