So exciting to be able to watch her classes, even on a little screen.

Acting Notes:

• Actions are through out the scene. If you can sit, don’t stand.  Practice moving the whole time. However, don’t let the action take  over the interaction.
• Physicality: don’t use it until the words call for it. For example, if your objective is to make the other person laugh and words are already doing it, then don’t use physicality.
• Don’t just “knew” each other. Discover each other, test each other, find out about each other. Really receive before you need to send back, top, under-mined, cut, out rage, startled or scared, all the fun of that.

Acting Exercises:

• Perform activities as the character, in the costume and in the setup to really BE the character.
• Be alone and be yourself on the stage but in a imagined setup, such as outdoor. Experience the privacy of being alone. Feel the bugs, the sun, the sand… Pay attention to consistency, such as don’t run your eyes after wiping sand off your feet.
• Talking to yourself. (It’s an involuntary action. You rarely talk to yourself standing still.  )
• Waiting (for a bus, etc)  You don’t stand still waiting. However, during the exercise, don’t occupy yourself with too many actions.

It’s interesting that she said, the reason I don’t want you to pick a scene that is longer than 5 minutes is that: inevitably you are going to direct yourself, “I cannot play this here, I have to save it there” rather than approach the scene subjectively and see how much life you can bring to the 5 minutes.