Adventures in Acting Class

As a struggling actor in LA, one of the most important things you can do to get your career going is to study. Study everything you can....auditioning, improv, scene study, comedy, whatever you can do to keep yourself fresh and 'in shape' so you'll be ready to tackle any job or audition that comes your way.

Since moving to LA three years ago, I have been studying with the same teacher and the same students. This month, I decided to shake things up in my creative life by joining a new class.

The class was small, maybe 12 or 15 students. I had no expectations going into it; I only knew that it was a scene study class, so how different could it be from my other scene study class?

Little did I know what I was in for.

We began by sitting in chairs on the stage and the teacher asked us to perform any kind of continuous physical movement (arm waving, flailing, head-bobbing, anything weird really). So, I'm thinking, "well, I'm sure this is going somewhere."

Then we were instructed to attach some sort of sound to this physical movement (preferably something that makes you look and sound like you're being exorcised). So, now I'm thinking, "this had BETTER be going somewhere."

Next we were told to make the movement bigger, and the sound louder so that at this point we look like a bunch of people who have escaped from the looney bin and should have people with giant butterfly nets chasing us around while trying to tranquilize us. And now I'm thinking, "ok, I want my money back."

As the exercises get weirder, I just get angrier. I look around and everyone around me seems to be fully participating in these exercises as if they're actually quite normal and beneficial. I want to walk out of the room, but I don't want to be rude...plus one of the actresses is doing some weird hair flipping head-bobbing thing and I don't want her to knock me out.

Finally, after about and hour and a half of this exercise combined with saying a nursery rhyme as though we were giving a eulogy, as though we were a rockstar, and as though we were giving an inspiring speech, I HAD to excuse myself to the bathroom.

I was already thinking in my head how I was going to ask for my money back and what I would do with the money I got back, I decided to head back in and tough it out for the rest of the class.

When I returned, I watched two actors perform a scene from The Glass Menagerie, a play that I'm quite familiar with. I was prepared to be bored, but the actors approached the scene with such innocence and vulnerability that I was truly inspired and excited to put up a scene of my own.

So, I guess I'll give this new class a shot for now, but I swear the minute I'm asked to moo like a cow while flapping my arms like wings, you will see a Lacey-shaped hole in the wall of that theatre.