Which Acting Method is for You?

There are so many classes and styles of acting, how do you determine which method is best for you? When you are honing your process and developing your own method, you have to determine factors like:

• do I tend to be emotional?
• do I lean heavily on technical skills like speaking the words?
• do I tend to live in my head when I'm acting?
• do I like working from the inside out (think then do) or vise versa?

The father of modern acting methodology is Stanislavski. He devised a process of acting with a super-objective (overall action), objectives (actions within the scene), and beats (segments of each scene where one objective happens). Most modern methods are versions of his original work.

If you already find accessing your emotions to be easy, you might want to investigate Meisner. His method will cultivate your ability to use your emotions and help you avoid pitfalls of simply being emotional for its own sake. His catch phrase is "the reality of doing."

If you can't seem to access your emotions, you might want to investigate Strasberg (photo right). Lee Starsberg started the Actor's Studio in NYC and Hollywood. His belief was to access the emotion is to harness the scene.

If you want to use your daily life in a practical way to boost your performance, You might want to investigate Hagen (photo left). Uta Hagen likes to use sense memory as the core to her performance methodology. She has a few great DVD's out that you might watch to get a feel of her style.

To find your process, determine your strengths, weaknesses, and how you like to approach your work. Happy hunting!

Copyright 2010 Heather Corwin