Enjoy an extract from Sally Ann Gritton’s book The Independent Actor: An Accessible Companion for All Actors and browse Methuen Drama’s essential acting books, all at a special discount of 35% off!

The Independent Actor presents a 21st-century training route to acting, designed as a companion to practical experience and useful as a reference sourcebook for self-curated learning. It takes the position that each individual actor must find their own process and rejects a purist approach to actor training, disregarding the embedded elitist notions of Western-training methods at the top of the hierarchy and, fundamentally, offering you more choices. Through doing so, it is the first book to validate a self-curated approach to actor training.

Below is an excerpt from one of the chapters where Sally Ann Gritton offers practical exercises and tips for actors involving movement, imagination, character building, voice, and inhabiting space.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Exercises for a Self-led Approach

The exercises in this chapter are self-led. These exercises have no hierarchy and are offered for you to decide their use to you personally. Millions of exercises exist in this field, many brilliant ones, which you will find through the resources in the following chapter and many more besides. The physical suggestions are not fixed: adapt the exercises to work with your own body. Record your discoveries in your journal.

Connection, Movement

• Shake out every part of your body and, without pushing, allow any natural sounds to release as you shake. Next, stretch as your body feels it needs—listen to it. What feels stiff, tired, or tight?
• Clap your hands continuously, placing emphasis on your out-breath. Keep clapping until your muscles struggle with the repetition. Close your eyes, relax, notice the energetic sensation in your body, release your breath, and open your eyes.
• With your spine at full height, rotate your torso to the left and then to the right to its comfortable reach. Allow your arms and hands to follow the movement freely.
• Let your arms swing, slowly accelerating your speed. As you move, your hands will naturally tap against your body. This Qi Gong exercise stimulates the nerves, tendons, and muscles surrounding the shoulders, waking up the body's energy.
• Return gently to stillness. Then, with cupped hands, vigorously tap your body from your chest downward and then upward.
• Notice the sensations in your body and remember how to recreate them.

Imagination, Character

• Stimuli such as locations, objects, and art can ignite “play,” with opportunities everywhere. Using imagery, sound, touch, taste, and smell to stimulate associative stories is equally valuable and an important way to evoke the imagination.
• Visit a coffee shop, train station, or park and focus on the people you see.
• Identify them as characters in a scene. Invent their Ws, imagine their super objectives, and their relationships with one another.
• What could be the imagined drama in the scene? Look for clues to help your imagination. Choose one character and, as a stream of consciousness, speak or write their interior monologue.
• Imagine those words being spoken aloud to someone else in the scene. Consider the scenario.

 

Connection, Imagination, Space

• Lie on the floor in a comfortable position and place awareness in each part of your body in turn.
• Move each body part momentarily as you focus on it. Close your eyes and notice your breathing.
• With every exhale, imagine your torso opening, becoming wider and softer.
• Visualize your breath releasing from each body part in your favorite color. Picture the color extending beyond you, inviting your body into the surrounding space.
• Open your eyes, roll onto your side, and come to your full height slowly. Spend a minute relaxing to ensure you distribute your weight evenly. Make your joints soft to help with balance.
• Repeat the steps above in the space, this time with your eyes open and focusing on a fixed point.
• As you exhale your colored breath, imagine it reaching as far as your point of focus. Open your eyes afterward.
• Focus on an object in the space. Imagine that, as you breathe, you’re creating a sphere of color that expands to fill your 360° kinosphere. Open your torso and embrace the energy.

Connection, Space, Movement

• Be in a space where you can move freely without obstacles and feel emotionally safe.
• Lie comfortably on the floor and focus on your heartbeat—find your pulse to deepen the connection. Close your eyes and feel its rhythm.
• Slowly visualize the positions of your organs and consider their function, performed without direct conscious effort.
• Create gentle continuous movement in your body—rolling or rocking—and tune into each organ's sensations.
• Let your body lead you to positions that bring you joy.
• Gradually allow your body to rise from the floor. Follow any movement impulses in the space that bring joyful sensations.
• Conclude the exercise naturally when your exploration feels complete.