Introduction
Throughout my first term of 3rd year, and my last term of actor training, I partook in my specialist skills module, specialising in Advanced Acting. Every week, I had 8 hours of acting classes in: Screen Acting, Uta Hagen’s Techniques, Monologue Bootcamp and Shakespeare. I found all of these classes extremely helpful, and they have developed me as an actor, even if they had their challenges. Throughout this portfolio, I am going to discuss my experience in each class, the challenges I faced, how I overcame them, and what I will take forward into my professional practice as an actor, expanding my actor’s toolkit.
Screen Acting
Screen acting was the class I was most tentative with at the start, as I would describe myself as quite a big theatrical actor, and so bringing my acting down to fit on camera feels weird to me. “The greater-than-life style necessary for naturalness in the theater is unnecessary—and even undesirable—for film.”(Barr & Kline, 1997:4) This was a challenge for me to deal with over the term.
Techniques learned:
- Acting around and with the camera
- Extracting information from text quickly
- Continuity of performances
- Toning down and microadjusting performances
One of my first big learning moments was when we started doing duologues with each other. I did mine with Lucas, and we did a scene from “The Wolf of Wall Street” (Scorsese, 2013). This scene has Jordan Belfont meeting with Mark Hanna over dinner, and Jordan feels very out of place and taken aback by this meeting. I received the script a couple days before, so it was a good test for learning lines quickly, which is something common on TV with a fast production pace.
I do have some experience with film, as I took it for GCSE and A-Level, so I understand how cameras and film sets work, however, I often avoided being in front of the camera. Being in front of the camera felt weird because I was conscious of where the camera was, even though I understood why it was there. I also found eyeline difficult, because as an actor, you can be asked to move where you are looking to best suit the camera shot. This could mean you are looking at a spot on the wall away from the person you are talking to, to make it look like you are talking to them. “Off-screen characters will be positioned by the director or camera operator so your eyes can be seen … you’ll probably be told where to look.” (Britten, 2015:111) I found it difficult to stay connected to the other actor, as usually I would watch the actor opposite me, listening and reacting to their movements. However, I managed to act this by imagining and recalling Lucas’s acting choices from an earlier shot. I also found it challenging to do the same motion and movements for every shot. This is important for when you cut between different takes, so you can sync up the continuity between shots. So, “if you drum your fingers on a table for part of a scene, you must drum your fingers in the same part of the scene on every take.” (Britten, 2015:85) I found this really challenging as you had to not only remember your lines, but what you did on each line and when you said it. Thankfully, on set, there is a continuity advisor, who will advise what actions you did on what line to match up shots. I found this difficult to remember and was not aware of how many things I was doing, so I had to minimize my actions to make it easier to shoot.
Wolf of Wall Street Shots
In another class, we were given a script and had to make our choices for the scene and do a screen test within the class. Sometimes during an audition for screen, actors may get the script minutes before the screen test. So, we learned how to extract information quickly from the script using techniques such as: stage directions, information from other actor’s lines, and identifying key moments we need to make sure to hit. The script was an extract from the movie adaptation of the book “Ready Player One” (Cline, 2012). Luckily I have both read and watched the film, and therefore understood the context of this future dystopian land – alongside the use of virtual reality headsets. If I did not know what virtual reality headsets were, it would have been tricky to act, and I would have either asked the casting director, or presented my best interpretation of it.
We then did a screen test of the scene, which was rather difficult as there was not much to act off and see around me, and thus there was an underlayer of awkwardness. However, I pushed through and I received feedback that I did a very good job in the amount of time that I had.
Finally, my last technique I took away from screen acting was toning down and microadjusting performances. I performed an abridged version of one of Samuel Byck’s monologues from the musical “Assassins” (Sondheim & Weidman, 1991:76). Because I had performed this on stage, I was making rather big choices, and the first take I did was ‘for stage’. I was told that I needed to tone down my performance for the camera, and it can be a lot more contained and smaller, to make it more realistic due to the slightly different acting styles and tones for screen and theatre. For example, “unlike in a theatre, the screen actor has no need to project, and any attempt to do so is immediately imposed as false.” (Britten, 2015:14). I also got the feedback to move where my eyeline was, and place it just below the camera – which felt really weird to me and felt as if I was cutting off the audience as you usually don’t want to block off your sightlines to the audience in a monologue on stage. However, looking back at the two takes, I feel the one where I was looking down at my tape recorder was much stronger – showing another stylistic difference between screen and theatre.
Byck Monologue Take 1
Byck Monologue Take 2
To conclude, I found screen acting challenging, from acting with the camera, to the continuity between my movements and toning down my performances, I feel I have come away as a stronger screen actor, now able to give a convincing performance for TV and Film, through techniques such as: acting off different sightlines, extracting information from text quickly, and allowing myself to tone down performances to make it realistic and truthful for camera. In the future, I will take all of these techniques forwards to successfully act for screen, notably my showreels for camera in the upcoming terms.
Uta Hagen
I had weekly classes in the Uta Hagen technique, which I found really helpful.
Uta Hagen was a theatre practitioner who developed a series of “ten object exercises” (Hagen & Frankel, 2023:82) based on Stanislavski’s system. Every week we presented a new exercise, derived from Uta’s exercises. I found this extremely helpful to develop my characters, as it is about building the world around them, and knowing key information about them. Uta devised 9 questions for this, and she says, “These are the questions we must ask ourselves, and explore and define in order to act.” (ibid.:83) I also took away the idea of observing humans and being ourselves, rather than ‘acting’ something. Here I will pick out a few of my favourite exercises.
Key takeaways:
- 4th wall
- Endowments
- What to do when your character has no actions specified (waiting)
The 4th Wall
Using the 4th wall is a technique to let the audience into your character’s thoughts and feelings, especially during a monologue, without compromising your reality as an actor. Uta described it as a way “to feel as free as a bird, and relieved of the old agonizing burden of audience intrusion” (Hagen & Frankel, 2023:111). Our exercise was based on being on a phone call, and we had to devise a scene based on a real phone call we had, and use it to look out into the 4th wall. This reminded me of when I used to do public speaking, as to include everyone into your speech, you would need to look at 3 different points in the audience, similar to Uta’s 4th wall. Uta’s 4th wall also includes creating the points in your imagination, as the audience can tell what you are looking at through your eyes and if you are in the theatre or in your character’s world, without giving the points “primary importance” (Hagen & Frankel, 2023:111).
So, for my exercise, I was based in my room, with my window to the right, lamp to the left and desk in front of me. This allowed me to create the world which surrounded me, enabling more naturalistic choices as an actor. This made it feel like I was actually in the character’s world, rather than an actor in a theatre with an audience watching me.
4th Wall Diagram
Endowment
In another exercise, I had to act 3 different endowments. Uta states, “It contains the essence of make-believe, and in its simplest form: how to turn cold water into boiling tea” (Hagen & Frankel, 2023:112). I personally found this the most challenging, as I struggled to find the realism in it. I was trying to recall how I react to my different endowments, such as how I react when I get a paper cut. In the past, I have not consciously thought “how am I reacting to this moment”, so I struggled a little bit because of that, and felt that the performance was a bit off. This was reflected in my feedback, saying that I glossed over these moments rather quickly. For example, when I received my paper cut, I went straight to my bag to get a plaster – which is a common behaviour, but I ultimately missed out the moments where you look at the cut, maybe suck it or play with it, pinch it to stop the bleeding etc. Finding these moments helps to find the truth in it, and in the future I will think in these moments, what is my reaction – and if I need to perform something which has never happened to me, such as a broken leg, I will conduct research from people who have broken a leg.
Waiting
One of the exercises I found the easiest was the waiting exercise. Uta asks the actor to, “watch what you do every time you stand for a few minutes waiting outside when most alone.” (Hagen & Frankel, 2023:126) I really enjoyed this task, as I am very aware of how I act in these moments, and the games that I play to engage myself – I think likely due to my ADHD. For my exercise, I decided I was going to wait in Farringdon train station – as I had done recently, and look at the architecture that was around me. This worked well for being in a place that I had been in before, but I found it challenging when I had certain requirements for the place, as I will discuss in my next point.
Putting it together as a character
Finally, in our last class, we performed a multitude of these exercises as our character from our 3rd year shows – for me, ‘The Baker’ from “Into the Woods” (Sondheim & Lapine, 2019). However, I asked for some advice on something I was struggling with. In feedback from previous shows, I had been told that sometimes I walk on and off stage without being present in the world around me, so I asked for help creating this world. This I found very challenging, as, unlike waiting and looking at my surroundings, I have never been to the woods which ‘Into the Woods’ is set in, and it has its own key places to see, so I did not have as much control over what my surroundings looked like. I was given the advice to create a pinterest board with castmates, containing the types of trees and landmarks around us, and create our world based on that. I was also told that I needed to look beyond the trees, as if I looked only to the closest trees I would make the world seem smaller than it was – and I needed to look to landmarks or interesting moments beyond the trees. This is something I will take into my 3rd year show as I have a lot of entrances and exits throughout the show.
‘Into the Woods’ Walking
To conclude, I found Uta Hagen’s techniques fit my toolbelt more comfortably than Meisner’s techniques, as it is based on observation and research of how humans behave and react, rather than being in the moment, and I found it a more reassuring and compelling technique, due to the fact that everything is completely choreographed and is the same each night, but still remains fresh due to these different techniques. I also found that it works more similarly to how I create a character, thinking about why they have their own quirks, and what makes them who they are.
Monologue Bootcamp
In our monologue bootcamp classes, we worked on two different styles of monologues; one classical, and one contemporary. Each style has its own techniques I would use, but with some similarities.
Annotated Script with Changes of Thought
One of the main differences between classical and contemporary monologues to me, is the idea of ‘thinking on the line’. This is what we call thinking and changing thought only when the punctuation changes, and not changing thought before the start of a new sentence. This is an important technique to think about in a Shakespearean monologue, as it was the style of the writing at the time. The subtext is actually embedded in the text through different writing techniques, such as iambic pentameter, or rather, when he breaks his iambic pentameter, and the effect that brings, “When lines consist of fewer than ten syllables, each new line will more quickly follow another. This, inevitably, will, begin to draw attention to the lines”(Hinds, 2015:55), alongside the idea of thoughts changing where there is punctuation. To test this, we performed an exercise where we had a text, starting with “To be, or not to be,” (Shakespeare, 2008, 3.1:62), from “Hamlet”, and later using our own text. My text was Lance’s monologue from “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” (Shakespeare, 2008, 2.3:1). First, we annotated our script wherever there was a change of thought. Then we walked whilst reading our script, and changed direction every time there was punctuation. “Although punctuation was probably put in by editors, it suggests changes in thought and energy” (Darnley, n.d.) By physically changing our direction, it helped us change our thought on every bit of punctuation, as it is a different feel to a contemporary monologue. Later, we developed this exercise, where we stopped walking after the previous thought and said our line, and then reverted to walking again after the end of the current thought, repeating this for the whole text. We were not allowed to think about the next thought until we started walking again, which is often different to contemporary. When performing a contemporary monologue, you usually string a thought to the next thought, and don’t change thoughts on every bit of punctuation, whereas, in Shakespeare, because of the iambic pentameter and use of language, this is not the case. Another key difference between contemporary and classical, is that because Shakespeare’s thoughts change when there is punctuation, it makes them a lot more sporadic, compared to a contemporary monologue, which allows for longer, more strung out thoughts.
My contemporary monologue was the opening monologue from, “The Play that Goes Wrong” (Lewis et al., 2015), which also had a stylistic difference to my Shakespeare in its style of comedy. Both of my monologues were comedic monologues, and both directed to the audience, however, my classical was based on audience pity, and as the character is a jester, he is performing in a clowning style. However, my contemporary monologue was more comedic through puns and wit in the writing, with the comedy coming through as catastrophic events which have happened in the past. This changed how I acted the two different scenes, as my Shakespeare was feeding off the audience’s reactions to continue moving the scene forwards and raising the stakes, whereas, my contemporary monologue meant that I did not need the audience’s feedback, and could just continue with the monologue, giving less power to the audience.
I believe I was successful with these monologues, and look forward to developing them more. I also received feedback that I should consider going to clown school in France, which could be an exciting way to develop my comedy more.
Shakespeare
In our Shakespeare class I found it overlapped with notes from our monologue bootcamp classes, such as iambic pentameter, thinking on the line etc., however, there were a few things touched on that I found really interesting and helpful, which were more about the understanding of the text than the performance of the text.
Something I found extremely useful was looking at Shakespeare’s different writing periods in his canon. These 4 periods are often divided into different themes, for example, Reuben Halleck (1913:185) summarises each period’s timeframes as: before 1595, from 1595-1601, 1601-1608 and 1608-1613 when Shakespeare died. They all have their own styles, such as the first period, “showing the exuberance of youthful love and imagination” (Halleck, 1913:185) and the fourth period being, “remarkable for calm strength and sweetness” (Halleck, 1913:185).
It is useful to me to know the different periods as I found it is an effective way of understanding the style of a Shakespeare piece. Each period is different due to the years he developed as a writer – more than just the categories of tragedy, history and comedy. I also found it will be useful in the future for finding monologues for auditions and different plays. For example, if you are auditioning for a comedy, you can look at other similar comedies from the period to inform you and find one of a similar style, and use that for an audition, rather than bringing “Bottom’s Dream” (Shakespeare, 2008, 4.2:195) once again.
The idea of retelling stories was curious to me. I find Shakespeare’s stories can be hard to understand to begin with, due to the language and the length – it is difficult to skim read it and understand the plot. However, we were taught that often Shakespeare’s stories have been retold, and that the plots are actually really simple with a lot of decoration on it. For example, “Hamlet” (Shakespeare, 2008) and, “The Lion King” (Allers & Minkoff, 1994) share very similar plot points. For example, Simba and Hamlet are both princes, whose fathers are murdered by their uncle, sent away by their uncles, and after seeing an apparition of their fathers come back to their kingdom to avenge their father’s death. (Tichenor, 2019) This is a device I can use to establish a concrete ground to build my foundations for a Shakespearean text.
Conclusion
To conclude, I have found the past term extremely helpful for developing my skills as an actor. From learning about Shakespeare’s different periods, the stylistic differences of screen acting, to Uta Hagen’s methods and techniques, I have learned a great deal which I will take forward as an actor in the future, each having its own pocket in my actor’s toolbelt.
Bibliography
Barr, T. & Kline, E.S. (1997) Acting for the Camera, Revised Edition. New York: Harper Perennial.
Britten, B. (2015) From stage to screen: A theatre actor’s guide to working on camera. London: Bloomsbury.
Cline, E. (2012) Ready Player One. London: Random House.
Darnley, L. (n.d.) Voice and Text Preparation Resource Pack. Available at: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/schools/teachers/offbyheart/obhs_voice_text_preparation.pdf [Accessed: 21 January 2026].
Hagen, U. & Frankel, H. (2023) Respect for acting: Expanded version. Jossey-Bass.
Halleck, R.P. (1913) Halleck’s New English Literature. New York, New York: American Book Company.
Hinds, A. (2015) Acting Shakespeare’s language. London: Oberon Books.
Lewis, H., Sayer, J. & Shields, H. (2015) The play that goes wrong: 3rd edition. Edited by H. Shields, J. Sayer, and H. Lewis. London: Bloomsbury.
The Lion King (1994) Directed by Roger Allers & Rob Minkoff [Film]. Walt Disney Pictures.
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) Directed by Martin Scorsese [Film]. Paramount Pictures.
Tichenor, A. (2019) Can you feel the Shakespeare love tonight? Available at: https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/lion-king-shakespeare-hamlet-hal-falstaff-henry-iv/ [ Accessed: 22 January 2026].
Shakespeare, W. (2008) William Shakespeare Complete Works. Edited by J. Bate and E. Rasmussen. Basingstoke: Macmillan Publishers.
Sondheim, S. & Lapine, J. (2019) Into the Woods [Libretto]. New York: Theatre Communications Group.
Sondheim, S. & Weidman, J. (1991) Assassins [Libretto]. New York: Theatre Communications Group.
