Just A Few Acting Interface Stories*
In the play and film "The Corn is Green," a schoolteacher provides rudiments of an education to children working in the mines of a Welsh Village. One, Morgan, reveals brilliant potential, and she aims to train his mind to win a scholarship to Oxford. As the months pass, she is unrelenting in demanding his total focus, but at the end of each day, she dismisses him, telling him to "run in the hills." She knew the sudden physical freedom, would let go and lift his spirit, and all that he had learned would absorbed by his unconscious. Morgan begins to envision a life out of the mines, and, in the end, wins his scholarship.
* The Acting Interface is for all those who would transcend the frustrating confines of their circumstances, by first achieving relaxed but total focus, allowing them to learn at will, and then be let loose to run in the hills of their imagination.
* The Acting Interface is for all those who would transcend the frustrating confines of their circumstances, by first achieving relaxed but total focus, allowing them to learn at will, and then be let loose to run in the hills of their imagination.
Penny, Broadway Child Performer, Grade 5 A sparkling, lovely child, when Penny tried to read, she struggled with the classic, dyslexic wiggling and flipping of letters and words. Sentences were an impossible scramble. Yet, she had the intelligence and focus necessary to perform on a Broadway stage. By teaching her to achieve and sustain a high level of concentration off stage, she tamed the the letters and words and in a few months was able to read whole sentences perfectly. |
Jeremy, teen actor Jeremy was despondent. Admittedly talented, he had just been told by an agent, his speaking voice was terrible and so was his heavy Midwest accent. He would have no chance for a real career. Teaching Jeremy about voice placement and the rhythm of speech enabled him to overcome both problems. After an astonishing two weeks, he called me to say, he had signed a long, touring contract, and been been told he had a beautiful voice! |
Private Class, Grade school students
Teaching the students to achieve the acting state of a highly-concentrated mind, connected to a relaxed body, was simple and fun for them, when I made a game of the times tables. It was far different from the exercise I had taught the adult Lynn. I had the students sit on the floor cross-legged. This informality, along with gravity, relaxed their bodies and their diaphragms (putting that main breathing muscle and source of energy in a readiness state). Mixing the tables, I would call out 7 times 6, 3 times 12, 8 times 9 etc. and they would shout back the answers. I would pick up speed, forcing them to retrieve the answers faster and faster. The faster the exercise got the more the children loved it. Until I called, "Relax!" And they laughed as they let go of concentration. They became competitive. Wanted to try the game individually. Who could last the longest? Who could get out the answer, as fast as they could speak, without making a mistake? They learned about the power of stillness to summon great concentration, deep, natural breathing for high energy, and to think sequentially. In addition, they over-learned the tables, giving them solid foundation for the math of higher grades.
Teaching the students to achieve the acting state of a highly-concentrated mind, connected to a relaxed body, was simple and fun for them, when I made a game of the times tables. It was far different from the exercise I had taught the adult Lynn. I had the students sit on the floor cross-legged. This informality, along with gravity, relaxed their bodies and their diaphragms (putting that main breathing muscle and source of energy in a readiness state). Mixing the tables, I would call out 7 times 6, 3 times 12, 8 times 9 etc. and they would shout back the answers. I would pick up speed, forcing them to retrieve the answers faster and faster. The faster the exercise got the more the children loved it. Until I called, "Relax!" And they laughed as they let go of concentration. They became competitive. Wanted to try the game individually. Who could last the longest? Who could get out the answer, as fast as they could speak, without making a mistake? They learned about the power of stillness to summon great concentration, deep, natural breathing for high energy, and to think sequentially. In addition, they over-learned the tables, giving them solid foundation for the math of higher grades.
Pessy, college Student
Pessy told me after class one day that she had no energy, and would often faint. An ambulance would be called. When checked out, she said, no medical reason could ever be found. So, besides speech training, I taught her an actor's simple relaxation and breathing exercises, and the mind/body connection. "Before I learned them, I had an arduous life," she later wrote to me. "I did not have the energy to do any type of exercises. Now, I feel like dancing!" |
Chinese, college student,
He sat, the first day of class, at the back, head down. Just having arrived in the U.S., his English was unintelligible. The class just shook their heads in their frustration trying to understand him. Bringing him up to the front of the class, I showed him a simple, smooth, arm movement to use when he spoke. It immediately cleared his speech, and the class responded, "It's a miracle!" His progress in speech and academics was rapid. |
Public Speaking Class, Touro College
From the first, few minutes, it was evident, it was not to be the usual, freshman, public speaking class. From open enrollment, the students were clearly unprepared to handle the work. But just how unprepared, I learned when asking a student to read a descriptive passage from the text, and the student was stymied by the words sand pile. A few hands went up, but before I could call on one, the students all turned to me and said, "We don't understand the textbook." I paused and then when to the board, where I wrote out the first page. I marked the rhythm and stresses, according to the actor's method. Then, without a word, I stepped back from the board, and the eyes of the students reviewed what I had written. After a few moments, they all turned to me again, this time saying, rather astonished, "Now we understand!" I spent the semester this way. Not teaching public speaking at all, but re-wiring their brains to be better readers.
Public Speaking Class, CUNY, John Jay College
The first lessons in presentation were to establish a natural authority by building confidence through the mind/body connection: breathing, relationship to gravity, filling the space. Then came placement of the voice for clarity and power. It was misplacement that often gave the freshman speakers (and would any speaker) great distress. In the midst of a speech, sometimes several times during the speech, they would trip over a multi-syllabic word or phrase or actually get it stuck in the throat. At these moments, sitting in the back of the classroom, I would simply call out to the speaker, don't move, just picture in your mind, the back of your upper front teeth. This natural placement brought the word or phrase up from the throat, releasing it, and relaxing the speaker, who quickly learned that such a simple shift of mind focus, worked every single time.
The first lessons in presentation were to establish a natural authority by building confidence through the mind/body connection: breathing, relationship to gravity, filling the space. Then came placement of the voice for clarity and power. It was misplacement that often gave the freshman speakers (and would any speaker) great distress. In the midst of a speech, sometimes several times during the speech, they would trip over a multi-syllabic word or phrase or actually get it stuck in the throat. At these moments, sitting in the back of the classroom, I would simply call out to the speaker, don't move, just picture in your mind, the back of your upper front teeth. This natural placement brought the word or phrase up from the throat, releasing it, and relaxing the speaker, who quickly learned that such a simple shift of mind focus, worked every single time.
Carmen, late 30's, from the island of Dominica
As a teen mother, back home, she had dreamed of acting. She had even managed to do some. Referred to me for private classes, I studied her at our first meeting, wondering just how I would help her. She spoke, read and moved very, very slowly. I had never encountered such problems before in someone who otherwise seemed to be healthy and of normal intelligence. It wasn't a question of English as a second language. That I could tell. But her mental energy seemed low. If I asked her a simple question, she seemed to have difficulty retrieving the words of her answer and then putting them in proper order. Perhaps, I thought, if I worked on her breathing, that would bring her energy and speed up. It did. But a real breakthrough came, when I added the second part of the mind/body connection, specifically teaching her to think from the corpus callosum: the nerve fibers underneath the top of the skull, which connect all areas of the brain. Almost immediately, she began moving and speaking at a normal tempo. Her eyes also looked more engaged. Within several weeks, she came in one day to say goodbye, announcing she "understood everything." When reading, she said she could look at any new word, immediately know how to pronounce it and know its meaning. A bit skeptical, I said, "Okay," and I tested her. Looking down, at a script an actor had used, I arbitrarily pointed to the longest word. She gazed down, and replied, without hesitation, "surreptitious." I was amazed. In two or three months, working only once a week, had re-wired her brain. |
Lynn, mid-50s
Meeting Lynn, and speaking to her for just a few minutes, it was obvious she was educated and highly intelligent. Why did she come to me? She explained, rather emotionally, that she was dyslexic, that she didn't read until she was eleven-years-old. People read to her in college. That's how she got through. When I handed her something to read, she didn't get far before she broke down in tearful frustration. Assuring her that I could help, I started teaching her how to narrow her focus, so her brain would straighten out the words. It helped, but not enough. So, I added an exercise I use with children and adults alike. Relax, focus on a blank wall, pick a times table and say it as fast as she could. Initially, she couldn't even slowly get through the 2 table once (very common). She lost her place, repeated numbers, jumped numbers and gave up. She stopped, saying she "hated the exercise," (also very common, initially) and that it was giving her a headache. So, I worked her just on breathing and rhythm, and she improved. After three months, she asked to try the times table exercise again. Not only could she do it, but she loved it. Soon, she was able to do the 2 table (and others) as fast as she could speak. Not long after, she was able to do a table, rapidly and perfectly, four or five times in a row, without stopping. Did this carry over to her reading? You bet. Lynn could read better, but more than that, when she did make an error, instead of crying, she laughed and corrected herself. |
MAT Class, Graduate school of Education, Touro College
Initially, I faced a room full of skeptics, teachers who spent their days in city classes from pre-K through high school. What could I teach them? What could acting training have to do with teaching? I started with relaxation and breathing, freeing their movement. Moved on to enhancing concentration. The goal was to strengthen their presence, and natural authority in the classroom. Then one day, a question came from one of the first grade teachers. "How do you get the younger children to settle down quickly after recess? Calling to them and clapping my hands has no effect." "With the actor's mirror exercise," I responded, demonstrating. "Stand by your desk. Extend your arms to the sides and raising them, until you join them high over your head. Then, use your hands to smoothly gather the air around you, bringing your hands down to settle at your waist. When the children look at you, tell them to do it, too. Repeat it several times. Their energy will settle and they will focus" "It won't work! It's too simple!" several teachers exclaimed. "Just try it," I told the first grade teacher. The following week, she came back to say, "I did it, and it worked right away!" No more skeptics.
Initially, I faced a room full of skeptics, teachers who spent their days in city classes from pre-K through high school. What could I teach them? What could acting training have to do with teaching? I started with relaxation and breathing, freeing their movement. Moved on to enhancing concentration. The goal was to strengthen their presence, and natural authority in the classroom. Then one day, a question came from one of the first grade teachers. "How do you get the younger children to settle down quickly after recess? Calling to them and clapping my hands has no effect." "With the actor's mirror exercise," I responded, demonstrating. "Stand by your desk. Extend your arms to the sides and raising them, until you join them high over your head. Then, use your hands to smoothly gather the air around you, bringing your hands down to settle at your waist. When the children look at you, tell them to do it, too. Repeat it several times. Their energy will settle and they will focus" "It won't work! It's too simple!" several teachers exclaimed. "Just try it," I told the first grade teacher. The following week, she came back to say, "I did it, and it worked right away!" No more skeptics.
Lee Kelley taught students from Grade 2-through college and beyond (privately, in small groups, and in jammed classrooms, sometimes full academic programs). For her SAG Foundation programs, she was deemed "enlightened in the craft of acting". In each, academic and performance classes and seminars, adapting just one or more of the first seven acting exercises produced consistently solid, sometimes remarkable, life-changing results, in confidence as well as the ability to learn, regardless of age.