Expanding into a role

An actor always works to ‘expand’ into a role rather than ‘shrink’ into a role. It’s a terrible feeling when you ‘shrink’ into a role. This is something that was never explained to me when I was an actor in training, but looking back over my work, I can see when I’ve had the experience of expansion, and when I’ve had the experience of shrinking. If you ‘shrink’ yourself, you feel bound by the role, you feel tight, you feel limited. You take your idea of a role and then try and squeeze yourself into that shape. You are always just a little bit nervous because there is a sense that, at any moment, you might pop out of the correct shape.Expanding, on the other hand, is when you you’ve got that role under your skin and you can move in any direction. No matter what anyone throws at you, your reaction is fluid. You can get to the point when you know the role so well, you can start pushing those limits. Everyone knows what it’s like to watch an actor push the limits. That’s when great acting comes into play.Level 4 class is all about understanding expansion of character. It’s about finding the movement no matter what anyone says or does to you. And as you practice that, you can start pushing those limits more and more outwards. You can start testing the limits on how far that character can go. That’s when confidence is real and that’s when acting is worth watching.