I Don't Need an Acting Class

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content!

⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe⁠⁠⁠

This episode is the third in our trilogy about making everything something. This week Milton gives us a strategy for this. Using his “Why I Love the Theater” exercise as an example, he discusses how to building one thing at a time by talking it out, making sure it feeds you and adding more, little by little. “We are after moments so that nothing sound pedestrian, so that every single thing has a life to it.”

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content!

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe

This week’s episode is a continuation of last week’s topic. Milton talks about the importance of treating every fact and every element as if it’s important. Even those facts that seem to be incidental plot points cannot be skipped over in rehearsal. If they are, the lie that is your play will not sound like the truth. They are facts that give us the opportunity to go deeper into character, into the given circumstances, into the idea that the writer is intending to communicate. The more specific we are when building each fact, the more confidence we have to let go and let the play play us.

In this episode, Milton takes a question from Benjamin in Canada who asked him to clarify an idea from our episode The Biggest Sin: beginning your work on a play as if you know nothing. Another way to say that is: begin your work with a mindset of assuming nothing. If you assume you already know about a fact of your character or the circumstances of the play, you’ll neglect to dig deeper and end up just throwing it away, thus making your performance cliche or 2-dimensional. Nothing is inconsequential. Every single fact is an opportunity to ask yourself: what does that really mean? How do I feel about it? The deeper we dig into the facts, and the more specific we get, the more they will feed us, and bring us to life.

Last episode we talked about theme. This week, we continue that conversation but make the distinction between truly big ideas and everything else. Big ideas affect all of us, they shape civilization. As actors, our understanding of a big idea has to go beyond our own personal relationship to it in order for us to communicate the idea that the writer intended. This is what is meant by “raising ourselves up to the size of the idea,” as opposed to bringing it down to our limited human experience.

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content!

⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe⁠⁠⁠

In every play, there’s a big, universal, cosmic idea, (or theme.) It’s what the writer wants to communicate. As actors we must know what this big idea is. We won’t know what it is right away- our rehearsal process is our discovery process. But eventually, in order to play the part, we have to reach this understanding. Once we do, we must raise ourselves up to the size of the idea, making sure that all of our choices feed into it.

This week’s episode is a direct response to a question from one of our listeners. Belen from Argentina wanted to know what to do when she’s in the middle of a scene and suddenly remembers none of it is real. Email your questions to: [email protected]

WANT MORE? Become a subscriber for bonus content!

⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/actingclass/subscribe⁠⁠⁠

It’s true that your talent is in your choices, but that’s not all there’s to it. Your choices must serve the central idea of the play, and must be consistent with the given circumstances of your character. And yet, making a good choice is still not enough. You have to understand what the cost is of your choices and then earn them emotionally. Lastly, we must strive towards creating something enigmatic: good theater. 

Thank you for your questions so far! If you’ve sent in a question, we have not forgotten you, and Milton will address them in upcoming episodes. Send all questions and comments to: [email protected]

Acting is not mathematical. You won’t always use the same tools, and what worked for you during one project may not work for you in another. There are so many different paths you can take when building something out of nothing, but here’s what is certain: you must dig deep into every aspect. If you just logically answer questions, thinking that if you have the answers your work is done, your performance will be a cliche. This takes a long time to get to, but eventually we come to realize that your character doesn’t have a plot problem, she has a conflict of the soul. We come to the theater to watch her live it out.

*We'll be starting in-person classes on September 15th, 2025 at The Actor Lab in NYC. Register at: theactorlab.nyc

If there’s one word all actors are familiar with it’s “objective.” But how often is the idea of “objective” a practical tool and how often is it an albatross around our necks? Stanislavsky wanted acting vocabulary to come out of common usage, and he wanted it to free us, not cripple us. Today we examine where the word came from, and whether the concept of “objective” was even Stanislavsky’s in the first place.

We've all been there. You look at your script and see something that resembles a list. What do most actors do? They act it as a list and by doing so, sound like they're running down a dull inventory of groceries. There's no connection to what they're talking about, no specific choices made, and therefore, no real human being with a past standing before us. This is an episode about having a specific relationship to everything you talk about. You never want to miss the opportunity to build each element specifically. Nothing is a throwaway, everything is something. And the more detailed you are, the more you'll come to life.