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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.

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When Milton recently asked Gustavo Dudamel, the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, what he saw when he looked at a piece of orchestral music, he said: “I see phrases.” This is a perfect metaphor for how we need to approach text as actors: not as a group of sentences but as a sequence of thoughts. As they do in life, the words need to come out of the thought, not the other way around.

In the Summer of 1980 during the run of a regional production of Boys in the Band, Milton wrote a letter to Stella Adler asking for her guidance. She responded: “The actor in you is beginning to feel the birth pangs in acquiring the role and that is very normal. The work you do at home is done, and is in you…Let it go where it wants. That’s the impressive joy of just letting it happen instead of forcing it.” Milton’s book “I Don’t Need an Acting Class”, on which this podcast is based, was born out of the many correspondences he has shared with his current and former students over the past decade. Although email has long since replaced letter writing, the spirit of getting to the bottom of an acting concept, or clarifying an idea that has someone stuck or confused, is the same. This episode sheds light on why that has been helpful to his students as well as to Milton as a teacher.

Whether you’re auditioning for a pilot or in rehearsal for a Clifford Odets play, our jobs as actors is to launch, imaginatively, into the world of the piece, and open ourselves to its influence. But how do we build this world? By talking out one believable moment at a time and knowing we have to earn what we create. Have a question or comment? Email us at: [email protected]

As actors, most of us have had the experience of closely identifying with a character we’re playing. In this episode, Milton talks about the mistake so many of us make when we feel like we relate to a role. “The problem is,” he says, “somehow in the back of our minds we think that’s enough, that we don’t have to do any other work.” Tune in to find out how to avoid this common pitfall, and how we can turn our identification with a character into something actable. Have a question or comment? Email us at [email protected]

How did we end up studying acting in the first place? In this episode, Milton puts his teaching in context by giving us a brief history of modern acting technique; from 19th-century realism to Konstantin Stanislavky and the American teachers who adapted his principals and revolutionized the American acting landscape.

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In this episode, Milton talks about how writing and thinking are great ways for actors to avoid acting, and offers a practical technique that allows us to fully own (and earn) our character’s reality, or in other words: make a complete lie sound like the truth. Email your questions to: [email protected]

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