Cold Reading

I did a great class today. This time, cold reading was on the menu with Crystal Carson. She has developed her own exercise called Thought Support. It's a way of being able to cold read without it looking like you're reading. Sounds too good to be  true, right?

For actors, it can be a real mine field trying to make bold choices when you haven't actually seen the script beforehand. With a little bit of background information but no access to the script, Thought Support means all the actors who were in class today were able to create gripping scenes even though they hadn't a clue what their next line was until they saw it. 

My friend Alex went as far as gatecrashing an audition and using Thought Support to land him the job. 

It takes a while to get your head around the technique and there a number of technical rules that you have to learn (which I won't go into now, you'll have to speak to Crystal or take the class) but once you have them down, you can do so much with it. 

Whilst you wouldn't want to go into an audition and cold read a script you've had for a few days, in those rare instances that you don't get to see it beforehand, this is invaluable. Another day of learning amazing things.

My first LA Acting class

I'm here for a reason and I figured I might as well got on with it. Landing an acting job and that means applying myself. Actors here have a different approach to the craft than Brits back home. They may have just rolled in from Utah because they won a beauty pageant and their dad said they could make it in Hollywood but if their head's in the clouds it's a business head. Actors here are either working or in class and/ or (hopefully) auditioning.

So I figured I'd better get my arse in class. Crystal Carson came very highly recommended and within minutes of her first session starting, I could see why. She has a passion for acting and actors' training that goes beyond landing a job and making a stack of money. For her it is a craft, an art form, a means of expressing God (deal with it atheists. I'm down with it) and touching hearts. The ponse slayer in me shudders at the thought of this but the bigger part of me who doesn't care what people think, loved this about her.

Her technique is to issue 'sides' (script seg.) before the class then each student is put on tape auditioning and then she teaches the classes using the the tapes to prompt her teaching points. This is an amazingly effective way to learn.

During week one, I was absolutely dreading seeing myself on tape with the whole class watching. I'm very self conscious in acting classes back home wondering who knows who I am. It's quite a vulnerable place to be and one that's not entirely comfortable for me. Here, I reminded myself, no one knows who you are, so quit the vanity shit, throw caution in Wind's face and just do some good work.

It wasn't too bad in the end and just from her first lesson I could see all the mistakes I was making and had made in the past (I relive the horror of bad performances a thousand times over but never seem to dwell on the good ones).

I was utterly inspired. For the rest of the week, I watched ever piece of fictional television with the cavalcade of new insights Crystal had given me. I'd never really known how to analyse a script outside of a theatre rehearsal room. I'd never really thought about creating objectives, obstacles and specific history for my character. Perhaps this was why I'd never moved beyond being the go-to doctor/ nurse/ copper in the eyes of casting directors in London.

As I watched all the fantastic performances on a wide range of shows from dramas to comedies to the odd feature I saw in action, everything Crystal was teaching us. Often it was difficult to concentrate because the choices and decisions the actors were making were so solid that you couldn't help but get drawn into the performance. We often take for granted what an actor brings to the table when they bring a character to life, which is why it's so jarring when they are miscast or do a bad job. Suddenly you see Geppetto and not Pinocchio. You see the wood and not the boy.

When I received the sides for this week's class, I spent hours investigating my character. I saw the script as a puzzle to be solved and there were clues everywhere. Every time I read it, I saw another piece of the puzzle that went some way to explain who I had to become in the audition. And for once, I started to make specific choices. I'd always been very vague about characterisation, assuming that what the character said was all that mattered.

I couldn't have been further from the truth. What, as actors, we should be looking for is the emotional motivation to say the words in the script and that takes enquiry, research, consideration and choices. That magic word again - choices.

Even though it was taxing and a way of working that was new to me, I LOVED it and when I came to perform at my class audition this week, I knew I'd made big progress. I'm really excited about where this class is going to take me.

Amazingly, using Crystal's techniques you are able to make what appears to be even the most apparently ludicrous script, good, perhaps even great by finding the truth of the character you're portraying. I can't believe it's taken me ten years to discover this about acting. Oh well, just goes to show that no matter how long you've been doing something, there's always a chance to have huge shifts and grow in skill and understanding.

Every now and then you meet a person who changes the trajectory of your life. I believe Crystal is already one of those people.