Andy Robinson instructing his Physical Acting students. Behind him is Natsuko Ohama, who will teach in the new MFA acting program. Photo by Mark Berndt

Issue: Summer 2006

A Tale of Two Classes

How do you teach the courage and craft required to create a believable character? In the spring, USC Trojan Family Magazine visited two advanced undergraduate acting classes.

“Advanced Acting 420B” is not for the faint of heart. Here, senior BFA students mine their deepest emotions. Instructor Charlotte Cornwell can handle all the drama because she’s very, very experienced. Over a 36-year career, the veteran actress has worked under such storied directors as Trevor Nunn, Harold Pinter and Sir Peter Hall – and has starred opposite the likes of Sir Ian McKellan, Daniel Day-Lewis, Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren.

Today, she listens and watches intently as the students fine-tune monologues that should carry them through professional auditions. Whenever Cornwell speaks – be it to make a comment or to deliver a few lines of dialogue – her expressive face and clear diction furnish a blueprint for putting across emotions.

The first student runs through her piece.

“You need to be very specific and clarify,” Cornwell comments at the end. “Why does your character want to say this now? Her guilt is layer upon layer. Put yourself into that situation she is recalling. It was incredibly humiliating. Focus on her need now. Do it again.”

The actor tries again, with notably different emphases and actions.

Cornwell tries another tack. “We spend our lives behaving as we think people expect us to, not communicating, never revealing ourselves, continually evading,” she says. “It’s part of what Pinter calls ‘the poverty within.’

“I’m getting the sense that you’re doing what you would do. What would Isobel [your character] do? You know that sense when you’re overwhelmed physically?”

The student nods.

“You lash out at anybody. If you could vomit it all up, you’d feel better.

“Always remember how complex we human beings are. We contradict ourselves at each instant. We can be anyone at any time. It’s really important to remember that. At the heart of our work is the endless exploration of what we as humans are capable of. That’s what I find fascinating. Otherwise, acting is a stupid, pointless exercise.”

The student tries her monologue for the third time and, suddenly, finds herself overwhelmed by emotion. Her tears are real; she is shaking, unnerved.

Cornwell throws her arms around the actor, calming her down, telling her to breathe.

“When we connect, it can be alive and raw. Now you have to explore how to go there in a way that is safe for you. That was very brave, but you need to quietly sit down and analyze how that came about. Acting is scary. All those emotions are dangerous because they’re ours. We need to find the safe way to transfer our reality to the character’s reality. Acting is not psychotherapy.”

Even crying, Cornwell points out to the class, can be controlled on stage in a useful way.

“You can be filled up, but not cry. If you back off, lessen the intensity, it’s easier for tears to come. But if you fight it and strengthen the intensity – sometimes even speaking louder to avoid crying – you can really use it effectively.”

Meanwhile Andy Robinson, a well-respected stage, film and television actor, is urging 13 barefoot thespians not to act.

“You don’t have to pretend anything,” he says. “There’s nothing you’re trying to do.”

Earlier in the semester, he had sent students in his upper-division course, “A Physical Approach to Acting 499,” to the Los Angeles Zoo to study animal movements. He had assigned readings from biology texts and instructed them to create their own prehistoric creatures.

Robinson’s goal is to train the body organically, not intellectually. During a free-form warm-up, he instructs students to engage their imaginations and let their bodies follow.

Legs gyrate and kick. Some bodies are upended, balancing on heads and hands. Others slither across the padded mats, with a soundtrack of groans and exuberant exhales.

As students move, Robinson circles the mats, giving a clearly-spoken, thoughtful running commentary.

“With all of our acting models and the piles of books we read, we forget that our images as actors come from us,” he says. “We are the generators of the images we need for our work.

“Sense memory – Actor’s Studio stuff – reduces you. You are in your early 20s. For you to try and recreate a memory: you’re limited. But your imagination is as large as mine. Call it fantasy, call it daydreaming. You make up your beliefs, and the sum of your beliefs adds up to the character.”

The students barely notice each other – or Robinson. Their focus is inward as they fling their arms, roll their shoulders, try walking on all fours.

Robinson continues: “Your mind wants to intrude, trying to think what is a proper acting model. We’re always having an inner debate. What am I letting in, admitting to? If we’re not admitting to where we are in the moment, then we’re lying.”

Limbs now appear to be detached from bodies. Hair flies wildly as heads move side to side.

“Tip to toes, every part of your body has images. Trust them, let them guide you. Surprise yourself. Learn something about yourself.

If you come to a dead end, just back up and find another way out. How does it look different being upside down?”

Several students execute backbends and survey the room from that position.

Robinson instructs the actors to lie on the mats and speak their monologues.

“The words of your monologue will come out with your breath.

No actor adjustments. Let the words play you. Just let the changes come.”

A cacophony of words fills the room as the students repeat their monologues over and over, eventually while standing.

Robinson tells them: “Sometimes, by doing this, you can think of something to add to your monologue. Most of the time, it’s an exercise. That’s all it is.”

When the class began, Robinson confided that this kind of bodywork had freed him as an actor. Before “I was trying to squeeze out some emotion that wasn’t there. I felt like a loser. But by engaging my body, I felt bits and pieces ringing true.”

His words ring true to the students. By term’s end, they rave about this course – how it has improved their imagination and physical courage.

Only a few weeks from graduation, Nick Dazé of Pasadena expresses some frustration: “I kick myself that it’s the end of my senior year. This is the class I should have been taking for eight semesters!”

Robinson, who was hired last year to direct the school’s new MFA acting program, responds philosophically: “There’s no such thing as too late.”

– Allison Engel