Acting

Me

• A Night of Scenes and Monologues (December 2025) (past)

Primary topics

• Given circumstances
• Objectives
  • Overall objective
  • Scene objective
• Obstacles (Acting)
• Stakes (Acting)
• How to approach a script

Schools

(Recommended ones.)

• The Acting Muscle

Books

These are the books I found useful:

• The Power of the Actor¹¹1 Ivana Chubbuck, The Power of the Actor (East Rutherford: Penguin Publishing Group, 2005). 
• Audition²²2 Michael Shurtleff, Audition (Random House Publishing Group, 1979). 
• A Challenge for the Actor³³3 Uta Hagen, A Challenge For The Actor (Simon and Schuster, 1991). 
• The Actor and the Target⁴⁴4 Declan Donnellan, The Actor and the Target (Theatre Communications Group, 2006). 

There are more books that I have read. Recommended to me were:

• The Empty Space (Peter Brook, 1968)
• Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays (David Ball, 1983)

Assorted stuff

Lots of stuff that I have not properly put into words and sentences and notes.

• Tactics
  • Actioning
• Voice work
  • Being on voice
  • Breath work
• Verbal action
• Beats and transitions
  • Moment before
  • Escalation
  • Don’t drop the energy at the end of a beat
• Make a choice
  • Be specific
• Pacing
• Making it real
  • Anchors
• Physicality
  • Where is the pain located?
• Find the love
• Warmup
• Moment before
• Eyeline
• Playing opposites
• Recording myself: a checklist
• Dream work
• Importance of purpose
  • Each word has a purpose
  • Each line has a purpose
  • Each prop has a purpose
  • Each movement has a purpose
  • Each breath has a purpose
  • … what is it?
• Substitution
  • Inner objects
  • Substituting situations
  • Substituting characters
• Staging/blocking
  • Don’t upstage
  • Using the space to convey power
  • Don’t face away from the audience
• “Action” vs. Bitte/Danke
• Text
  • Learning lines
  • Know the core words
    • Play around with accentuating different parts
  • Read the entire play (multiple times) and highlight
    • what “I” say
    • what other characters say about “me“
    • what “I” say about “myself”
• Monologues
  • Who are you talking to?
  • Does the target change or does it stay the same?
  • Why do I keep talking?
• Three rules
  • Be on time
  • Know your text (not just learn lines)
  • Have an idea
• Analysing a script
  • Givens/given circumstances
  • Superobjective/overall objective
  • Secrets: What does your character know but isn’t in the script?
  • Stage directions (cross them out unless they have an effect on the script)
• Each scene is a power struggle
  • Every scene is a chase scene⁵⁵5 Frank Hauser and Russell Reich, Notes on directing: 130 lessons in leadership from the director's chair (New York, London, Oxford, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2008), p. 33. 
  • Each confrontation can always(-ish) be bigger.
• Don’t play safe
• Don’t play pity/helplessness
• Simplify
• In each practice run, figure out what you want to focus/work on
• Space
  • What is the space I am in?
  • What is my relationship to the space? Do I own it or not?
  • What are the objects in the space?
  • Where are the characters in the space? Where are the ones that are not in the scene?
• Beyonds