Twelve Steps to Becoming a Great Actor
Tasha Smith Actors Workshop - Acting Tools
As a comprehensive acting tool, TSAW follows 12-steps to becoming a great actor based on Ivana Chubbuck’s technique found in her book, “The Power of the Actor” (click the title to purchase).
Overall Objective: What does your character want from life more than anything? Finding out what your character wants throughout the script. It’s important for the actor to identify their character’s primal need, goal or OBJECTIVE. It’s best used when an actor finds the appropriate personal pain that can effectively drive this OBJECTIVE.
Scene Objective: What your character wants over the course of an entire scene, which supports the character’s OVERALL OBJECTIVE.
Obstacle: Determining the physical, emotional and mental hurdles that make it difficult for your character to achieve his or her overall and SCENE OBJECTIVE.
Substitution: Endowing the other actor in the scene with a person from your real life that makes sense to your OVERALL AND SCENE OBJECTIVE.
Inner Objects: The pictures you see in your mind when speaking or hearing about a person place, thing or event.
Beats and Actions: A BEAT is a thought. Every time there’s a change in thought, there’s a BEAT change. ACTIONS are the mini-OBJECTIVES that are attached to each BEAT that support the SCENE OBJECTIVES.
Moment Before: The event that happens before you begin the scene. This is created by your imagination. It gives you a place to move from, physically and emotionally.
Place and Fourth Wall: You endow your character’s physical reality, with your imagination. It’s best used with attributes from your real life, it creates privacy, intimacy, history, meaning and safety.
Doings: The handling of props which produces behavior.
Inner Monologue: The dialogue that’s going on inside your head that you don’t speak out loud. It’s also called an inner thought.
Previous Circumstances: This is the information that determines who your character is, how he operates in the world, and why. This will help you to understand your character’s behavior and enables real connection
Let It Go: Just what it says, LET IT GO. In order to have an authentic, emotionally connected experience, you must get out of your head and trust that the work you have done in the previous 11 steps is in you and will be reflected in your work.