I can’t express enough the value of being able to take an adjustment in the room. A casting director might throw something out at you that feels left field, but it could also be a test of skill and character. How will you receive the direction? Will you be receptive or will you be disagreeable? They may just be testing to see whether you are the type of actor with whom they’d want to spend all day on a fast-paced set. People can and have been fired for being unwilling to take direction or just for having a bad attitude about making adjustments.
Author Archive for
Recall a particularly dismal day at school that you tuned out and allowed your mind to wander freely, seduced by the siren of your subconscious. Whatever path the wandering may have taken you down, wasn’t it delicious? To be able to shut out the droning and be ever so free to create and explore the makings of your own mind! Liberty! Continue reading ‘Imagination by Lisa Milillo’
One of the most important things to remember in an audition is to respect the writer. The screenwriter or playwright has invested blood, sweat and tears into the collection of words that you are expected to enliven into a full performance. Their story is told through you! Every actor should be in love with the storytelling, because that is precisely what you are doing. Continue reading ‘Respect the Author – Lisa Milillo’
Intention
“Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.”
- William A. Foster
The new year is buzzing with Pilot Season and Awards Season in full swing! Let this be a time to be inspired by veteran and new talent alike and be intentional about your career. This past week, one of my clients booked the very first Pilot she went out for after firmly setting her intention. I also had a student determined to work on her active meanings prior to a big audition that she ended up booking and she is now a series regular. Continue reading ‘Intention by Lisa Milillo’
Brilliance on stage can be identified in certain moments, when there is no doubt that an actor is fully present. His response to the imaginary circumstance is created from a clear and specific relationship. The times when an actor is living truthfully through an event are when preset emotional responses manifest, in spite of oneself.
Actors try to display when they are deeply affected, whereas most people try to hide it. Continue reading ”
I’ll never forget the moment. Twenty-five years ago Master-teacher Joanne Baron told our class, “The thing that brings you into acting is that which you must overcome to be able to act.” Silence filled the room. Something profound had been said. What did it mean? All of us began to ask ourselves the same question, “What brought us into acting?” Escape, entertainment, fame, attention? Or was there something more? As usual I suspected there was something more. The ancients had told us this for centuries. Behind every dark cloud is a smiling Providence. Underneath every trouble lies an invisible net. She was leading us to something deeper. What she had said was meant to trouble us. And it did. Continue reading ‘The Paradox of Overcoming by Tom Patton’
The Joanne Baron\DW Brown Studio welcomes back students from the holidays and would like to kick off the New Year with some resolutions.
In this coming year we want to courage every student to look at their artistic obstacles and start to reduce or remove them with renewed vigor. Maybe that way you can move on to some new obstacles. If you don’t know what your artistic obstacles are, then you have just found one. From this point forward, you want to be aware that your obstacle right now is that you don’t pay attention to what your obstacles are. Keeping that in mind, ask your teacher what they suggest the main thing for you to be aware of in your work is and what to work on to improve it.
There are obvious things you can recommit to: increased concentrated rehearsal times doing the work you can do alone, as well as that with your assigned partner; doing extra rehearsals with other serious students, doing artistics (if you don’t already know about this, ask), and volunteering to be the go-to acting partner for anything that comes up.
More than anything though, you want to get your spirit right and marry that with detailed action. Make plans for how you’re going to make time for what you know you need to do. That means sacrifice and understanding you’re not going to allow yourself those moments of weakness where you let it slide “just this time.” It means discipline.
Beyond this, you could resolve to study your art by attending the theater once a month (where you can best study an actor’s performance), or you can watch a movie for a second time with the deliberate intention of observing a particular performance: Is the actor really playing moments? Are they clear in their intention? How would a better actor (like you!) play the scene?
Basically, the suggestion here is that you should be the hero of your own life; and “a hero is someone who does the next necessary thing.”
D.W. Brown
The Joanne Baron/D.W. Brown Studio encourages all of its students to see all of the nominated films for the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy Awards. This is a rich opportunity to study performances and evaluate the work in relationship to the studio training. Is the performance specific and clear, alive and truthful, relaxed and real? In studying the Meisner training each student is educating themselves in what to look for that creates a truly great and skilled performance. The popular response to a performance or film can sometimes be uneducated as to what truly makes the art form art. As students of the Meisner work we no longer sit in the audience merely being entertained or moved; we are analyzing the work before us as painters may study a painting at a museum. We encourage every student to create their own personal best actor list and turn it in for discussion in their class with their teacher. Through this artistic debate we can all learn much about what creates virtuosity in acting.
This form of study is yet another means by which to measure your own work and growth within your training at the Joanne Baron/D.W. Brown Studio.
Have fun and learn much within this New Year with all its possibilities
Artistic Director
Joanne Baron
JOANNE BARON D.W.BROWN STUDIO – AN INSPIRATIONAL EXAMPLE
NEW YORK TIMES article on Javier Bardem Star of Biutiful
GREAT ACTORS STUDY AND PREPARE.
Organic and spontaneous impulse is found by disciplined and detailed daily work.
“A sign of the seriousness with which Javier Bardem approaches his craft is that, despite the growing acclaim for his body of work, he continues to study acting …
… Mr. Bardem attends acting classes and workshops, where he is sometimes matched with beginning actors.
“Part of the work in preparing for roles at the table, where we analyze each phrase, I try to understand the mind of that other person,” he explained. Mr. Bardem does exercises designed to “prepare the canvas for painting” by “identifying and stripping away the habits, clichés and artificial aspects between him and the character, so he has the courage to find a freedom in his character.”
“If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying. “Here comes number seventy-one!” Richard M. Devos
