Last year I was an extra in an indie movie, and there was a scene that required me to cry, which threw me off cuz this was a comedy and freaked me out due to my hit or miss incidents. In desperation, I decided to try something new and remembered reading from a book called Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen about using trigger objects from sad memories. It sounded crazy. So I decided to try it. At the time, my boyfriend was living in Ohio and he visited a few months before I booked this movie. He only stayed three weeks and I started to think about how I felt after dropping him off at the airport, I started thinking about the obvious stuff first, remembering how hard I was crying, the empty feeling, just trying to get the tears to come, etc. Then I tried thinking of things I saw and things in the car. Then I remembered the cd my brother was playing. There was a song I never heard before and I suddenly became fixated on that song. Then it just happened! We filmed and the two extras I was paired with were very complimentary. They just hid their faces and made whimpering noises, lol!

Unfortunately when I decided to go back to college, my confidence dropped and I was back to the hit or misses. But when I remember my little breakthrough, I get excited! My confidence in myself stinks so thats what I'm trying to work on and reading this post helped me see that all I need is to trust myself. I'll be performing a dramatic scene for my final and I'll be taking everything I read here to heart

Take care!

Well anyway, I had the privilege of seeing him on Broadway in "Speed the Plow" with the late Ron Silver and Madonna. (It took two mounted police and one squad car just to handle the crowds who gathered outside just to catch a glimpse of Madonna. Kind of funny because the two great actors could slide out and make their way without anyone even noticing. Well Ron Silver won the Tony because his part was very flashy and flamboyant and he played it to the hilt. But Joe Montagna's part was kind of like the straight man in a two man comedy team but I thought his performance was terrrific, it was just subdued, which of course it what the part called for. Well glad to know he's such a class act.

with regard to "Sandy" i guess you could call it tough love. But the thing is, if the TV show trusts you enough to cast you in the part, you better have enough confidence to know you can act the part welll, or else you're proving them wrong by hiring you!!!!

Well anyway, I had the privilege of seeing him on Broadway in "Speed the Plow" with the late Ron Silver and Madonna. (It took two mounted police and one squad car just to handle the crowds who gathered outside just to catch a glimpse of Madonna. Kind of funny because the two great actors could slide out and make their way without anyone even noticing. Well Ron Silver won the Tony because his part was very flashy and flamboyant and he played it to the hilt. But Joe Montagna's part was kind of like the straight man in a two man comedy team but I thought his performance was terrrific, it was just subdued, which of course it what the part called for. Well glad to know he's such a class act.

Now, the Sandy story is funny. Tough love, or did she have a penchant for over dramatizing her situation and he was tired of it… Or was he just plain tired? Still, very funny.

Anyway, thank you for sharing. It was a good read.

I did a play I did a few years ago and one of the of the leads was a twelve year old boy. He was a very nice boy, but he really couldn't act at all and everyone was mad because he was really bringing the play down. It was hard because he was one of the central characters so the director was doing all he could to help shape the kid's performance.

In one scene, the boy has just heard the news of his grandfather's death. The stage directions said for the boy to come running on and throw himself on the couch, bury his face in a pillow and start sobbing. Which he did. But his fake crying sounded more like a donkey braying.

This was not going to work. So the director said "Son, just forget about running on. just walk on very slowly, and keep your face very still, don't frown, don't smile, then very slowly and gently, sit yourself down onto the couch and stare out just above the audience. Which he did. And it was a very touching moment. Every night the kid did it better and better as he trusted himself and let the emotion happen. It worked beautifully.

But it goes right along with what you're saying. True emotion takes the courage to know that the emotion will be there WITHOUT FORCING… You just have to prepare yourself to be in the right frame of mind for the ghost to appear. I had the same thing tonight. I did a staged reading where I was supposed to be a guy who has to tell his grown daughter that his wife's Alzheimers is getting worse. So just like you I was thinking how the hell can i do this? Well I just said the lines simply and directly and i thought I was terrible but everyone was very complimentary. This trusting yourself as an actor is a scary business….

OK last story. Back in the eighties, I was lucky enough to study acting with the great Sanford Meisner. It is kind of ironic that so many acting teachers now advertise as teaching the "Meisner Technique" but I studied from the guy himself.

Well anyway, in our class there was a young actress who was working fairly regularly in film and television, and she had just landed a part in a TV show where she is at a party getting drunk and happy, when gunshots ring out, and she sees her brother lying dead in a pool of blood. The script called for her to scream and drop to her knees over her brother's body and sob uncontrollably.

So she goes up to "Sandy" (as we called him) and said, "Sandy, can you give me some advice? I'm supposed to go from being so happy to falling on my knees and sobbing uncontrollably, I don't know if I can make that kind of emotional transition that fast. What should I do?"

So Sandy looks up at her and says "Here's a quarter. Go call the producers and tell them they hired the wrong actress" — well that straightened her out fast. BTW, A few months later I saw the episode and she did a TERRIFIC job in the role.

Well anyways, you've touched on something really important here. The very core of acting is emotional truth under imaginary circumstances and it's the hardest thing to do.

take care

Jim