Acting is a skill that can be practiced. If you’re diligent and consistent then, like anything, you’ll get better at it. However, another less convenient truth that, is that progress is not always obvious.
You train and practice and audition, but you can help but wonder: “Is my acting improving?”
Say you’ve started going to the gym and you start lifting weights. You can do about fifteen bicep curls using five-kilogram weights. A couple weeks go by and you’re a bit stronger, so you move up to eight-kilogram weights. With enough time and effort, you’re eventually pumping out fifty reps each side at a whopping fifty kilograms. Very measurable.
The problem we face with improving our acting is that it’s not as obvious that we’re getting any better at it. It doesn’t seem like a measurable skill. But what if I told you that acting is just as easy to track as going to the gym? Would you believe me? No? Good, let me change your mind.
Keeping track of how you’re improving isn’t just reassuring, it’s also a key part of improving. Acting is a very cerebral skill so by thinking about it, talking about it and analysing it, we actually aid our own improvement. Here’s how to do it.
The word is the thing
What really makes our improvement difficult to track is not knowing how to articulate what we’re getting better at. Start by digging up an old self-tape or recording of a performance you did, years ago. Take a deep breath and watch it all the way through.
Sidenote: If you’re at the start of your acting journey and don’t have any tapes, great! Jump on YouTube and watch some Bad Acting videos for reference. Also, do your future self a favour and create a good storage system for your auditions now. A folder labelled Self Tapes with more folders inside it labelled Theatre, Commercial, Television and Film is excellent. Upload every tape you do, even the boring commercial ones, and save them for later.
Difficult, right? You might’ve breathed a sigh of relief when it finished and said something like “Whoa, that was horrible.”
My question to you now is this: Why was it horrible? Any ideas?
If you struggled to answer that, you’re not alone. It’s hard to say what exactly we didn’t like about a performance, partly because it’s so subjective. Someone might love what you did in that yoghurt commercial; someone else might have trouble sleeping at night because of it.
We’re not interested in subjectivity, though, not with our own performance. We need that sweet, sweet objectivity. Let’s break it down.
Tension
Returning to our old self-tape: the most obvious thing to look for is tension. Are our shoulders bunched up? Does our neck look stiff? We can even go as fine as the eyes; do they look strained at all?
It isn’t just physical, either. Tension can be things like overthinking a line, being unsure about a particular moment or character relationship, or feeling self-conscious.
Tension that isn’t a deliberate character choice is a notorious killer of good performance. It constricts the voice and strangles the imagination, and it’s a sign of what Declan Donnellan calls a “blocked actor”.
The best thing we can do to ease tension is to train our awareness of it. If you’re interested in how to do this, check out the Alexander Technique.
As you perform and train, you should start to notice that tension starts to dissolve just as quickly as it shows up. We all get nervous, which makes us tense, and you can’t eradicate nerves, so naturally you’ll still have moments of tension throughout your career, but you’ll start to get more efficient at noticing it and letting it go.
Voice
We can place our voices on a spectrum. At one end is Constricted and at the other end is Retracted.
Give me your best Voldemort impression. Did you feel the muscles in your throat tighten? That’s what we would consider a highly Constricted voice.
Now, give me a big yawn with lots of sound. Open your mouth as wide as you can and let out a big sigh of sound. Lovely. That’s what we’d call Retracted.
Generally, we want to be moving more towards a Retracted sound. The less tension there is around our throats, the better.
We should also be looking for improvement in our diction, which is basically how athletic your voice is. A strong set of articulators leads to clearer sound. Your projection should improve over time, too, which isn’t just shouting or speaking louder, it’s speaking with the full support of your diaphragm to create a full and resonate sound.
A healthy voice can do a lot of different things, and you should be paying attention to this in your tapes and recordings as well. Don’t just ask: does my voice sound nice? Ask does my voice sound healthy? How does it sound in day-to-day life, as well as in performance? Am I speaking clearly without any scratchy or tickly feelings in my chest and throat?
Am I making choices that engage it in a way appropriate to the character? Also, how are my accents? Am I able to do a convincing general American and received pronunciation (General British)? Compare your accent-work to recordings on the International Dialects of English Archive.
Everyone’s voice is different and you’ll have days where it sounds better and days where it sounds worse. Once again, it comes back to awareness. Being able to notice when your voice is sounding strange and identify why, e.g “My voice sounds more constricted today because I’ve been at my desk a lot and I’m holding tension in my neck,” is a clear indicator that you’re improving as an actor.
Ask for feedback
From the right people. Remember we want objectivity as much as possible, it’s lovely to get an occasional confidence boost from mum and dad telling you how great you are but, unless they’re actors or directors themselves, they’re probably not going to give you critical and actionable feedback.
I wrote an article a while ago on How to Take Constructive Criticism which is deep dive into who to ask and what to ask for but here’s a speedy recap.
Who to ask?
- Actors
- Directors
- Casting Directors
- Tutors
What to ask?
- What’s the first thing you noticed?
- What did I do well?
- What can I improve on?
- How can I improve on it?
It’s so important that feedback is warranted, in that you ask for it, and it’s actionable, in that you can do something about it. It’s not enough to hear: “That was great,” or “That was terrible,” because we can’t do anything with it. This is why asking people in the industry is really important: they have the language and experience to identify key things about your performance and can give you tips you can put to use.
Let’s look at the numbers
Now for the one you saw coming. My colleague, Lauren wrote a great article about keeping a record of your auditions. You should go check it out and start doing it. It’ll show you exactly the kinds of projects you’re getting noticed for and start to paint a picture of which jobs you’re most likely to book. This is a really clear way to track your progress and improvement but it’s important to clarify a few things.
First: the number of jobs you book isn’t what you should be looking at, you should be looking at the number of auditions you’re getting. Remember that the audition is the job. Getting asked to put a tape down for something is a success and the thing worth counting. Once you’ve sent in a tape, there are a billion and one different factors at play that might not land you the job; only one of them is “you’re not a good enough actor” and the only people picking that as the reason for not casting you, are people you don’t want to work with.
Second: If you’re getting more auditions, it could be for several reasons. It might be a sign you’re improving, or it might be a sign that you’ve grown into your looks or you’ve been seen by enough casting directors who remember you and now they’re recommending you for more projects. Great but not necessarily an indication that you’re improving as an actor. You’re good enough to get asked to audition, sure, but are you getting better? The best and most reliable way to track your improvement is to go back to what’s observable: your body and your voice.
The “Am I improving?” checklist
Here’s some questions you should start asking yourself:
- Am I practicing, daily?
- Where am I holding the most tension? Why am I holding tension there?
- How does my voice feel today? Why does it feel like that?
- Am I getting feedback from people I trust? What is the most common piece of feedback I’m getting? Is it actionable?
- Which casting directors are asking to see me? Have any of them seen me for multiple projects?
Ask yourself these questions every couple of months and keep track of your answers. (The answer to number one is “yes”, it shouldn’t change.)
Conclusion
While tracking your improvement as an actor might seem like “I dunno it’s just a vibe” thing, there are plenty of objective and observable things that can show us how we’re doing. A lot of it comes down to awareness, as you may have noticed. How do you identify what’s going on in your body and voice, and how do you respond to it? Do you have the techniques to respond to it? That’ll all come down to your personal practice. The numbers side of things is important but it isn’t the whole picture. Keep track of your auditions and watch them back when you’re asked to audition for a similar project, what did you do well? What can you do better this time? If you can answer those two, you’re well on your way.
Hope this helped. See you around the traps!
