external/internal mobility

ask the actors to sit still and start finding their calmness centres. ask them to ponder over the idea of internal/ external mobility. shifting their attention between the chaos going inside of them reflecting about what they are feeling inside and then shifting that attention to outside listening and seeing whet is happening there.

walking- space awareness

this exercise will help the actor tune his muscle memory, marrying it to the mental/ physical space that he is in right now.its a group exercise and ideally done in numbers upwards of 8.
decide if you want actors to imagine the space/mental space.

for a mental space , you ask them to start walking, ask them to walk faster breaking any mental patterns they are making during the activity, ask them to cris-cross. ask them to imagine a crouded space yet a private one (railway station, airport/ football stadium, any public space),
change that to a public yet community space such as college campus where people will identify and greet each other.keep changing the space from most intimate to public, from authoritative to relaxing, from sanitized to chaotic and ask people to get sensitive about how the space is dictating their behavior.

you can repeat this exercise in groups of two where one person is blindfolded while the other person guides him. its interesting to see how the small group dynamics work out within the constrains of space when the faith and responsibility become the obvious roles in a given situation

for the physican space excercise its good to get blindfolded and feel the space in terms of textures, sounds , people. and then start claiming your own by motion, jumping, dancing, being fearless.

change motion with claps you can bring pauses such as sit, stand jump which sync up with clap frequency ( one/ two/ three).

taking feedback from actors as the session ends

finding your centre- body balance(warm up)

Exercise1
stand with your feet apart at shoulder length, mentally divide your body into two.
top half and bottom half.picture your waist to be the central axis.
mentally shift all your body weight to the bottom half. feel the stability at bottom and your top half resting over it, almost as if its floating . then in one go, let your top body fall.

Exercise2
stand with your feet apart at shoulder length, mentally divide your body into two. left and right.
arch up your hands in a peak type formation. picture as if a thread is passing through the joinary of your palms through your navel down to the ground. mentally shift your weight from one half to another as you oscillate from one side to other. find your balance.

training excercises for actors-Introduction

acting in a play is a systematic process. knowledge and awareness of self, of the character, the scene and getting into the character is a deliberated sequence. a lot of work has already gone behind this and i would just want to compile and keep it here in form of exercises to go through for the production.

the necessary ones can be utilized to prepare for the act.
they are drawn from Constantin Stanislavski's method acting, popular suzuki methods used in japanese theatre and other sources. videos and images are included as reference where ever required.