Tag Archives: Practical

Method Acting – Practical Excercises for the Actor : Memory Exercises

Article by Brian Timoney

Method Acting Tips

The Method has become synonymous with many great actors such as Daniel Day Lewis, Sean Penn, Forest Whitaker, Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, and Marlon Brando to name but a few. But what is the Method? And what has made it so successful?

Below are practical exercises from the technique that clarify some of the tools used by Method actors.

1. Develop Your Concentration

A high level of concentration is essential to enable top quality acting. Concentration triggers your belief, impulses and imagination.

Concentration is not abstract. Often you will hear teachers or directors telling actors to concentrate and focus, but what on? You have to concentrate on something real and something specific this evokes real thought. Not phony or pretend thinking, but real thought.

The first exercise we tackle in the Method to build concentration and belief in what we are doing on stage, is the Sense Memory exercise.

2. Sense Memory Exercise

It is understood that we perceive the world through our senses. We see, we hear, we smell, we touch, we taste. This is what stimulates us as human beings. It’s also understood that the memory of these senses can affect us. We have all felt hungry and thought of our favorite food and started to salivate, or heard a song that has reminded us of a relationship we once had. Our memories are strongly linked to our senses.

To develop your concentration and sense memory, begin with a simple exercise.

The Breakfast Drink – Recall what you drink first thing in the morning in intricate detail. Close your eyes and recreate in your mind’s eye the room that you have the drink in – really see it, smell it, touch it, hear it. Then bring your attention to the drink and slowly start to drink, really concentrating on the senses. Try this for 15-20 minutes. Then choose a monologue you have learned by heart and start to say the lines whilst thinking about the drink. The drink is the main focus of concentration the lines are secondary.

You must ensure that you are truly focused on the drink. Test this by continually asking sense questions internally to yourself, such as ‘How hot or cold is it? What is the cup made of? How does it taste?’, whilst saying the lines at the same time. Tricky I know, but it will have a significant effect on the believability of the lines. The reason for this is that the experience of the drink is real to you – you believe in the drink. This belief starts to transcend into the words of the character.

3. Overall Sensation Exercise

In the same way as the breakfast drink, try an overall sensation sense memory. Ok, this part can be a bit uncomfortable, but take a cold shower….for real. Then later try and recreate in your mind’s eye that event. Use all your senses to relive the cold shower. Once you have done this for 15-20 mins, try saying the lines from a monologue whilst recreating the experience of the cold shower. This will have quite an impact on your senses and will impact the way that you say the lines significantly.

4. Personal Object Exercise

Ok, you are probably getting the hang of this concept by now. This time, identify a personal object from your own life that has significant meaning to you. Take the object and really focus on it. Investigate it from a sense point of view. How does it look, smell, taste, feel and sound? Whilst doing this, start to say the lines from a monologue. Do nothing more other than investigate the object in intricate detail and say the lines. The memory of the object will impact the way that you say the lines of the character.

5. The Animal Exercise

This exercise is relatively famous within the technique. It requires you to humanise an animal’s physicality to recreate a new physicality for a character. If you look at Marlon Brando’s performance in the ‘Godfather’, he plays a bulldog or in ‘A Street Car Named Desire’ you can see that he plays an ape.

Pick a wild animal that you think could have similarities to your character. Go to the zoo and study the animal physically. Study how they move, eat and sleep, in detail. Then at home, physically recreate to the best of your ability, the animal. Once you have done this for awhile, stand up and humanise the animal. How would it walk and move if it were human?

Author: Brian Timoneyhttp://www.themethodcentre.co.ukemail:info@themethodcentre.co.ukBrian is an experienced actor, director and teacher of the Method. He established The Method Centre in London, an actors studio in the UK focused on the Method.










To get your own SPRI Xerciser Ball go to www.spri.com. The balls used in this video are the Soft Orange SPRI Hand Xerciser SKU: HB5231-R.

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The Dana Guide to Brain Health: A Practical Family Reference From Medical Experts. Book Review. : Brain Foods

Article by Alvaro Fernandez

Copyright (c) 2008 SharpBrains

Dana Press kindly sent us a couple of books. One of them, The Dana Guide to Brain Health: A Practical Family Reference From Medical Experts, is our topic today.

We are impressed by what Dana is doing to insert neuroscience findings and implications into the public discourse.

No big surprise then, to find out so much quality content inside a 700-page one-of-a-kind guide.

The guide is really 4 books inside a common binding. Priced at a reasonable level, and with superb in-depth text and images in all relevant areas, the book can be used as a 1) Brain 101 tutorial, 2) brief summary of the basics of Brain Care and Wellness, 3) description of the stages of brain development, 4) reference guide for around 70 brain-related conditions.

In my personal opinion, every neuroscience, medical and psychology student, clinician and researcher should have this book in their hands to keep abreast of many recent developments, and also be exposed to professional development courses based on it. Many families and individuals interested in the brain should consider buying it too.

Given the focus of our blog-brain fitness for healthy individuals-, we particularly enjoyed the sections

– on intelligence, with sentences such as “It is extremely unlikely that an “intelligence pill” will be discovered in the near future” (P. 215)

– on “The Brain-Body Loop” which explains, among other things, the effects of stress,

– “Taking Advantage of New Findings and New Finding About the Adult Brain”, with gems such as “Recent research on the brain has established two great principles. First, far from remaining static in adulthood, as we had long assumed, the human brain continues to grow and develop throughout our entire life span. This development takes place in two ways: by ongoing adjustments in signaling pathways and by the addition of new brain cells. Knowing this means that you should try, as you would with any fine, high-powered machine, to practice good maintenance to give it the best chance to provide peak performance…in many respects we can make a material difference in how it ages, and even induce it to perform better over time…Just as we may choose to strengthen our muscles with challenging workouts, we can encourage brain growth by keeping engaged in many different mental activities”.

– and, above all, the one on “Basic Brain Care: Protecting Your Mental Capital” (Pages 31-41), where we are all recommended to

—- Sleep: at least 6 hours a day, making sure we don’t make a habit of “cutting sleep short”

—- Eat well: the general rule here is that what is good for the body is also good for the brain, and to be wary of “diets advertised as “brain food”

—- “Protect the fortress” (our skull), by making sure we use security belts and helmets whenever there may be a risk

—- Exercise regularly

—- Keep Stress in Check (stress can inhibit or reduce the creation of new neurons, among other things)

—- Stimulate our minds through life, by ensuring a flow of novelty and variety that enhances the creation of a “cognitive reserve”. If is fascinating for us to see how Brain Fitness helps integrate “Brain Health” and “Lifelong Learning”, Health & Wellness and Education. Of course, these categories are human conventions that the brain itself probably doesn’t care too much about…

In short, a great reference book for professionals and for people interested in the brain. And a great starting point (the only one we are aware of) for a really useful and practical guide to Brain Health that every family should have. In a bit more creative terms: great quality marble looking for a consumer-oriented Michelangelo.

Alvaro Fernandez is the CEO and Co-Founder of SharpBrains.com, which covers the emerging neuroplasticity and neurogenesis fields. SharpBrains has been recognized by Scientific American Mind, Newsweek, Forbes. Alvaro holds MA in Education and MBA from Stanford University, and teaches The Science of Brain Health at UC-Berkeley Lifelong Learning Institute. You can learn more at http://www.sharpbrains.com/










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In These Days Of The Drive-thru And Prepackaged Ready-to-eat Food, It’s Hard To Imagine Our Young People Will Have The Same Memories. That’s A Shame. And That’s Why I’m Sharing This Collection Of Old Fashioned Meals That I Call “memory Lane Meals”.
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