10 Tips to Keep Your Acting Skills Sharp Between Shows
When I was a young and struggling actress, nothing drove me crazy faster than not having a rehearsal or a performance in the works. The city I lived in may have been the capitol of the state, but audition notices weren’t exactly plentiful. When weeks stretched to months, I always worried in the interim that my acting chops would go floppy and I’d lose the ability to memorize a single line.
As of this writing, I’m empathetic to drama students around the world who are stressing about (1) what theatre will look like in the future and (2) when their next chance will come to tread the boards and hear applause. The worst thing to do right now is to do nothing. Just as practice, practice, practice brings athletes to a state of accomplishment in sports, a continued regimen of discipline and training can keep us at our best for that moment when the curtain once more rises.
Here are 10 tips to keep your voice, mind, and body in shape while you’re on hiatus.
1. Brush Up Your Shakespeare (Or Wilde, Shaw, Moliere & Simon)
If the first time you ever read a play is when you’ve been cast in it, you’re missing out on an opportunity to become a well-rounded thespian. Familiarize yourself with a broad range of playwrights and their styles. Read the lines aloud to acquaint yourself with inflection, rhythm, and accents. Who knows? At such a time an audition opens up for one of those plays you’ve already studied, you’ll be more at ease in try-outs than your competitors who are reading it cold.
2. Build Your Skill Sets
If it’s not possible to take a class in person, there’s no shortage of YouTube and Zoom instruction for adding new talents to your actor’s resume. Singing, dancing, and playing musical instruments are at the top of obvious choices for remote learning. But what about online courses in stage makeup, costume design, juggling, gymnastics, and even swordplay? I’d also recommend yoga as a way to focus on movement, balance, concentration … and training yourself to relax.
3. How the Cookie Crumbles
Let’s work on those improv skills. This technique requires a bag of fortune cookies. Each time you break one open, you need to incorporate the message into a 30 or 60-second off-the-cuff monologue. Consider what type of character is delivering this monologue, who is s/he talking to and under what circumstances. (Tasty tip: Buy fortune cookies that have been dipped in white chocolate. You deserve it.)
4. Demo Reel
If someone asks to see an audition tape that demonstrates your range and wants it by the end of the day, would you panic and throw something together? Not if you read this article first. Now is the time to be assembling a professional portfolio of short solos which can either be presented as a collection or used individually depending on whether the person asking wants to see comedy, drama, classics, etc. I do advise, though, against wielding a selfie-stick for this endeavor. Recruit a friend to be your camera person so you can concentrate on delivering a seamless performance.
5. Where Am I?
Mime artist Marcel Marceau enjoyed a long career trying to pretend to get out of an invisible box. For this exercise in concentration and body language, you can either perform in front of others or video yourself. Absent any props or furniture (with the exception/option of a chair), the objective of your mimed performance is for viewers to figure out what type of room you’re in and what you’re doing. This is best accomplished outdoors or in a room with a blank wall or curtain directly behind you.
6. First Lines
As humans, we strive to find logic, cohesion, and progression in the things we read. But what if you had to deliver a monologue that purposely made no sense from start to finish? This is a fun one to do with friends either in a group or remotely. Grab any 10 books off the shelf and, using 10 index cards, write down the first line from each one. Shuffle the cards. This is now the “speech” you’re going to give and with as much aplomb and conviction as if your character believed every line was rational and true.
7. Straight From the Headlines
In this exercise you get to play a newscaster. Take any story from today’s newspaper and read it enough times that you feel confident you can get all the details straight in your own words. Sit down at a desk and put both hands behind your back. Why, you ask? If you can’t move around and you can’t use your hands, it calls upon you to deliver as much as you can with your head, your eyes, your facial expressions and the power of your own vocal inflections. Once you’re back in rehearsal in an actual show, you’ll have greater mastery over what you’re physically communicating with your entire body.
8. Streaming Theatre
Thanks to the internet, you can watch any number of amateur and professional productions of your favorite plays online and observe how others have played the roles you’d like to try. Some examples include Drama Notebook, Time Out, PlayBill, Broadway Direct, Digital Theatre, and PBS.
9. We Pause For This Commercial Break
What product or service do you think you could sell in a 30-60 second commercial or public service announcement? Whether it’s a magic disappearing cream, a pair of dirty sneakers, an elixir for acing tests, a caution against walking and chewing gum at the same time, a bag of enchanted beans, or your father’s new car, the sky’s the limit in using costumes, makeup, props and backdrops for a video performance. For variety, introduce the fusion of well-known characters hawking modern products; i.e., Lady Macbeth and spot remover.
10. Tap Into Creativity
You’re not the only one who’s missing theatre right now. This last bit of advice comes from my actor friend David Selby who recommends seeking out kindred spirits and getting creative. “You can do a virtual play or a scene from a film and then show what has been done one evening. Some of my friends have improvised little skits on their phones or written out scenes they’d like to do. Think about stories to write that would lend themselves to a fresh performance piece. Do a monologue on your phone, send it to a good friend and ask for comments ... or not. Free the imagination. Don’t try to impress. Watch films of actors you like and learn from their techniques. And as Christina said, read, read, read!”
Meet the Author, Christina Hamlett
Former actress and theatre director Christina Hamlett is an award-winning author whose credits to date include 43 books, 209 stage plays, and squillions of articles and interviews. She is also a script consultant for stage and screen and a professional ghostwriter.