The Experienced Actor
Most experienced actors; the successful ones, that is, enjoy being given performance notes by a director. Make no mistake… giving an actor performance notes is a distinct craft within itself. Some consider it to be the art of psychology at its highest state. Some actors have been known to be a little touchy, considering any...
Read More I Never Met Ruth Suffield
To the best of my knowledge there is no person I’ve ever met by the name of Ruth Suffield. I have no idea where the name came from. There was and is a person I wrote to who by no stretch of the imagination happens to be an extremely well thought of professional writer. I...
Read More What If
What if I don’t make it in show biz? Have I wasted my years of training? What about my singing, dancing and elocution lessons? Have I wasted all that money and training? At Kalmenson & Kalmenson, we follow not only the Stanislavsky method of progressive study, but also the theme of social grace and proper...
Read More The Competitive Life: A Precept for Living
Don’t compete! It isn’t necessary or required. Being well schooled or being in the habit of practicing your craft is your requirement in order for success to happen; that is to say… if it ever happens. For what we do or contrive to do as actors is our addiction to nothing more than a personal...
Read More Interviewin’ da harv
Interviews can be fun and informative, especially when the interviewer has done their homework. Yi Tian not only enjoys her work, but shows up thoroughly prepared as a professional interviewer. I found her questions to be well thought out, and substantive. I do believe most actors may gain something from what follows. You can find...
Read More Improvisation
Answering a question I’ve been asked over and over again is worthwhile for me to do, when I determine the number of actors my answer may be helping. One question comes at me more often than any of the others. “What can I do to keep myself up to date and in the game?” Basically...
Read More Cope!
Often, as most of us do, as we wade through more of life’s unexpected chores, we may boohoo the happening as being undeserved, unwarranted, and even unfair. “Why me Lord, oh why me?” is often murmured to one’s self. Is there a person out there who hasn’t had a comparable inner debate at one time...
Read More “To adlib or not to adlib; ah that is the question!”
“To adlib or not to adlib; ah that is the question!” Whether it is nobler or not nobler in the minds of most men, is definitely not the question; it’s the challenge that counts! (Besides… we’re talking about actors and actresses.) The search for the answer to the actor’s commercial voice over performance decision making...
Read More Focus
No man is lonely while he’s eating spaghetti; it takes so much attention. (Think about it.) But perhaps we should call it “focus.” If one doesn’t focus when he or she consumes any form of life’s sustenance, then he or she, a.k.a. “the consumer”, is destined to be forever known as the consummate slob. A...
Read More Outtakes & Intakes
I have never saved an outtake. I may have recorded them during a session or an audition, but by the end of the day, that same day, they were erased and discarded forever. Going one step further, I have never shared a recorded outtake with anyone other than the actor who had delivered the blooper...
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