Acting Exercises

There are plenty of acting exercises that can help you develop your skills. Each exercise is designed to work on specific skills to better prepare yourself to act. Consider these exercises when you want to master your acting skills.

A Man at The Bus Stop

This exercise is designed to help with your imagination. You can do this alone or with a group of people. This exercise could be referred to as a form of people watching. The objective of the exercise is to create as much detail as possible about someone sitting around. Be creative about coming up with things about this person. Create their job, where they live, what they do for fun, who their friends are, what kind of hobbies they have. All of this is helpful in expanding your imagination. Imagination is vital for actors to have when creating characters.

The Change of Roles

In this exercise, participants will have to portray different people in a certain amount of time. Pick 4 or 5 different types of people and create that character for 40 to 60 seconds each. This is a great exercise for character development and receiving constructive criticism about your characters. Do this exercise with a partner. Your partner will be able to give you feedback and a rating from one to ten. Repeat this exercise until your partner gives you a ten rating on each character. After you receive a ten on each character, switch the characters and start over.

Interviewing

This exercise will help you with your improvisation. Ask someone to interview you. Have them create a set of questions that require a lengthy answer and are very personal. When answering these questions be as detail-oriented as you can be. Animate yourself with your answers and ask for feedback once all the questions are answered. This exercise works best if the person interviewing you is someone you don’t know.

Paint The Fence

This exercise helps you with calisthenics with your hands. During this exercise, you will imitate certain physical tasks that are performed using mainly your hands and your body. Tasks like, painting a fence or touching invisible walls like a mime! Try this exercise with no audible sounds, strictly just physical movement. This can help you feel more comfortable with your body movements and understand how to use your hand for certain situations.

Originally published at graftondoyle.com on December 22, 2017.