A Taste of Technique
Whether you’re in person in L.A. or you join us online on Zoom, here’s a little taste of what it’s like to join our technique class!
Everybody who’s new to our studio, with an occasional exception, starts in one of our technique classes. Technique class is the foundational class. It has the basic building blocks that you need before you get into scene study.
Scene study
Scene study is taking all of those techniques that you learned in technique and then just adding text to them. For those of you who are itching to start in scene study, think of technique as scene study without the scene.
Imagination exercises
We start class with some imagination exercises, with some silliness to get us loose and free and uninhibited. Everybody’s a little inhibited and that is not a good quality for an actor to have. The more inhibited you are, the harder it’s going to be to be able to step into your character’s reality, so we do a lot of stuff to get you free.
Voice warm-up
Next we may do some exercises to work on your voice, some tongue twisters and vocal warm ups. This is not vocal training, but a warm up to remind you that your voice is another tool for the actor to use.
Concentration exercises
We’ll do some concentration exercises because sets are chaotic places. There’s a lot going on on set, and sometimes it’s really hard to focus on what you need to in the moment. So we’re going to do some focus exercises.
Practice your homework!
There’s an opportunity for you to do homework. You’re taught the technique, you practice it at home, and then bring that exercise into the class to see that you understand it and know how to use it — techniques like sense memory, endowment, substitution.
I love emotional memory because emotional memory is one of those techniques that intimidates so many actors. The idea that as an actor you will need to “cry on cue” is not always true. Rarely do you need to do it on cue, but let’s go ahead and teach you how to cry within 30 seconds so you know you can do it.
Experienced or not — learn the techniques
If you’re a working experienced actor, then you might go right into our master class or you might start in one of our scene study classes; but we’re still going to ask you to learn the techniques.
Technique is not a lecture class. If you are auditing or in the class, you are participating: Learning how to do entrances. What if your character is freezing cold? Using sense memory. You’ll practice in class and at home and learning both character and scene breakdown. I do know that Jennifer Lopez (JLo) still uses our breakdown template that she got back when she was in technique.
If you enjoyed this article, watch the corresponding video with bonus content on the technique for creating an imaginary wall, also referred to as the “fourth wall.”
