Introducing… The Independent Actor

September 25, 2024
Acting, Articles, Book Extracts

The Independent Actor: An Accessible Companion for All Actors presents a 21st-century training route achievable by self-curated learning.

This book rejects a purist approach to actor training, disregards the embedded elitist notions of Western-training methods at the top of the hierarchy and, fundamentally, it offers choice. Through doing so, it is the first book to validate a self-curated approach to actor training. Designed as a companion to practical experience and useful as a reference sourcebook, it takes the position that each individual actor must find their own process.

See below an excerpt from one of the chapters where the author offers practical exercises and tips for actors involving movements, imagination, character building, voice, and inhabiting space.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Exercises for a Self-led Approach

The exercises in this chapter are self led. These exercises have no hierarchy and are offered up for you to decide their use to you personally. Millions of exercises exist in this field, many brilliant ones, which you will find through the resources in the following chapter and many more besides. The physical suggestions are not fixed: adapt the exercises to work with your own body. Record your discoveries in your journal.

Connection, movement

Shake out, include every part of your body and without pushing, allow any natural sounds to release as you shake. Next, take on stretches that your body feels it needs – listen to your body, what feels stiff or tired or tight?
Clap your hands continuously and place emphasis on your out breath. Keep clapping until your muscles begin to struggle with the repetition. Close your eyes and relax, notice the energetic sensation in your Release your breath and open your eyes.
With your spine at full height, rotate your torso round to the left and then to the right to its comfortable reach. Allow your arms and hands to freely follow the momentum of the movement.
Let your arms swing and slowly accelerate your speed. As you move, your hands will naturally tap against your This Qi Gong exercise helps to stimulate the nerves, tendons and muscles surrounding the shoulder. It also wakes up the energy in the body.
Gently return to stillness, then, cupping the hands, vigorously tap the body from your chest down and then up your body.
Notice the sensations in the body and remember how to recreate them.

Imagination, character

A range of stimuli, such as locations, objects and art can ignite ‘play’, and the opportunities are everywhere. Using imagery, sound, touch, taste and smell to stimulate associative stories is equally valuable and an important way to evoke the imagination.

Go to a coffee shop, train station or park and focus on the people you see.
Identify them as characters in a scene, invent their Ws, imagine their super objectives and their relationship to each other.
What could be the imagined drama in the scene? Look for clues to help your imagination. Choose one character and as a stream of consciousness speak or write their interior monologue.
Immerse in the idea of those words being spoken aloud to someone else in the scene and imagine how the scenario.

Connection, imagination, space

Lie on the floor in a comfortable position and in turn place awareness in each part of your body.
Move each body part momentarily as you place your awareness. Close your eyes and become aware of your breathing.
Each time you release your breath (exhale), imagine that your torso is opening, becoming wider, softer.
Imagine your breath is released from each part of your body in your favourite colour. This colour reaches out and beyond you, inviting your body into the space.
Open your eyes, roll onto your side and slowly come to your full height. Spend a minute relaxing to ensure you are placing your full weight evenly. Make the body soft in your joints to help you balance.
Repeat points 2–5 again but this time in the space and, keeping your eyes open, focus on a fixed point.
Close your eyes as you exhale this imaginary-coloured breath, see it reaching as far as your point of focus, then open your eyes.
Place your focus on an object or piece of furniture in the space and imagine as you breathe that you are creating a sphere of colour. Send the coloured air to reach out and fill your 360° kinosphere. Open your torso and embrace the energy.

Connection, space, movement

Be in a space where you can move freely without obstacles and where you feel emotionally safe.
Lie on the floor in a comfortable position and become aware of your heartbeat – find your pulse to easily access this connection. Close your eyes and focus on its rhythm and sensations.
Slowly begin to consider the position of each of the organs in your body and visualise them; consider the function they are performing without any direct conscious effort from you.
Create very gentle continuous movement in your body – such as rolling or rocking – and in turn gently see if you can experience the sensation of engaging each of these organs. Give yourself a lot of time to tune into the sensations.
Next, let your body lead on moving into positions that give you a joyful sensation.
As you experiment, open your eyes and give your body permission to move beyond the floor. Each time you find a joyful sensation, allow the body to repeat it. Ask ‘what does my body want to do?’ and follow through in granting each wish and embracing any movement impulses in the space.
Gently bring the exercise to an end when you feel that your exploration has naturally finished.

Connection, imagination, character

Place your focus on an object in the room. Look only at the object and move closer to encounter it.
Notice the shape, colour, feel, smell of it and consider the function it serves.
Imagine its history, how long has it existed, what has it meant in its lifetime and for whom?
As you fall deeper into communion with the object let your imagination create scenarios for the object or those who may have known it. Close your eyes.
Underscore your story with sound or music in your head and allow an emotional connection to it.
Sit with this for as long as you feel able to and then slowly come back into the space.
Now replace this object with one which is relevant for a character you are working on.
Repeat the exercise in character, discover the connection and create a character memory of this communion.

Voice, imagination

Lie comfortably on the floor and become aware of your breath.
Place your hands gently on your ribcage and let them rise and fall with each breath.
Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, notice the sensations you experience.
Imagine you are breathing in through your feet and become aware of the sensations this creates.
Lay your hands by your sides, palms facing upwards and imagine the breath coming through your hands. How does this differ from the sensation of breathing through the feet?
Slowly roll to one side and using your hands and knees come to standing.
Slowly move into the space experimenting with each of these in turn. How does it change the breath? How does it change your movement through the space?

Character, voice, imagination

Choose an animated film you have not watched before and put it on with the sound off.
Pick a character and imagine from the look and behaviours of the character what their vocal qualities and accent could be.
Write a short monologue for the character based on action in the film and experiment with vocal sounds and qualities to bring the character to life.
Record your voice.
Watch the animation with the sound on. What choices does the actor in the animation make?
How are they like your own choices? How do they differ? What can you adjust in your own choices?

Text, movement

Choose a monologue you are not familiar with.
Read it aloud and make instinctive decisions in pencil, sectioning it up into units/chunks.
Choose a movement for each chunk: skipping, sliding, running, hopping etc. and use the space to explore these simultaneously with the text.
Explore the changes of movement and adapt them to feel organic with the text, repeating until the right quality of movement feels right with each change.
Exaggerate the transitions and repeat until the body has ownership of each movement.
Speak the text without committing to movement but remaining connected to that exploration. The movement may reappear through gesture or create an internal sensation.
How has the text changed because of your movement?

Text, imagination

Choose a monologue or poem and three instrumental pieces contrasting in style and tempo.
Work on the text to discover its natural rhythms, paying attention to punctuation and phrasing.
Play each of the pieces of music in turn underneath your vocalisation of the text.
Encourage your body to respond to the impact of the music, allow the music to initiate movement or to change you vocally, exaggerate your responses so you can feel the full extent of their impact.
Vocalise the text without the music and become aware of what has changed. What new discoveries reveal themselves?

Text, context

Take a monologue you are unfamiliar with and observe its

Structure – observe paragraph length, sentence length, punctuation, dialect or vernacular, rhetorical questions.
Content – identify the narrative, choice of language and specific words, characters mentioned, topics revealed, personal information revealed, level of stakes.
Intention – ask: What is the impulse to speak? Why is the character telling this story or sharing these facts/truths/ reflections? Why are they sharing it now? How does the character hope to affect the person that they are telling? What does the character discover by speaking? What context is revealed?
Absorb your discoveries and then record yourself speaking the text. Playback and consider where you can better clarify meaning, raise the stakes or tell the story.

Space, context, creativity

Choose an interior or exterior space which you have access to.
Research the historical context including the people associated with it.
Spend time in the space, feel its parameters and soak up its
Imagine an event there, e.g., a pond where a group may come to sail toy boats; a car park where a car boot sale would run. In the space, write a stream of consciousness passage that imagines a dramatic happening at the event.
Review your writing and shape it from the perspective of one of the people you have researched.
Work on it as a monologue, perform it in the space, record it and reflect on it. Consider making a series.

Character, context

Choose a character to explore. If the character is a real person or historical figure you can engage in comprehensive research to complete the following task. Otherwise, if the facts in the script have been accounted for, your imagination and your own body are the limits for this exercise.

Use the framework of circumstances known in a play – either explicitly or implicitly – to map the journey of a character’s body. Where you have no facts, invent them.
Start the journey in the womb and travel through to the age of the character in the script.
- What sort of pregnancy did the character’s mother have? What was the birth like?
- Early years – were there any medical complications?
- As a child or teenager did they sustain any injuries?
- How did they use their body as a teenager?
- How nurturing were they of their body?
- Has the character tested their body with alcohol, drugs, sport, extreme adrenalin, self-harm?
- What work activities have they engaged in?
- How physically fit are they?
- Has the body had many adventures?
- What is their most comfortable gait?
- What is the quality of energy that consumes their body?
Record your discoveries and explore how this information can be a catalyst for your physical and behavioural choices.

Connection, voice, context

This is a voice journey research project.

Try to find out how you used your voice as a Did you cry/scream a lot? What age were you when you started speaking? What were your first words? Were you a confident speaker? Whose voices were you learning from?
What memories do you have of your voice during your school years? Were you particularly vocal? Achievement at school is linked to how confident we may be to use our voice. Were you a student with their hand up successfully answering questions? Was your voice ignored at school, at home, in the playground? Did you feel that your voice was not worthy of being heard? Was your voice celebrated? Was your voice criticised?
What memories do you have of using your voice creatively or feeling free vocally? Reflect on moments of joy, laughter, singing, shouting – how does it feel when you use your voice spontaneously and emotionally? What natural volume do you feel confident using? How does your voice respond when you are sick? Do you have a history of losing your voice?
What feedback comments have friends, family, colleagues, students or strangers made about your voice, whether invited or otherwise? What words have been associated with your voice?
Gather audio recordings of the voices you grew up with – parents, guardians, These may already exist or you may record them now.
Look for any audio recordings you have of your own voice at different moments in your life (these may be on film). Then record yourself speaking now, ideally speaking freely and spontaneously or reading something you have written yourself so that you avoid ‘correcting’ yourself or using a more formal tone.
What words describe what you hear? Reflect on your connection to your voice and its journey so far.

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The Independent Actor: An Accessible Companion for All Actors is now available via Bloomsbury.com