Acting Basics- Lesson 1 Part 1

To be an actor takes a few necessary ingredients. Take a dash of talent, mix in a smidge of desire, and some training; stir it up and you have a performer. Change measures of ingredients to taste.

Have you ever lied to someone with a straight face and known they believed you? Think back now to that time you came home late from school because you were in detention. Remember what you told Mom? That is acting. Not only that, but is called improvisational acting. Congrats, you have a dash of talent.

Do you like being the center of attention? Do you tell jokes and dance boldly in the middle of the crowded dance floor? Do you enjoy when someone laughs at your witty quip on a date? You may have the desire.

Let's help you now with the training. We'll start with some basic acting exercises you can do by yourself, in preparation for partnered exercises. I like to take a real-life approach to acting before advancing to character acting.

First, it is important to get comfortable with your body and its various uses. I recommend that you spend a few hours each day studying your natural movements. Try to really pay attention to your own way of walking, sitting, or holding a cup. Do you stride with confidence? Do you take small steps? Do you hold your head down and look at the ground when you walk, or do you look around you at everything you pass? These are all the little things that can help you gain an awareness of your body.

Another thing is to always stretch your muscles out every day. Take a half hour in the morning to really stretch gently to learn how your muscles work. This is not only good for gaining an awareness of exactly how a body moves, but muscles maybe you didn't know you have. Plus it is healthy for you, and you will feel more energized for it. As you stretch, try to imagine yourself in a peaceful place, filled with light. Try to take this light into the bottom of your feet, tensing your feet, then your calves, your thighs; all while pushing this light through your body. Keep tensing your muscle groups, until your entire body is tensed up and the light reaches the top of your head and the tips of your fingers, hold the light in, tighter until you feel ready to explode, then release... you should feel relaxed now, and the light, the energy will suffuse your body and you will be more at peace. This should ideally take you to a place where you can get better awareness of yourself.

This may sound silly to you, but an awareness of self is necessary to create things that are NOT you. When you get angry, or if you can make yourself angry, or sad, look at yourself in the mirror. Examine the facial expressions you make, feel how the muscles move. Most people take for granted the expressiveness of their own faces, and how much can be read on our faces. An actor cannot. We MUST be aware of our expressions at all times when in the lights. The cramp in our leg cannot let itself be known when we are performing. We must know the positions of our facial muscles when we smile or frown, how the eyes crinkle at the edges and the forehead raises or furrows. We must know how to not let our true feelings, pain, anything other than what we want, to show in our faces or walk. No limping unless your character limps. It's difficult, but you CAN do this.

Once you feel like you are comfortable in your skin, and a general awareness of how you move, talk, react and feel in response to situations, you can begin the next lessons.

I'll give you some basic improvisational exercises that will get you started. These may be incredibly silly, but the purposes of the exercises are to:
1. Get you outside of your comfort zone. Learn to open up to situations you may find embarrassing or uncomfortable. Remember that class clown? He is now humiliating himself for a living, and earning money and adulation for it.
2. Get a feeling for speech. To help you to learn to ENUNCIATE, really pronounce each word crisply, Every "T" sound and every "O" comes through; even if your mouth is full on stage. This is also going to help learn how the mouth and tongue moves to shape words and learn accents.
3. Give you the basics for creating a character, and practice immersing yourself in them.

First, Let's deal with pronouncing word crisply. Find some tongue twisters, like "she sell sea shells by the seashore", or "a tutor taught two tooters to toot, said the two to the tooter, is it harder to toot or to tutor two tooters to toot". Make sure you work on saying these as crisply as possible, gaining in speed as you go. Practice these every day, to keep your tongue loose and pronunciation clear, enunciating every consonant and vowel clearly. Repeat the one's you have more difficulty with most often. Let the sentences flow.

We'll move on to more exercises in the next part of the lesson.