I am hoping to get into the BFA program in my school, do anyone have any good advice? I am looking for any tips that anyone can give me.

Just wondering, when you are doing a scene, and it's supposed to be cold, are you really feeling the freezing chill? Or when you smell a smell, do you really smell it? Touch a "hot" skillet, do you really feel the burning metal?

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Just wondering, when you are doing a scene, and it's supposed to be cold, are you really feeling the freezing chill? Or when you smell a smell, do you really smell it? Touch a "hot" skillet, do you really feel the burning metal?

When you are freezing ... don't play "being cold;" instead, as in real life, you should try to get warm.

If you're character is nervous, most often you should play "trying to keep yourself calm."

When you smell something, your reaction depends on the smell, and where it came from.

When you touch a hot skillet, it hurts.

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I don't know if I really feel it. I believe I feel it and my body believes it too. So it responds.

LOL.

We are nuts.

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Just wondering, when you are doing a scene, and it's supposed to be cold, are you really feeling the freezing chill? Or when you smell a smell, do you really smell it? Touch a "hot" skillet, do you really feel the burning metal?

I disagree with ron brown, because that seems like indicating to me. you can't try to keep calm if you're not nervous in the first place or try to get warm if you're not cold.

i think most if not all of the great actors really feel the cold and smell the smells and burn themselves. this is brought about through the "as if" so just practice it at home and just keep repeteating in your mind "if I am cold how would my feet feel, if I am cold how do my legs, my face, my ears, etc. " keep repeating this in your head. relax your body as much as possible. be aware of the tension in your body.

Important thing is to not try to force yourself to be cold, but think of it like you were a child playing make believe. just ask yourself these questions and see how your body responds.

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Originally posted by pekingtokyo:

Just wondering, when you are doing a scene, and it's supposed to be cold, are you really feeling the freezing chill? Or when you smell a smell, do you really smell it? Touch a "hot" skillet, do you really feel the burning metal?

I wanted to drop in my two cents.

I haven't trained in the Strasberg "Method" outside a few exercises here and there, but I don't think sense memory is about really smelling the coffee, that it's more about your sensations when you smell the coffee if you catch my drift.

That said, look: If I pick up a fake prop flower and smell it, do I really smell a lilly? No. Because what I'm smelling is not a flower. It's plastic and it's a prop. At all times, you are acting and to suggest that you start smelling things that aren't there or that you feel pain that hasn't been inflicted would be to suggest that you're losing your mind a little bit. It's the same thing with actors who say they "become" another person. In my opinion, which some disagree with, that's just nuts. You can do deep, good work, work that is personal and emotionally and physically transformative, but I don't think you can make things that aren't there.

I agree with Ron Brown. You don't "feel" a broken arm into existence. You don't feel a bullet going into you when you're shot on stage. Indicating is a dirty word and I agree that it should generally be avoided, but you are acting. These things are not really happening and certain things cannot be felt into existence. I was taught to call such things "impediments." These are things that must be delt with in a physical way.

If I'm not being clear lemme go ahead with this: An actor friend of mine had to have the flu in a play. Now, she knows what the flu feels like and how that effects her body. How she held her body effected how she felt about what she was saying and remembering the sensation of having the flu informed her performance. She never gave herself a 101 degree fever or felt like she was actually going to be sick on stage because how the hell can she act freely and openly while going through that?

Also, what Roz says is true. You don't really feel it, but as an actor your have an imagination. If you can believe in the imaginary circumstance your body will also react to that circumstance.

I hope I haven't been to confusing.

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Originally posted by pekingtokyo:I disagree with ron brown, because that seems like indicating to me. you can't try to keep calm if you're not nervous in the first place or try to get warm if you're not cold.

It's pretty classic advice.

The point is that it gives you an action. Instead of "being" cold, you DO what you would if you were cold. And yes, you should do it with a sense of the reality that you NEED to do it.

It can indeed become indicating, as for instance if you walk into a scene and start hugging an overcoat around you to "show" you're cold. But if you hug an overcoat with the intent of resisting cold, the difference should be clear to the viewers.

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But if you hug an overcoat with the intent of resisting cold, the difference should be clear to the viewers.

Except that could just as well be indicating. It depends on the actors' ability to live within an imagined world. Thus, they need processes to create an imagined world. This part is left out of a heck of a lot of actor training.

Actions are not all Meryl or Anthony is doing. She actually really cries, on cue. And she doesn't just think of acting as a series of "doings."

Indicating is behavior that is shallow, without the underlying need or imaginative impulse impelling it. It is always showing. The showing is either filled with imagined life and truth or not. One is living fully, the other is indicating.

That said, one doesn't need to go as far as "Creating and completely believing the cold." Then, you'd be psychotic. But some sensory work adds depth and life and reality to the doing. This is why Chekhov and Strasberg and Hagen were so brilliant, in their own way doing opposites kinds of things. They were filled, not just doing.

Doing with no meaning is indicating and shallow. Anyone can DO actions. Hardly anyone is a great actor. - Jason