Practice Makes Perfect
Let’s face it, if you don’t practice in a variety of ways that fit your abilities, you’ve already defeated yourself as an aspiring or current actor. There are so many ways to do this and there are fun ways to experiment with technology to see how you look with today’s electronic mirror if you desire.
- Set up a camera and a few light(s) for a mood.
- Practice dry and then very emotional skits and play them back.
- Set up a mic and recording device/pc and see how your voice sounds.
- Take your favorite books and read a paragraph, page, or chapter.
- Put on some costumes in a video and be silly or serious
- Take a favorite movie scene and redo it as one or all of the characters.
- Imagine there’s someone in front of you and play off of that.
- Ask a friend who is an actor to do scenes or improv with you.
- Pretend you’re a documentary host about something you love.
- Ask some of your friends if you can interview them about their jobs.
- Use puppets. Yes, puppets, and imagine characters you are afraid to do.
Monologues
Longer monologues can be crushing in an audition, 2-3 minutes is far too long for most quick auditions to give a taste of who you are. I found an amazing website where the author has made many 20,30 and 60 second monologues. One of my favorites is “It’s Mine”. Here is a link to it and his page, it will be every useful to you.
https://monologueblogger.com/its-mine-drama-monologue/
Acting Styles
There are so many ways to act, and it is constantly changing like language as if uses language itself to convey many parts of acting itself. It would be impossible to say which technique if any is best, but there are many styles that stand out.
The Meisner Technique
Sandy Meisner was an amazing teacher, and an amazing person. His Meisner technique is so simple yet so complex. It favors truly becoming the character by being yourself. Learn about his life, his classes and it can help you immensely find yourself as an actor.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/140507.Sanford_Meisner_on_Acting
http://cursteatrubucuresti.ro/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Sanford-Meisner-The-Meisner-Technique.pdf