Be Yourself
“If you have the guts to be yourself, other people will pay your price.” – John Updike While many in Hollywood would encourage you to be like someone else (i.e. Whose career do you see yourself having? Know your type!, etc.) in order to make their job of marketing you easier, what will truly set…
Playing the Paradox
The best acting, like life itself, contains paradoxes, or opposites. Look to nature – inhale/exhale, tide in/tide out, day/night, loud/soft, creation/destruction: for every action, there must be an opposite and equal reaction. As most great actors have always known -using opposites infuses our work with surprise and nuance. Even in loving someone, there may be…
Jeffrey Marcus interview with Corey Parker
I am re-printing an interview that I did with the estimable actor and coach, Corey Parker, with whom I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with at the beginnings of our careers at the Public Theater in NYC. Corey’s blog is Corey Parker for the Actor Corey: When did you know that you wanted…
Obstacles
While we may talk a lot about our actions (what we’re actively doing) in scenes, the choice that adds the most ‘flavor and spice’ to any event is the obstacles. Obstacles, for our purposes, are the challenges that are keeping us from attaining what we want. In our day to day life, we spend an…
Polé, Polé (pronounced po’-lay)
What I bring back from my African trip is a Swahili phrase that I heard over and over – “Polé, Polé (slowly, slowly)”. The biggest overall adjustment that I find myself giving actors is urging them to slow down (while they are talking, not before talking –i.e, going into their heads before responding). When we…
Heart Openers
Perfection is a very common trap for any Artist. I believe that we, as Artists, are born into this world with a clearer sense of perfection from the ‘other side’, and spend our lives trying to re-create that perfection here on earth. But this plane is imperfect by its very design (except in nature, of…
Jeffrey Marcus Acting Class 