Get down on the ground!
Why don’t you just roll around on the floor for a bit. Get. In. Touch. …with yourself. get your mind out of the gutter for a second and think about what it was like to take your first steps. To stick you fingers in the mud to grab that toad. The wonder! the excitement. For a very short time in our lives we are on the floor discovering. We learn to walk and then it’s over. We live in a Vertical world. Get in touch with your horizontal world. Get yourself on a floor and roll around as if you were a toddler. Feel the weight of the floor support your body. What do you feel? One of the first acting excersices I did was roll around on the floor. From one end of the room to the other. See how your body responds in the horizontal world. Support your weight with your head. support your weight with your butt, your hips. your knees. Then tap into your imagination, what sort of imagery comes to mind when you crawl around on the floor in different shapes and positions? Do you feel like a duck? Well quack damnit! Do you feel like a lynx? Well stalk around like a predator. Be versatile, use your instrument in ways you’ve never imagined.
–TV, Bitch!
I was on the train recently and a little girl who must have been about 4 or 5 climbed underneathe my seat. It made me smile because I remember how, as a child, the most fantastic worlds could be found if you got down on the ground and went looking for the nooks and crannies. I would love to try it sometime on a public bus and see the sort of stares I’d get.
I miss being a kid! That’s one of the reasons I’m an actor I reckon. It gives you permission to rediscover a sense of play.
Rhys
http://theactorbegins.blogspot.com
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