Exploring Theatre

Chapter 3: Developing Your Personal Resources

Overview

Many of the same skills that a child at play practices innately during recess are important skills to develop to become a stronger actor. Acting involves imagination, concentration, observation, sensory awareness, and movement. Imagining is visualizing, seeing the world from many perspectives. By becoming aware of one's environment and seeing it from several points of view, one becomes more apt to act believably onstage. To gain a firm awareness of one's surroundings, one must develop acute observational skill, which involves excellent focus, concentration, and reflection. When actors develop these traits, their sensory awareness—or recognition of how things taste, smell, look, feel, and sound—is improved.

An in-depth sensory awareness helps an actor when deciding on movement onstage. Movement, whether rhythmic or expressive, becomes more believable when an actor thinks it through first. Soaking in one's world with deep interest and noticing the small things are hard work, but that is how an actor decides on motivations and learns how to express emotions believably to an audience.