So, I was just wondering what techniques some of you use to help yourselves be as open as possible to your partner? I mean, you don't have to tell me if it's way too revealing, but anything will help!

One barrier that I think I have is that I'm worried about being bad, so I put up this tense barrier, so that I don't have to really go at it, thereby protecting myself from being bad.

Happy Halloween by the way!

Sounds like you are in your head too much as yourself and not actually 'in the moment' as the character.

Meisner helps with working off of instinct and working moment to moment.

An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words.
You only say ouch if the other fellow pinches you.

quote:

Originally posted by Prospective:
So, I was just wondering what techniques some of you use to help yourselves be as open as possible to your partner? I mean, you don't have to tell me if it's way too revealing, but anything will help!

One barrier that I think I have is that I'm worried about being bad, so I put up this tense barrier, so that I don't have to really go at it, thereby protecting myself from being bad.

Happy Halloween by the way!

It's important that you learn how to release muscular tension. Very important. It's something I personally work on several times a day. I place that kind of value on it.

Muscular tension does several negative things to you:

-Prevents you from concentrating
-Inhibits you from acting on impulses your body gets
-Inhibits any kind of emotion from bubbling up
-and it just plain looks bad (there are probably other negative things it does that I'm not even aware of).

Human beings use muscular tension to block off physical and emotional discomfort. If someone pinches you, you'll usually tense up and scrunch up your face so you don't feel the pain as much. If you walk by a stinky garbage can a common reaction is to scrunch up your face because tension blocks the smell to some extent. As actors, we need these impulses to enrich our work.

I don't care if I'm in the middle of a stage performance or if I'm in front of a camera burning through very expensive film. If I feel significant tension creeping up on me, I'll make it a point to get up and shake it off in the middle of the scene.

But in the grand scheme of things, I'm basically a nobody, so take this advice for what it's worth...