Acting Technique

“Body language accounts for 60% of our understanding of emotions, our reception of subliminal messages and our grasp of relationships.” - Ron Cameron-Lewis, Acting Skills for Life Student actors...

How are your students at physicalizing nonhuman characters? Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream? One of the seven deadly sins? A banana in an improv scene? A god in a Greek myth? The Lint Roller in...

What is THE most important part of an actor’s job? To tell a story to an audience! No matter what, the audience needs to be able to experience what’s going on during the performance. Actors must...

A character’s physicality is part of the actor’s toolkit. Physicality, along with voice and imagination, helps to tell a story, no matter if you’re doing a mime, tableau, monologue, or scene. The...

What do Julie Andrews, James Earl Jones, and Jim Parsons have in common? Besides names that start with J, these stars are among the many actors and actresses that enjoy successful careers both on...

The actor’s job is to tell the story of the play to the audience. Proper enunciation is essential for the audience to have any idea of what the actor is saying or singing during a production....

Directors and teachers, we’ve all been there: You’ve cast a wonderful young actor in a role that is fantastic and challenging for them. You get into the rehearsal room and all of a sudden, it’s...

Breath control is so important for performers, whether they’re in rehearsal, onstage, or somewhere in between. Breath control affects the range, volume, and speed of both speaking and singing....

Do your students know how to annotate a script for analysis? Script analysis gives every actor a foundation to build on for character development. Teach these steps to your students and they’ll...

Need acting exercises for your drama classroom? Here are 5 of Theatrefolk’s most popular exercises to help inspire student actors, from monologues to ensembles. 1.“Channel That Fear” Fear is such a...

Beginning actors make mistakes. Mostly it’s because, well, they’re beginners! I prefer thinking of them is missteps rather than mistakes – they are things the beginning actor hasn’t considered. And...

Auditions happen everywhere at every level, from middle school plays, to high school musicals, to college admissions. Audition styles range from prepared monologues, to cold readings, to group...

One of the issues in student artistic work (whether it be as a playwright, an actor or a director) is intention vs. presentation. There is often a difference between what students intended to put...

The first week of drama class can be the toughest week of the semester. A drama class is quite different than a “regular” class. Students need to be comfortable with each other before the “real...

The ensemble of your play is more than just set dressing; it populates the world of the play. A strong ensemble is the same as a strong cast: It is made up of actors who play well-defined...

The mirror game is a great stand-by in the theatre class. Students are grouped in pairs and face each other. One acts as the leader, moving their arms, legs, head, face, in a slow steady pattern so...

Commedia dell’arte is an improvised comedic theatre form that flourished in Italy in the 1500s. The exact origins of commedia are fuzzy and hard to pin down; there is not much documented previous...

Here’s one of my favourite acting exercises.You start with a list of descriptive characters. Here are some examples: • A firefighter looking for occupants. • A jealous significant other. • A spy on...