The Young Actor's Studio

We started with a warm up that helps actors to break patterns of controlling your acting work. I had students who were working on a monologue to do the monologue relaxed and with whatever is going on with them literally. Then, I had them do the monologue like a child throwing a tantrum, like a priest, like a cowboy, a mouse looking for cheese, a vampire, a senior using a walker and so on. It was great fun and many of the students broke barriers and the monologues actually got much better. In doing this you are not controlling how you think it has to be done and because of this you are able to be more free and the allow the words to form their own meanings. In addition I did an activity exercise of getting dressed and dealing with your clothes in your closet. I had the work on getting dressed and then getting dressed for a funeral, getting dressed to audition for a movie that your are playing a killer in, getting dressed to stand trial for something that you did and trying to dress innocent, etc. The actors were asked to choose the clothing each time. To stop patterns I had students to the same activity but with animal qualities. Really great stuff happened.

Next I introduced the students to place work. They were asked to work on a time of emotional significance and create the place on stage in a group. They were asked to re-create the place through sensory work. We did one hour of relaxation, place work and monologue.