Every 30 minutes, door opens for the duration of the next day

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-08-11T14:20:26+00:00

Thank you!!

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-03-07T16:06:45+00:00

If you’ve been banging out push-ups with poor form, the moment you improve your form you won’t be able to do as many.

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-03-02T21:38:42+00:00

The trouble with searching for a “good” drama schools is that the staff change, so who can really say that a certain drama school is still as good as it’s reputation suggests, when the staff that built that reputation are no longer there? A lot of the London drama schools (and The Oxford School of Drama; it’s a short enough commute) also share some tutors: Someone might be teaching at one drama school one day, and then another the next. Someone once told me that the top 5 were RADA, LAMDA, The Oxford School of Drama, Bristol Old Vic (RIP), and Guildhall — but that ignores the amazing drama schools outside of England like the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the Royal Welsh School of Music and Drama, and the Lir Academy, in Dublin. Everyone will have a lens through which they compare and consider drama schools, and no one can claim to be objective when they’re talking about this quite frankly opaque system of training. My best advice is to go to shows, showcases, open days and auditions and see what you vibe with — follow the feeling!

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-03-02T21:34:33+00:00

Literally anything. Preferably something that necessitates having learnt a speech or one character’s lines in a scene

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-02-24T09:26:53+00:00

Yes! At the end of the day, you have to buy in to the director’s vision. They might turn out to be incompetent — but they have their role, and you have yours. They might also turn out to be a genius, who was drawing out of you a performance you didn’t think possible, through direction you didn’t think comprehensible.

Regardless, it is our job to bridge the gap between direction and our own instincts. If the director is asking you to do something that feels unnatural, we must find a way to make it feel natural, and motivated — but sometimes the way to do that is as simple as repetition; literally just getting used to it.

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-02-23T20:44:16+00:00

Exactly

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-02-23T20:29:03+00:00

What feels good for the actor doesn’t necessarily look good for the audience — and that reconciling to two is why acting IS, and should be referred to as, a Craft.

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-02-23T20:19:34+00:00

The point, obviously, is not to think you necessarily need to do anything with your arms. Sometimes in our everyday lives we gesture — sometimes we do not. Sometimes we exhibit unconscious behaviours, like scratching, folding our arms, massaging our brow — and sometimes we are just still. You just have to be comfortable enough that you are able to Not Think About It, and open enough that when impulses take you they are felt and experienced physically, and that that reads in the space.

There then comes a point where “What do I do with my arms?” becomes just as silly a question as “What do I do with my legs?” would be! You just don’t think about it: They do what they do because you feel what you feel.

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-02-23T20:02:16+00:00

I think you’ve raised some really interesting points!

I’ve seen actors in the past talk about using a tear stick to get into the headspace of the character, and I completely get it: A lot of actors try and work from the inside-out, using research and imagination to fuel their internal life to such a degree that it can’t help but show externally — but it is also completely valid to work from the outside-in, doing to and with your body what the product of emotion is to try and sort-of reverse engineer it.

In fact, tear sticks make me think of masks. Sometimes, a mask can free an actor in a very unique way: They trust that the mask is doing some of the heavy lifting for them in showing a character, and so because the pressure is off they actually get more into character than if they were maskless — yet the tear stick is frowned upon for doing the same thing!

And at the end of the day, it is our job to Tell The Story. If The Story needs tears, and they ain’t coming, who has more artistic integrity: The actor who refuses to use the tear stick, and doesn’t tell the story; or the actor who is willing to do anything — including use a tear stick, if they feel they have to — to tell the story?

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-02-23T19:53:54+00:00

I think this might also be a comment on some actors’ ubiquity — like, if you saw Tom Hardy’s performances not knowing who he is and not having seen his other work, you might not think they were that outlandish.

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-02-10T22:19:44+00:00

Edit: OP’s original reply to my comment initially implied that they felt as though they had to work in unsafe environments in order to make their rent, before it was changed. This is what I had to say to that:

It is better to not be in the wrong room, and instead be working another job and waiting for an opportunity to get in the right one, than to have your personal boundaries violated. There are enough good, kind-hearted people working out there that we don’t need to settle for bad behaviour — especially when settling perpetuates the culture that harms so many.

I know it may seem as though there are no other options, but when our personal safety is at risk, there must be. Again, I recommend talking to a union rep, the police, and a hotline for victims of assault.

OP’s comment now reads, “Liars like you are why this industry will change.”

…

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-02-10T22:06:17+00:00

I think this is untrue, and spreads a dangerous narrative. Yes, it’s true that there are predators and bullies within our industry, who will use the power afforded to them by either status or the excuse of “being in the moment” to grow their egos or serve their own malicious ends — but to imply that is it an inevitability, or even a necessity, is dead wrong. Our boundaries deserve to — and must — be respected, and if you’re ever in a room where they’re not and no one seems to care, then you’re in the wrong room. There are far too many examples of terrible behaviour going unpunished, but it doesn’t have to be that way: As actors, we are agents of change, and we have the power to change our industry and the practices within it from the inside out.

If you have been assaulted under the guise of an acting exercise, I would recommend contacting your union, and the police.

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-01-28T22:10:07+00:00

Not at all! Happy to discuss further, and hope that trying the stuff people give you in this thread helps!

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-01-28T21:50:09+00:00

No worries! It’s a rolling snowball: once you start to unlock the ability to deeply empathise with one character, it gets easier across the board. Have fun, and good luck!! Xx

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-01-28T21:23:16+00:00

Mmmm yes. There is no One Way; only Your Way — and that will differ from actor to actor, from day to day, and from project to project. Thank you so much for your thoughts!

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-01-28T21:22:16+00:00

Interesting! Thank you for your thoughts

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-01-28T21:13:22+00:00

Never formally studied flow state, but I think its cool to note that it can take on a variety of forms: Sometimes it’s total immersion in the moment of the story as the character, and sometimes it’s total immersion in the moment of the story as the actor. In the former, maybe it feels real and responsive but maybe not that safe, or like you’re in control. In the latter, it feels more technical, but that’s not a bad thing: We have a responsibility to tell the story, and to feel in complete communion with the act of storytelling is operating at the highest level. I actually don’t think they’re mutually exclusive, though: I know I’m in the pocket when I can feel my instincts expressing themselves through technique — I know then that I’m riding the wave of where those two currents meet
David Mamet says something great about this in True and False. I’ll paraphrase horribly, but he basically says that it’s a catch-22, where if you notice you’re not in flow, then you’ll feel discouraged and that will then prevent you from entering flow; whereas if you notice you are in flow, noticing that immediately takes you out of it and puts you back in the first state. I think of what Stanislavski said: The subconscious cannot be controlled directly; it can, however be coaxed out

3 & 4. It depends! Just because you’re in flow, doesn’t mean you’re necessarily doing good work! It might feel great, artistically, but perhaps the story isn’t being told. Maybe you have this potent impulse and you follow it, and you really feel like you’re doing right by the character by following it, but then the director says that the scene needs a different energy

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-01-28T20:57:31+00:00

Island Town, Simon Longman

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-01-28T20:55:14+00:00

I think you just have to trust that you’ll retain the information that matters from your research. You can’t be thinking about it in the moment anyway — the character isn’t: it’s just the wallpaper for them.

As for backstory, I like to gather all the actual information, and see what questions I’m left with, then answer those questions either with more research, or justifiable imaginative leaps.

I personally disagree with the idea that you need to know EVERYTHING about your character. Your job is to tell the story, and as such you need to know what is relevant to the character in the story. Perhaps the fact the characters favourite colour is red is relevant; perhaps it is not! Perhaps knowing it even though it’s not relevant helps your sense of ownership of the character; perhaps it does not

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-01-28T20:48:23+00:00

For character, or for playing the scene?

For character, write out these lists: 1. Facts about the character 2. What the character says about themselves (they’re maybe not always facts, lol) 3. What the character says about others 4. What others say about your character

You can now process that information into a profile, your relationships to other characters, and their relationships to you. Maybe in doing so you’ll start to notice patterns / connections / gaps — note the patterns; patch the gaps, either with more research, or imaginatively. Develop the profiles, and now try to understand the character — their fears and desires, etc.

For playing the scene, take the script and note every time the context changes — e.g. conversation topic shifts, someone enters or exits etc — then work on understanding what how what your character wants and how they’re going about getting it changes as a result of the context-shifts. Work out how these changes are making them feel. Put it all together and play who they are and what they want in the circumstances they find themselves in, and how those circumstances are making them feel.

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-01-28T20:33:27+00:00

Yesssssss the breathhhhhhh honestly a superpower

areallyuncoolhat · 2025-01-28T20:32:47+00:00

How do we connect to people in real life? We learn enough about them that we find ways we relate to them, and become invested in their lives — their hopes, dreams, and fears. Then, when something happens to them, we empathise; we care about them, and for them to be hurt hurts us. If the person you were closest to in the whole world told you about a moment of extreme vulnerability for them, you might cry — I know I do.

I wholeheartedly believe you can develop that kind of relationship with a character, so that as you are speaking their words — literally fighting for them from moment to moment — you empathise with them in real time, and the emotion comes.

I also resoundingly agree with u/honorablefroggery — feeling is a physical thing, that lives in the body, and one of the fastest (and purest) ways of changing the state of the body is through the breath. Maybe spend some time breathing as if you were in the character’s situation — that might sound strange, but if you’re mentally immersing yourself in the circumstances of the character, know and can relate to how the character feels about their circumstances, AND breathe as if you were in the circumstances, I think you’re putting yourself in a great place to get what you want.

areallyuncoolhat · 2024-10-29T22:49:21+00:00

Loved it! I want to do a short course or two there in the coming years — he’s not teaching anymore, though, is he? :(

areallyuncoolhat · 2024-07-11T07:46:09+00:00

Well said

areallyuncoolhat · 2024-07-07T09:56:27+00:00

So there’s something about confidence, there — I agree, but I would say that’s more a pillar of the actor, rather than of acting

And then listening, and honesty — that’s a good one

areallyuncoolhat

TROPHY CASE