(Part 3) Top products from r/acting

Understand Shakespeare

The writing of the time is essentially a different language than Modern English, and you'll want to learn that language.

While reading, should you not understand a word, you must look it up. The internet usually has the definitions of such words, but just in case: Shakespearean Lexicons Volume I & Volume II

Learn iambic pentameter.

Learn how to spot operative words. How I do it is to look at a sentence, find the most important words, and see if you can maintain the basic meaning of that statement whilst only using the operative words. As a rule of thumb, operative words are generally not negatives (e.g. never, not, etc.)

Learn how to perform scansion. Scansion is essentially writing out the iambic pentameter and underlining the operative words.

Shakespeare was a poet and was very lyrically gifted, but his stories are often weighed down with non-existent fluffy interpretations. For example, the famous "TO BE... OR... NOT... TO BE!" monologue from Hamlet is too-often used in auditions and is too-often made overly dramatic. A writer/casting director friend of mine said he has only been impressed by one audition of it. The actor walked in, and casually delivered the monologue, hitting the operatives, paying attention to real iambic pentameter, and not over-dramaticizing it. tl;dr Shakespeare may sound like music, but it's not always music... sometimes it is. Be honest with intention.

Audition

Auditioning is a subject in and of itself, but I'll attempt a "quick" guide:

Stay calm and concentrate on the story.

Have monologues with variety, but make sure they are characters you could fit in.

Remember, the people casting the show want you to succeed. They are cheering for you, whether you know it or not.

GOTE or Goals Obstacles Tactics Expectations, and for good measure S for Stakes. What are the character's life goals, play goals, scene goals, and moment goals? What are the obstacles for every goal? What are the tactics used and how often do they change? What do they expect to happen and how do they react?

Most importantly, I am one person. One actor. I can defend my expertise, but still... I am only one opinion. There are no rules in Acting, it is an art. There are good pieces of advice... but that's about it.

Also, everyone loves it when someone usually on the outside of Theatre participates with us! :D I am in love with science, but I pursued my art. We love it, so don't be afraid of us. My only note is that you must treat it with absolute respect. Many of these people are risking absolute destitution, psychological despair, and never-ending passion for a very lofty goal. We have to study as much as anyone else (even those who seem to have the mysterious talent.)

As long as you care about your performance, I'm sure you'll do just fine.

Break legs. :)

EDIT: I seem to have formatted incorrectly earlier. I believe I've fixed it. Sorry. :P
EDIT II: Fixed The Scottish Play*

When I taught acting for young people I relied on four books:

[A Practical Handbook for The Actor]
(https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Handbook-Actor-Melissa-Bruder-ebook/dp/B007QPFFXY/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503710497&sr=1-1&keywords=a+practical+handbook+for+the+actor)

True and False

Sanford Meisner On Acting

Theater Games for the Classroom: A Teacher's Handbook

I taught Acting and Improv to a range of students: from elementary and middle school kids who didn't really want to be there to dedicated high school kids studying theatre 12 hours a day in the summer. This is typically how I built my curriculum:

The Meisner Technique personalizes a student's relationship with whatever text they're working with. Acting exercises shift away from Being A Good Actor and become about being honest in imaginary circumstances, making observations, and taking action. The exercises can be grueling. The games require focus, and a willingness to make observations about scene partners. Good for serious students.

True and False is a series of essays by David Mamet. If you're not familiar with Mr Mamet, he is an important American Playwright who's work will never be performed in a high school. But he was a student of Meisner's and does a masterful job of articulating the point of Meisner's method and distinguishing it from Method Acting.

A Practical Handbook is Second Generation Meisner - based on the notes of David Mamet's and William H Macy's acting students. It focuses on HOW to choose a dynamic action. Much of the material can be made into worksheets for use in later scene analysis. Suitable for all ages.

Many young actors have little experience to draw from to make dynamic choices. For some students it may be the first time they've thought of how and why they reacted to people and situations. Viola Spolin's exercises can help unlock their imaginations - plus, they're fun.

I say all of that to actually answer your question about finding material:
I highly recommend Spare Scenes.

In College we called them Contentless, or Empty Scenes. They are short, two character scenes. Characters are 'A' and 'B' (sometimes there's a 'C' as well) with anywhere from 10 to 20 lines each. There's no real context to the scenes. There is no action described, only vague dialog:

A: Do you believe me?

B: Yes mostly.

A: Mostly.

B: Yes mostly.

A: But not always?

B: Usually always.

A: Usually

B: Yes, usually.

A: But not absolutely always.

B: I guess not.

A: That's strange.

B: Why?

The student must apply techniques from Meisner, and The Practical Handbook to analyze the Spare Scene, create a scenario and choose actions that convey dynamic characters. It's hard. But that's the best part - it is very beneficial to fail at these exercises. When students get their hands on actual text - it's like they only have to do half the work! But, as an educator, you also have an endless source of material to practice. So when you have a play, or a One Act, or an actual performance - it becomes an Event.

I've noticed that while many young musicians are taught the difference between Practice and Performance, many young actors are either On or Off. The Meisner Technique encourages the student to resist the temptation to be The Great Actor, and instead focus on building Great Character.

Please forgive the wall of text. This is my favorite thing to rant about. Hope that helps. (edit: formatting)

(On mobile so I'm sorry if things are messed up)

Hey there. I also suffer from anxiety and depression, and I'm quite shy as well. I find acting very therapeutic. I'm not in theatre for just that reason, but it certainly helps.

Although yes, theatre and acting is a group and collaborative art there are lots of exercises you could do by yourself that many actors use, especially in the area of understanding your emotions and being more in tune with them. Many of these I use myself not just for acting, but to help my mental health as well.

I would first suggest checking out the book Mindful Way Through Depression I would actually recommend this book to any actor. It helps me be aware of my emotions and helps me when I'm having a particularly hard time. Also Respect for Acting which is an actor book. I recommend this one because it may help to see how universal the emotions of fear, embarrassment and so on, are and to help raise your emotional intelligence. There are actor exercises in this book you may find really silly, but they may be worth trying out.

I'd also recommend yoga and meditation. Not all across do these but I know many that do. They help ground you and get more in touch with the "self" and all that jazz.

Lastly, read a lot of plays. Check out Next to Normal. It's a musical about mental illness. The whole thing can be found on YouTube.

Read Shakespeare. It's hard to read at first yes, but the more you give to Shakespeare the more he'll give back to you. You'll discover a lot about the human condition and probably a lot about yourself as well.

That's all I can think of at the moment. I hope this helps.

> It's never too old to start with acting.

Reading this made me feel a lot better. Even though I've been acting since high school and just graduated with a BA in theatre performance, I still sometimes feel like I'm way behind in the game because I wasn't into youth theatre or haven't gotten an agent yet. Great inclusion!


Also, if you wanted to add a book that's a great starting point for reading plays, the Norton Anthology of Drama (Shorter Edition) is a great collection of classics leading up to more contemporary plays. It was basically a staple all 4 years at my university. (Kind of expensive, but if you can find a library where you can check it out, it's definitely worth the read! There's also the full sized Norton Anthology of Drama that comes with two volumes and quite a few great plays.)

This book might help you. I took the class with Joseph Hacker and I learned so much about filming myself and how to set up attractive shots. I second what everyone else has said as well, don't use a front facing camera. If this is what you want, get accustomed to speaking to the lens as if you were speaking to a friend. Spend time with it. Set up a camera (doesn't have to be on) somewhere in your room and get accustomed to having it look at you. It's not scary, and the more comfortable you get around (any) camera lenses, the better your performance will be. Break a Leg!

I think that's what Harry's trying to get at. That there isn't any real craft to what that guy is doing. It's a bad example of voice acting because there isn't any thought being put into intonation, pauses, and the like. He's just reading, without any type of intention or meaning behind the words. It's essentially a guy doing a cool voice... and that's it. And "doing cool voices" really isn't what voice acting is about.

As an audience member, we can't glean what he's feeling, or where he's coming from, or what he intends to accomplish with the way he delivers his copy. Our only clue as to what he's feeling is what it explicitly says in the text.

That's kind of the base level of voice acting. You want to tell a story, through not only the letter of the text, but the way you convey feeling through vocal expressiveness.

The link I posted earlier will provide better examples of what you should be going after.

If you're looking for a book, here's what I'm reading currently:

The Art of Voice Acting

My copy came with a CD too... so that should be helpful.

Most definitely. I read his three major books several years ago, but someone here informed everyone that they'd been re-translated into An Actor's Work, and it sounds like that's a much better volume. I would start there. http://www.amazon.com/An-Actors-Work-Students-Diary/dp/041555120X/

It probably doesn't matter that much whose book you read first, but I personally would recommend starting with Stanislavsky since he informed most of what happened in acting in the 20th century. All the other names you'll see mentioned were either an extension of or reaction to his work.

Off-Topic, but does anybody own the book /u/thisisnotarealperson linked to for the men's monologue (this one)? It seems like a nice little collection of monologues, is it any good?

It really helps to have somebody walk you through it.

I also recommend Cicely Berry's book Voice and the Actor. It still holds up as a very clearly written explanation with helpful exercises.

http://www.amazon.com/Voice-Actor-Cicely-Berry/dp/0020415559

It's not that you shouldn't do that, but you want to replace it with an action. This doesn't necessarily mean doing something physically, but if I assume correctly that the narration in the video is your inner monologue, there needs to be some kind of response to that. You are listening to the voice, so you are engaged by it. Having your blocking be as simple as sitting and listening is fine, but there needs to be a connection between your thoughts and your blocking, which is sitting in the shower/tub.

To fix this, you need to realize that in this scene you have two characters. There is the character of your Inner Monologue and the character of Your Character (physical you). Your Inner Monologue wants one thing, and You want another (again, an assumption, but I assume this because all scenes are built on conflict - if you both wanted suicide, that would happen and there would be no scene to speak of). What do you want the voice to do? Do you want it to stop? How will you make it stop? This page has a breakdown of what objectives are and how you play them.

If you still continue to sit and listen, that's totally okay! But there shouldn't be a disconnect between the two characters in the scene. There should be a give and take, an action and a reaction, a response. Then the other character plays from this response.

I strongly suggest the acting book The Anatomy of a Choice by Maura Vaughn. This has helped me in many situations as an actor. Also, read lots of David Mamet. Read his plays, read his essays on acting. Another book I find helpful is A Practical Handbook for the Actor (written by students of Mamet) and The Art of Acting by Stella Adler. Reading is an actor's greatest tool other than just getting out there and performing.

Understanding objective is the first step toward becoming a fully invested actor. It will change the way you look at the stage and screen.

edit: added a thought

My latest find for a contemporary was Lucifer from Immaculate. It's comedic, about the devil explaining why he's the victim. For classical… http://www.shakespeare-monologues.org/home

I would also HIGHLY recommend this book for Shakespeare: http://www.amazon.com/Speak-Speech-Shakespeares-Monologues-Illuminated/dp/0571211224/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421816154&sr=1-1&keywords=speak+the+speech

Used it's quite cheap. It just lists almost every decent Shakespeare monologue for auditions and gives detailed notes on context, footnotes, hidden meanings, how the iambic pentameter should be read, length, frequency of use in auditions etc. etc. GOOD LUCK!

If you're buying it, and you want to try and hit as wide a shot as possible with your buck, look into anthologies. If you're just starting out, Stages of Drama has been read by every single person with a degree in theatre and is a great "short list" of plays to know. Also, if you end up attending college, you WILL read from this book.

So much of the play is in a story-teller monologue style. It's been a couple years since I did it, so I'm having trouble thinking of specifics. It's a great read, though. Looks like you can get the Kindle version for three dollars

Well sense memory and all that isn't necessarily any older. But that's a different story.

Nothing can really compare to actually being in a class and doing it. But reading in general is good. I will suggest William Esper's The Actor's Art and Craft as a good place to start. Also based on its name you'll be tempted to buy the other book too, but don't, it'll just confuse you.

My actor friends swear by Auditioning: An Actor-Friendly guide

Read mindset. This is where your pressure could be coming from. You are suffering from a fixed mindset, and the stress that you must "prove" you're the great performer you "always were". Instead, if you change your mindset to a growth mindset, and focus on being adaptable, working hard, being kind, and taking the classes in order to become a better performer, you'll be a much stronger actor for it (and less of an ass). I learned this the hard way, took me 2 years and it was ALMOST too late for me to turn my shit around, but I caught it just in time to make my college's showcase -> go to LA -> land a manager and agency and get my SAG-AFTRA card and blah blah blah this Friday I'm auditioning for HBO, you feel? Also, go to the gym. Most colleges have one on campus, or join a Planet Fitness for $10/month. It is time for you to take ownership of your life.

There’s a book by the actor who plays Jin Yang in Silicon Valley about Acting and doing stand up as an Asian American

I'm new too and I found this two books, although they are not specifically on acting, too be ridiculously useful:
1: http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Overrated-Separates-World-Class-Performers/dp/1591842948

2: http://www.amazon.com/Mastery-Keys-Success-Long-Term-Fulfillment/dp/0452267560

http://www.amazon.com/Two-Bed-Modern-Classics-Cartwright/dp/0413683303/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1425854485&sr=8-4&keywords=jim+cartwright+two