My Favourite Acting Exercise

I’ve got books full of useless acting exercises, I’ve tried them, I’ve worked at them, I’ve done them myself, forced professional actors to do them, made students try them out.. In the end most of them: don’t work, force the actor further into their head, distract attention but don’t help the scene.

My favourite acting exercise is called Active Repetition. I’ve been using it in class for a few weeks, although it absolutely requires that the students already have an advanced knowledge of the technique that this exercise comes from. The exercise is part repetition/part going after your task and it is my favourite because it doesn’t allow the student to hide.

In Active Repetition, the student needs to go after their task, whilst following the basic rules of repetition. The student has no place to hide because you can see very clearly if they are going after the task, or if as we say in class, they dropped the rope. At the same time, if they are not actively watching, listening and repeating, you can also immediately see it. So the game forces the actor into this constantly agitated state of going after something, whilst actively working off the other actor, and as such brings together two important elements of Practical Aesthetics.

Another important element is setting a physical cap, the point at which you have achieved your task. Acting is very intensive and requires all of your attention, you need a clear indicator of how close you are to getting what you want. The physical cap, a physicalised version of your task is the perfect way to assess quickly, if you need to make changes. If you need to put on the pressure, take it off, change tactics, or whatever.

I won’t describe the exercise in full here because it will be no use unless you are already experienced in PA, but what I will say is that it is a delight to find an exercise that actually works, that actively makes the student actor less self-conscious, that forces them into the moment, that makes them work off the other actor, gets them out of their head and into the scene, whilst chasing an urgent task (also called Essential Action in Practical Aesthetics).

It’s not magic, it’s not a special ‘creative’ exercise, it’s a simple exercise of being receptive whilst doing and as such, it beats books and books of impracticable, and useless exercise found in copious acting books.