An Actors Minute July 5th 2018 - What Was That? Line Please!

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Do you ever have one of those days when you struggle? We as actors can as well. What we all need to remember it is your mindset that can make a difference! As an actor you have lines to memories. Sometimes those line are large blocks of dialogue. What can be cumbersome though is when it might be words that you don't use or the order that you naturally speak.

So what do you do? Sometimes as an actor you can get flustered... one thing my acting coach is good about is to distract you before starting your scene. the big thing is to get out of your own way. Sometimes we overthink words or even an issue in life. It's a lesson for all of us to learn. It does not matter if we are memorizing lines for a scene or have writers block for your blog post. Simply don't overthink the situation.

My mentor would say "You get what you focus on". So if . you are focusing on not saying the words right what do you think will happen? My acting coach would say... "Did you read the lines? Then they are there in your brain... just let them come out. ". In most cases it is our mindset that gets us in trouble. We are overthinking our lines or even force something that is not natural.

If you think how the character thinks then you will have a better understand on what is being said and how it is said. Here is an example... if you are reminiscing about are girl friend the character had how would you be talking? If it was a good memory then you would be all happy, smiling or even giddy. If it was a bad memory you would be sad, upset, or maybe angry.

So in short feel like the character feels because the words the character speaks will be how the character is feeling. We all have those times when we have a lapse of memory. But, use that as the character has a lapse of memory and you hit gold!

Until next week... Happy Thoughts!

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