Introduction:
Over the course of my training in musical theatre, acting has always been of particular interest to me. When given the opportunity to study advanced acting, I could not wait to explore the techniques we had touched upon throughout the course in greater detail. Screen acting, Uta Hagen technique, Shakespeare, and monologue classes have allowed me to view acting from many different perspectives and navigate what works for me, ultimately expanding my “tool box” as a performer and developing my specialist skills.
Screen Acting:
My preference in acting falls in more intimate, naturalistic scenes so when introduced to screen acting, which allows subtle movements to be picked up that would otherwise be missed on stage, I was immediately enticed to learn more about the craft.
In our first class of screen acting, we used memories of the character to unlock a deeper connection to the text. This began by reading through a script a couple of times until we felt like we had enough of an understanding of the character. We then shut our eyes and discussed what the main feeling of the character was in that script. We placed that feeling, and for me it was anger that I felt in my chest which I would describe as a “bubbling” feeling. Then through Keely asking us a series of questions, we explored the first memory that we (as our character) had of experiencing that emotion in great detail. This was a really effective way of getting into character, however it may be inconvenient on a professional set so this tool is something I will add to my personal practices at home.
The first scene I performed for screen was from Saint Maud. I found it difficult to adjust my voice for camera because in all other acting classes up to this point there had been great stress on projecting your voice, however for screen we are told to almost whisper as that is a more realistic way of delivering text. In order to work on this, we did many exercises including crouching and delivering the text to a speck on the floor, and reciting the scene while walking through a busy corridor with people who weren’t in the class with us. Throughout the takes of the scene, I noticed my vocal level improving and I believe that was due to being able to watch back the tape. In other forms of acting, your self-feedback relies on “feeling” it, but it is helpful to me to experience performances from an audience perspective and analyse my work as one of them. When I filmed the Saint Maud scene as a monologue a couple of weeks later, I could tell that this lower voice was more integrated in my acting tool box and became more natural.
In addition to progressing my performance skills, screen acting has helped me improve the quality of my auditions. It has been common for us to enter a class and have an audition scenario presented to us without warning. Within these audition classes, we have covered skills like how to cold read, how to connect to your scene partner while still having to read from a script, and how to analyse a text in a short amount of time. A quick type of script analysis was taught to us through a method called “The 5 Cs” which enables you to understand the flow of the scene along with the context and characters, subsequently aiding in a more well-rounded performance even if you have only studied the script for a short amount of time (as would happen in an audition scenario). The 5 Cs stand for circumstance (understanding what is happening in the scene), conflict (who/what starts the conflict and the size of the conflict), crisis (when does the conflict escalate), climax (reaching the point of no return), consequence (how do we exit the scene after the previous steps have taken place). Along with developing the character choices you can make, within identifying the 5 Cs I found that I started to learn the lines or at least the intention behind them so I was less frequently looking down at my script. This allowed me to stay in character and to better connect with my scene partner – creating an all-round more successful performance. I have also been able to carry this tactic into other environments such as the audition technique classes, where we are occasionally given sides to cold read on the spot and using these techniques have allowed me to also excel there.
Not only has screen acting developed my skills as an actor, but it has opened my eyes to other opportunities in film and TV production. For the first scene we ever shot from Sweet Maddie Stone, I was given the role of costume designer. First, I read through the scene and highlighted any costume pieces that were listed within the text and then I used the clues in the text of who the characters are to fill in the blanks and complete the vision. I also was assigned director for Sophie’s monologue from Honour by Joanna Murray Smith. I did find this challenging as I had never participated in a role like this before, but I began by doing text analysis on the monologue as if I was the one about to deliver it. However, in this situation I attempted to keep the vision in my head more vague so I wouldn’t stump the actor’s creativity. I really enjoyed the process of working with the actor and figuring out how to honour both of our ideas in the final take of the work.
Over this semester, screen acting has completely changed my view of acting and opened my eyes to all the other roles within this industry which I may want to pursue. It has truly been one of the most influential classes of the last 3 years.
Audition Scenario
Saint Maud Original scene
https://leedsconservatoire.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=5d825f52-e489-4fd5-acbc-b3750100ff69Saint Maud Monologue
https://leedsconservatoire.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=70139c01-29a7-4e91-b280-b3a200ff3d86Monologue Bootcamp
To begin the monologue bootcamp classes, we explored classical texts. Initially we all worked on ‘To be or not to be’ from Hamlet and separated it into thoughts. I originally began to separate thoughts far too frequently as I was going off of every slight shift in topic, however, we discussed that the punctuation is there to aid in thought changes. I found it unusual to perform the text like this as it meant holding onto the through-line of thoughts for much longer than I was used to. When we ultimately used this same technique for our own monologues, I encountered the opposite problem. I chose to explore ‘I Left no Ring With her’ from Twelfth Night which is heavily punctuated throughout, meaning lots of rapid thought changes. This opened up the conversation of how Shakespeare texts in present day are transcripts that have been edited multiple times so the translation of the punctuation may not always be completely accurate. In the case of my individual monologue, abiding by the punctuation helped to portray the character’s confusion, as in the scene Viola is trying to figure her way through a very complicated situation. On the other hand, honouring every single full stop made the performance seem choppy so finding a healthy balance seemed to be a successful technique.
When exploring changes of thought, we used the stop-start method. This entailed walking on a thought, then staying stationary on the next one and alternating throughout the monologue. The difficulty of this was thinking on the line when it is in my nature both as a person and an actor to think before I speak, but when I really committed to the task and it worked out successfully, I received much more positive feedback and was told it read a lot better. This exercise is still something I need to work on going forward as it’s not quite engrained yet, however as it becomes more embodied, I am noticing the benefits in my performance much more.
In the second half of monologue bootcamp, we moved onto contemporary monologues. I chose Izzy’s monologue from BU21 where she discussed the traumatic event of losing her mother. Immediately this was a big change from my classical monologue, not just in language, but in character; Viola was a hopeful teen in a love triangle, while Izzy is a young adult struggling to come to terms with living through the loss of a terror attack. Despite the poignant differences between the two monologues, we still approached them with text work first. For the contemporary monologues we began by figuring out the context of the play and playwright in order to access style, what happened before the text, and the character’s objective. We next applied the stop-start method to these monologues and I actually found it much easier to think on the line with this monologue than my classical. Perhaps this is because a modern text better translates my natural thought processes and consequently is more innate to me, so when I work with classical texts in the future, I need to attempt to apply it closely to my modern thought patterns for a more authentic performance. When performing my contemporary monologue, the audience reception was majority positive, however I was told to expand the range of emotions so they translate better for stage. This is something I struggle with when it comes to emotionally heightened scenes as I find it difficult to keep the realism the more bold I make the choices, however if I trust that it still translates I receive positive feedback so I need to remember it’s less about how I feel performing it and more about how the audience receives it.
Uta Hagen
Uta Hagen’s technique is something that had been referenced frequently throughout the previous years of training, so to finally have a period of classes where we can dig into what the technique really entails was something I was deeply looking forward to when heading into this module. Uta Hagen teaches her technique through a series of exercises, each one building on the previous. First we explored the fourth side which means using your imagination as the character to expand the set to include where the audience sits. Our task was to create a 2 minute phone call using the fourth side. In order to aid in creating this expansive world, we place 3 objects in the middle, to the left, and to the right that mean something to the scene and the character. I found this task beneficial as it highlighted a habit I have of looking down when delivering lines so noticing this meant that when layering the exercises I was aware of it so tried to limit it happening again. For the next exercise, we explored changes of self and applied it to the previous phone call exercise – so instead of acting a phone call with just one person, you had to receive calls from 3 different people within the 2 minutes of the exercise. The difficulty I found with this was having a realistic switch between each of the personalities while still having a cohesive sense of self within them all. The feedback I received confirmed this however we discussed that bold switches may actually be appropriate for specific jobs and it is a case of balancing when this skill is useful and when it’s not. The following exercise was exploring moment to moment. In order to explore this, we had to present 2 minutes of looking for something that we lost, however, we of course know where we placed the item as the actor but as the character we are working through the motions of searching without thinking about the future – or in other words “moment to moment”. This exercise was quite successful for me, however I received feedback that choices could be bigger so I made sure to take this forward in the future while still honouring the feedback from the previous week as to not get too exaggerated. In the following week, we repeated this exercise but added 3 endowments. I discovered that this actually improved my overall performance as the character and scenario was more embodied and the use of intention created through endowments like being late or needing to go to the toilet made for a more well-rounded performance. Another greatly successful exercise for me was the occupation while waiting exercise where we had to simply wait for 2 minutes. As simple as this may sound, it opened my eyes during the week before the presentations as I became very aware of what I do and what other people do when they are waiting. This has essentially helped me do research on a daily basis of those around me which has helped me make my acting performances more realistic and natural.
Not only have these classes benefitted me through getting up and exploring the activities, but watching others develop during the exercises has allowed me to self critique more beneficially as I can see from an audience perspective what reads and what doesn’t. These classes have also opened conversations about acting in a more theoretical way. The main takeaway from these conversations has been that acting is for the audience; it’s not made for you to feel it as the actor, it’s made to make audiences feel so observing real-life situations and applying them as an actor is a great way to access realistic scenes and is something I will be taking forward with me in the future of my career.
Shakespeare
Performing Shakespeare texts has always been something I struggle with. From an academic perspective, I find Shakespeare understandable, however when having to act it I found it difficult to make my choices feel natural and cohesive with the style. These classes have approached Shakespeare through a completely different way to what I’ve experienced before and I have come away from it feeling much more confident about approaching a Shakespearean piece.
A common issue throughout the group was a lack of relatability within the stories, so to begin with, we each picked a Shakespeare story and simplified it down to the most simple telling of that story. We were instructed to pick a play that we didn’t know much about so I chose to explore Love’s Labour’s Lost. In its most simple form, the story depicts a group of men who make a pact to swear off women… then they meet a beautiful group of women and all take extensive measures to work around the pact. When viewing the story in this format, it felt more accessible as that is a plot that could easily be applied to modern day life. This immediately gave a path of understanding for every text I receive in the future.
Something that didn’t quite work for me is using imagery in text. In order to explore this, we supplied a monologue and when reciting it, if any images occurred we drew it. I thought this would work for me as I usually find actioning a helpful tool and I believed this to be a more visual way to conceptualise actioning. This was true to an extent but I struggled to correlate the imagery to the emotions – perhaps the images my mind was creating weren’t emotionally connected enough so this is something I will try again in the future, but for right now in my training I’m not sure it’s the correct tactic for me to use when approaching Shakespeare texts.
A particular lesson I found fascinating was about original pronunciation (OP). In modern day, it is common to associate Shakespeare with received pronunciation (RP) which has connotations of being “proper” or “elevated” due to a history of classism. We watched a video of linguists David and Ben Crystal discussing the original delivery of Shakespeare (BGS English, 2013). The original accent of performance was far from RP, in fact it has more relatability to a west country accent, with hints of northern vowels. Within the video we watched, it discussed that the OP accent reveals lots of rhymes or homophones that would otherwise be a miss. This increased my appreciation for the texts more as it makes them more understandable. The point of this particular lesson was not to make us perform Shakespeare in OP (although now that is a skill we possess to a certain extent) but it was an opportunity to explore our native accents while delivering a Shakespeare text. My accent is Southern and close to RP, however my natural accent was not always like this. My authentic accent is something that I tend to conceal in performances as when I focus on diction, projection, and other performance qualities along those lines – I usually fall into RP. To not do this and instead commit to my authentic accent made me feel quite vulnerable, but I noticed that it made the text settle into my body so much more, so this is definitely a technique I will be taking into rehearsals in the future – not just for Shakespeare text, but for all styles.
Although there is still lots of work required for me to improve on Shakespearean performances, taking these classes have opened pathways to make it more accessible and I now possess many different tools to make me feel more confident when performing classical texts.
Conclusion
Overall, this advanced acting module was more beneficial than I could have imagined it would be. I have always enjoyed acting and consequently knew this module would be the best fit for me, however I severely underestimated how much it would change me as a performer. Not only have I learnt new skills (both for areas I already felt confident in and for my weaker points of performance), but I have a more theoretical understanding of why certain techniques read better to an audience, and I have a new found passion for screen acting. In the past 3 months, my goals have changed as a performer and now TV and film is something I really want to pursue in the future and now thanks to this module, I have the means to do so.
Bibliography
BU21 (2016) written by Stuart Slade
BGS English (2013) ‘Shakespeare Original Pronunciation’ [Online] Avaialble at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQc5ZpAoU4c (Accessed: December, 2025)
Hamlet (1599-1601) written by William Shakespeare
Honour (1995) written by Joanna Murray-Smith
Love’s Labour’s Lost (1590) written by William Shakespeare
Saint Maud (2019) Directed by Rose Glass
Sweet Maddie Stone (2016) Directed by Brady Hood
Twelfth Night (1601-1602) written by William Shakespeare
