Acting Exercise - Adjusting Acting Techniques Based on Environmental and Personal Conditions

When I first started out as an actor over a decade ago, I used to think that acting exercises were simply a form of getting to know my fellow classmates and possibly learning a few tips and tricks; however, as I grew older I quickly understood the value and weight these exercises carry.

Acting exercises are carefully developed to strengthen and fine-tune specific acting techniques. While some of these exercises may seem silly, they all have a specific purpose and when done correctly and absorbed by the actor, they can teach invaluable lessons.

This acting exercises focuses on fine tuning your ability to adjust your character based on environment (elemental) and personal conditions. All of these scenarios call upon the actors imagination and when done correctly can help navigate you throughout the complex world of the human emotion.

Selecting an Environmental Condition

The first step in performing this exercise is to select an environmental condition. Feel free to make up your own environmental conditions; however, I have included a list of the most common conditions I use when teaching this lesson:

• · Rainy day
• · Windy fall afternoon
• · Winter morning - twilight
• · Snowy, gloomy day
• · Spring afternoon
• · Ice storm
• · Summer at dusk
• · Extremely hot summer afternoon
• · Breezy autumn evening
• · Spring morning
• · Bright and sunny winter day

Now, act out a scene, purely physical (no words) based on the environmental condition. Within the same scene, instruct the actor to act out a different environmental condition from this, or your, list.

Selecting a Personal (Human) Condition

After you have selected an environmental condition, you must then select a human condition.. I have included a list of human, or personal, conditions; however, feel free to adapt these to suit your own needs:

• · Drug induced high
• · Depression
• · Anxiety
• · Stress
• · Exhaustion
• · Nausea
• · Vertigo
• · Headache
• · Starvation
• · Drunk
• · Sprained ankle
• · Common cold
• · Flu
• · Angry
• · Extremely happy
• · Peaceful

Instruct the actor to act out one of these personal conditions. As in the environmental conditions, after several minutes instruct the actor to perform a different personal condition.

Adding a Time Frame

Before this, the actor was given as much time as needed to convey his emotions or interact with his environment; however, within this section of the exercise, give the actor a specific time frame, such as 45 seconds. Within this time frame, he must engage within his emotions and surroundings. It is interesting to notice how the tempo-rhythm changes when the actor is given a specific time frame to completely act out a scene from the environmental and personal condition list.