Acting Techniques You Should Know

Acting is a hard job to obtain regular work in and harder still to achieve any form of success. It's not all glamor and celebrity, I'm afraid! There are many different acting techniques that you can apply to your craft. Here are some I think you should know about.

Stanislavski

Stanislavski influenced the acting world so greatly that most modern acting techniques are based on his. Stanislavski acting involves analyzing the script and segmenting it. Looking at what method a character resorts to. How they over come their obstacles and reach their objectives. Do they succeed? Do they fail? Why do they fail? His 'magic if' allows you to think what would you do if this happened to you.

Meisner

Meisner's technique is predominately placed on self and the affect you have in reaction to others. Repetitive dialog is used as an exercise. It's about considering the characters objective, tone and body language. Meisner is all about cause and effect/ action and reaction. How the world changes and how your character deals with it.

Viewpoints

This technique was pioneered by Anne Bogart and is very similar to Suzuki's method from Japan. It's a physical based acting method that bases it's self on 6 elements: space, story, time, emotion, movement, and shape. Using these 6 elements to break down the script and character you can get a very visceral and community driven performance. Viewpoints encourages the actors to create the world of the play together.

Method Acting

Method acting involves adopting the lifestyle and habits of the character you are playing. Immersing yourself heavily into your characters mind enables you to gain a better understanding of how they feel. As a result you portray them with greater accuracy. If you do this style of acting pray you don't get a character that's an anorexic or a sex addict. That could be really awkward.