Training at the Atlantic Theater Company Acting School

Last year, I trained a young actress called Sarah, who wanted to develop her career by going to a conservatory. In the end and much to our delight, she got a place at the Atlantic Acting School in New York City.

Here is a blog of Sarah’s early experiences:

Since starting my training at the Atlantic Acting School I have had my eyes opened to a very real and beautiful way of acting. There is so much involved in Practical Aesthetics that by the end of the week you will feel like you have spent your entire time in the gym. The mental and physical workout you are put through is accelerating and tough.
The best part of studying Practical Aesthetics is that one line of magic that you will find jumping out of you from now where, and you will think to yourself, “wow!”
In Script Analysis and Performance Technique we approach script work through the As If. An observatory and emotional tool which requires you to let go of your mind and allow you and your emotions to be free of thinking. Act before you think not the other way round. If I am being honest this exercise has taken some time to adjust to, and it will take a long time to perfect. I have always been a very “heady” person, meaning that if I am not careful my thoughts will over crowd me and I will end up over analyzing everything! Which makes this exercise, personally, extremely hard. My first experience with the As If saw me stumbling and generally getting very frustrated, but now after a few attempts I see the direction in which I need to follow. Focus on your Scene Partner, only them, and ALWAYS remember that you are talking to them, not your cousin who your As If is based on. You have a goal and focus on that, I have found that this helps clear my mind of other insignificant thoughts; you want your scene partner to succumb to your action and not get their way. So how does all this help deliver your lines I hear you cry!? Very simply, it helps you delivery them from a completely real and honest place. While you are in the As If, it is you up there, not the character; and by going straight into your lines from the As If-ing you will find that the line you thought should be shouted will actual blow the audiences mind through whispering it. I recently did a scene from Patrick Marber’s Closer, a confrontational scene, that if you pre-conceived, which we are not doing, you would probably think involved a lot of attitude and bitterness, but by the end of the exercise my partner and I where amazed at how we interpreted some of the lines; and it is that sense of unknowing that I love. I am putting myself on the line; I am inventing nothing, I am denying nothing, just as David Mamet has asked of us as his students.
Another exercise which I have to say took me a while to understand and favor is Repetition. It was only two weeks ago that the light bulb finally switch on for me in relation to this exercise. But now I see how important the practice of this tool is. To really attune yourself to another person in that type of depth will benefit you so well, while on stage and in rehearsal. I have learnt that with the aid of Repetition I can read my scene partners with a higher sense of awareness and it makes my responses that much more electric. You will bounce off one another so much more freely, you will not be forcing any kind or reaction. But I do believe that for this tool to be as effective as it is for me now, you need to practice it at least four hours a week, it needs to become habitual.
I have discovered so much in the past weeks and been on one hell of an emotional roller coaster, but I have learnt to be at peace with and even welcome my emotions. They are our tools as actors after all, and to suppress them is an insult to your audience.