The top ten Masterclass/Sessions actor's checklist before every scene.

  1. Who am I?

    Did I work on my character’s bio? Do I have a backstory?

  2. What do I want?

  3. What are my expectations from my scene partner

    Do I expect to get what i want, do i expect a fight? Do I have a specific relationship with this partner?

  4. What’s the event of the scene?

    What’s really the truth of what’s going on?

  5. What are the obstacles to get what I want in the scene?

  6. What just happened prior to the start of the scene?

    The scene doesn’t start with the first line. Life was happening before this.

  7. As scene partners, did we rehearse enough on the “first beat?”

    If you’re not “in” from the top it’s hard to to get back there during the course of the scene ..and you may not!

  8. Am I listening to my partner

    Am I gauging their reactions to what I’m saying and adjusting to their reactions in the moment?

  9. Where am I?

    What time of day is it? Am I indoors? Outdoors? In a crowd?

  10. What is my physical life?

    Am I hot, cold, have a headache? Tired?
    What props do I have to personalize, endow, to ground me in the scene? Use your sense memory to send you imagination soaring!
    NOTE: Once I did an emotional monologue about reading a letter from my Father to me and I put his favorite English leather cologne all over it (smell/sense.) Boy did that send me! In Barefoot in the Park, Mike Nichols had his actors so busy with physical life they were too busy to “act” lol. Good.

Don't act. Be.

And if you must act never let them catch you at it.