Acting Improvers at City Academy: what happens when you stop watching yourself act

For a few minutes, I was much less aware of myself acting and much more involved in the character’s situation.

I eventually took City Academy’s Acting Improvers course after completing its Beginner Acting course — though not in a straight line.

I expected to do more scene work, learn more technique and generally build on what I had already done.

The most memorable part of the course ended up being a monologue towards the end. I had struggled to learn all the words, but during the performance I became much less aware of myself and much more involved in what the character was thinking.

By the end, I was physically shaking.

I still did not really understand why that performance had felt so different, or whether I could do it again. But it made me want to understand what had happened.

What came after my beginner acting course?

Finishing a beginner acting course did not lead neatly into one obvious next step.

I initially wanted to continue into Acting Improvers, but the dates did not work for me.

So instead, I took a one-day Meisner course at City Academy. That gave me a first taste of a specific acting technique rather than another general course.

After that, a classmate I had met during Improving Your Speaking Voice at City Lit recommended a course where we rehearsed and performed a full play.

So I did that next.

Only after those two experiences did I eventually come back to Acting Improvers.

Looking back, I am glad it happened in that order.

The Meisner day gave me a glimpse of what it was like to focus on one particular technique. The full-play course gave me experience of rehearsing a character over a longer period and performing a complete piece.

Then Improvers brought me back into broader acting training.

It also made me realise that after a beginner course there are quite a few directions you can go in. You can continue with general acting, or move into areas such as Meisner, Stanislavski, screen acting, voice, movement, improvisation or production-based work.

In my case, I ended up trying a few of those things before returning to Improvers.

Why I still wanted to do Improvers

My Beginner Acting course had been largely about getting comfortable enough to act in front of other people.

By the time I reached Improvers, that had not gone completely, but it was no longer the only issue.

I had already tried Meisner and performed in a full play. I knew I could get up in front of a group and do the work.

I now wanted to become better at the actual acting.

What I was beginning to realise was that acting involves quite a lot of things happening at once.

You need to know the words, understand the situation, listen to the other actor, respond to direction, move around the space and try not to look like you are consciously managing all of those things.

Improvers made that much more obvious to me.

The acting games

A significant part of the course involved games and exercises.

Looking back a couple of months later, these were some of the easiest things to remember. When I tried to record a chronological account of the course, I ended up spending most of the recording listing the games we had played.

Some involved movement, observation or quick responses. Others seemed designed to make us pay more attention to the other people in the room or stop deciding in advance exactly what we were going to do.

I have now come across similar exercises in several acting classes.

At first, they can just feel like games. Over time, I have started to see that many of them are working on things such as listening, spontaneity, attention or physical awareness.

Not every exercise produced some big insight. Sometimes it was just enjoyable, and sometimes I was concentrating more on remembering the rules than on the acting underneath them.

But they gave the course variety and fed into the later scene work.

When the scripts arrived

The scripted scenes were where the course became more interesting for me.

A script suddenly gives you several problems at once.

There are words you have to remember, another character to respond to, a situation you have to understand and decisions about how the scene should actually happen.

I started to notice how much difference it made when I knew the text properly.

If I was still searching for the next line, part of my attention was outside the scene.

The more familiar the words became, the less I had to think about retrieving them and the easier it became to listen and react.

That sounds fairly obvious now, but I had not really understood how much mental space insecure lines were taking up.

Thinking about acting while acting

One problem kept coming back throughout the course.

I can become very aware of myself when I am performing.

I might be thinking about the words, something the teacher has just asked me to change, where I should stand or whether what I am doing looks convincing.

All of those things are relevant, but when I am consciously checking them during the scene, I am also giving less attention to the other actor.

I had also started to notice that movement could make this worse.

An instruction might seem completely straightforward before the scene began, then suddenly become much harder once I was also speaking and listening.

I did not really solve that during this course.

I just became much more aware of it.

The monologue

The most memorable part of the course was a monologue Sam gave me.

The character, Ross, is facing the possibility of dying and thinking about what will happen to the people he loves afterwards.

What interested me was that his feelings were not simple.

He loves Rachel and wants her to have a life after him, but the thought of that life continuing without him is also painful.

There is fear, jealousy, love and the thought of the children and the future he may not be part of.

I found it quite easy to understand why someone might think all of those things at once.

That helped.

I did not feel as though I was trying to create a general feeling of sadness. I was thinking about the specific problem the character was facing.

Learning it was harder than feeling it

I had time to prepare the monologue, but learning it was difficult.

That was slightly strange because I felt connected to the material, but technically I did not feel completely secure.

At the beginning of the performance, I was still aware of remembering the words and of the fact that people were watching me.

Then at some point that changed.

I became much more involved in what Ross was thinking about and much less aware of myself performing it.

I cannot tell you exactly why.

I was not consciously trying to look upset or deciding how emotional the monologue should be.

I was just following the situation more closely than I normally managed to.

What “not thinking” meant

Afterwards, another student described it as me not thinking.

I know what they meant, although I do not think I had stopped thinking.

What had reduced was the extra layer of thought where I am watching myself act.

Usually part of my brain is asking things like: have I remembered the line, am I standing correctly, does this look believable?

For part of the monologue, that became much quieter.

I was still thinking, but more of the thinking belonged to the scene rather than to monitoring my performance.

I was still thinking, but more of the thinking belonged to the scene rather than to monitoring my performance.

That was probably the most useful thing I took from the experience.

I was shaking afterwards

By the end of the monologue, I was shaking.

That surprised me because it was not something I had planned.

I had not decided the character should shake, and I was not consciously using it as part of the performance.

It just happened.

I do not think that means actors need to feel strong real emotions for a performance to work. I am nowhere near experienced enough to make that judgement.

But it did make me notice the difference between deliberately trying to show an emotion and becoming involved enough in a situation that your body responds on its own.

Could I do it again?

I do not know.

That is probably the most useful answer.

I connected strongly with this particular material, so that may have made it easier. I also did not feel technically secure enough to understand exactly why the performance worked differently.

The more interesting question for me afterwards was whether I could get close to the same level of involvement with a scene I connected with less immediately.

Could I do it while dealing with more complicated movement?

Could I do it while completely confident with the text?

Could I repeat it reliably rather than having it happen once?

Those questions made me want to keep training.

Sam’s teaching

Sam’s Improvers course felt more independent than my Beginner Acting course.

There were still games and exercises, but the scripts required us to take more responsibility for understanding the scene and making choices within it.

I also liked that there was room for things not to work immediately.

Sometimes feedback from a teacher simply gives me another thing to think about. What seems to help more is getting the chance to try it again until the instruction starts to feel less conscious.

That was one of the things the course reinforced for me.

I can understand an acting idea quite quickly in theory. Doing it naturally usually takes longer.

I can understand an acting idea quite quickly in theory.

Doing it naturally usually takes longer.

What I still found difficult

Improvers did not suddenly remove the problems I had as a beginner.

Learning lines could still take up too much of my attention.

Movement could make me self-conscious.

An instruction that seemed simple while listening to the teacher could become much harder once I was also speaking and reacting to someone else.

And I was still capable of thinking far too much about whether I was acting properly.

The difference was that I was now noticing these problems more clearly.

Was Improvers actually a step up?

For me, yes.

Not because every exercise was dramatically harder than something you might do in a beginner class.

It was more that I arrived with enough previous experience to concentrate on different things.

I was already used to acting in front of a group. I had tried Meisner. I had rehearsed and performed a full play.

That meant I could spend more attention on the scenes themselves rather than simply getting over the fact that I was acting.

The scripted work also asked us to combine more things at once.

For me, that made Improvers feel like a genuine next stage.

My verdict

I am glad I took Improvers.

It gave me more script work, more experience and a clearer idea of some of the things I was struggling with.

The monologue was the part I remember most.

For a few minutes, I was much less aware of myself acting and much more involved in the character’s situation.

For a few minutes, I was much less aware of myself acting and much more involved in the character’s situation.

I still do not really know why it happened or how easily I could repeat it.

A couple of months later, I signed up for another Acting Improvers course with a different teacher rather than moving straight on to a higher level.

That was deliberate.

I felt there was still plenty at this level that I had not properly absorbed, and I was curious to see what a different teacher would bring out.