Give Me Three Days

Give me just 3 days and I’ll show you everything you need to know about the foundations of an actor’s craft.

Wow, that’s some boast huh!? Yeah I admit it sounds almost unfeasible…

But from experience as an Acting Coach in Scotland, I’ve found it to be true. The foundations of acting take only three intensive days to learn, the rest is practise. I’m not talking about voice or movement, or any ancillary skill. I’m speaking of the craft of the actor.

Our craft takes only three days to learn, but perhaps a lifetime to master.

Acting is a learnable skill, just some take to it easier than others. The character of some individuals is better suited to performance and to the psychophysical expression of desire.

Once you have learned the basics, it is about habituating them until they become instinctive. A good technique is simple, streamlined, with all the fat cut away from it. But the best technique is one that dissolves into you because it has through practise become a good habit and then eventually effortless.

I can teach you the basics, but to take them and make them habit, that takes something in you, to make it work with ease. That’s your part of the deal.

If you can figure out from yesterday’s blog how to act for yourself, then you don’t need me, you don’t need expensive acting seminars from big name acting coaches, you don’t need 3 or 4 or 7 years in drama school, dear God, seven YEARS?

Better to spend that time working, earning a crust, not getting in debt. But the system says go to drama school, and then we will consider you legitimate, then ignores that entirely when it casts its next role plucked from nowhere with no training.

3 Days. Think It Over.