Brian Timoney’s World of Acting Show

Episode 33: Emotion, monologues and accents

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One man – One mission: To rid the world of low-standard and mediocre acting, once and for all.

Brian Timoney, the world’s leading authority on Method Acting, brings you powerful, impactful, volcanic acting and ‘business of acting’ techniques in his special Acting Podcasts.

It’s Brian Timoney’s World of Acting – unplugged and unleashed.

Brian: Hi everyone, it’s Brian here – and welcome onto today’s show. And I’m joined with Joe – welcome, Joe.

Joe: Thank you very much for having me.

Brian: So, we’re continuing our “acting agony uncle” session here, Joe.

Joe: [laughs]

Brian: But these are great questions, you know?

Joe: Yes. Do you want to get people up to speed? You put something out on Twitter – right?

Brian: Yes. So, we put out, a few weeks ago now, a request on Twitter saying, “Look, if you’ve got an acting question, send it in” – and we got a raft of questions.

Joe: Yes! And from what I can remember, the questions have been very, very good…

Brian: Yes. Good questions.

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Joe: Yes – it just lets us know that people are really out there thinking and want help.

Brian: Yes – decent questions. Right, here’s one from David: What technique/steps to produce consistent emotion on demand? Right, so we’ll maybe make this a quick one, Joe, because we kind of covered this in a previous one…

Joe: In a previous one, that’s right.

Brian: But just, in a nutshell, the way that we do this in Method Acting is that we use a thing called affective memory – sometimes called emotional memory or emotional recall – and it’s about recreating an experience from your own life, and you relive it through the senses. Now, the reason we do that, relive it through the senses, is that when you’ve experienced anything in life, you experienced it through the senses: you saw something, you heard something, smelt something, you touched something – you know, all of this comes together and it creates an experience.

So, in order to trigger emotion, you relive an experience and you relive it through the senses. So it’s never a case of trying to produce emotion for emotion’s sake; it’s like, if you’re trying to, for example, say I need to get really angry, it’s not about thinking about being angry. What you’ve got to think about is a situation where you were angry in: What did you say? What did you hear?

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Joe: Yes – what triggered that anger? What gave you the response to that? Was it something somebody said? Was it the way they behaved? Was it something that they did? What were the extenuating circumstances around that? And through the developing of your senses, you can experience – because we experience anger through many different facets of our bodies. To give you an example: somebody cuts in front of you while you’ve been waiting for ages in a queue – that’s like physical, you know?

Brian: Yes.

Joe: Somebody says something to you that triggers anger in you – say they say something about your features, or the quality of your work; that comes from a different trigger. Something might even be like a taste, because you were told to eat spinach from when you were a young child and you hated spinach, and that might

www.worldofacting.com engender anger because you’re frustrated by somebody telling you what you need to do. So it comes through all the senses.

Brian: Yes. And the other thing is just to remember, David, that this is a progression as well that Method actors go through and eventually do get to affective memory work or emotional memory; it’s taken them quite a long time to get to that point. It’s not where you start; you don’t rush to affective memory.

Joe: No.

Brian: You’ve got to build your way up to it through sense memory first. But basically that’s how we do it. And affective memory works in the right way with the brain as well, because the right side/left side of the brain operate very differently and the emotional part of it is on the right side, and the way that you engage with it is really through the senses. And that’s what makes that approach so effective and consistent. And I think consistency’s important; you need these experiences to work each and every time. There’s no hit and miss; it becomes very consistent.

Joe: And what you do is you build up a core understanding of what works for you, over a period of sustained exploration into your senses. So, over a period of time you start to make and understand what gets you angry or what gets you sad or what gets you full of joy or compassion or love.

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Brian: Indeed, yes – you become, in the end, the teacher. It’s like we give you the process and the procedure and we take you through that, but eventually you’re the one who knows you best, and the things that trigger you, you begin to identify and that’s where you start to build up that toolkit. So, let’s move on to the next one, Joe.

Joe: Yes.

Brian: This is from “The Polly.”

Joe: “The Polly” – okay.

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Brian: Yes, that’s how she describes herself. This is Polly, I assume, here: Is an audition piece better from something you’ve seen or not? And does obscurity help when choosing? Good question.

Joe: Yes. Well, I can say straight away that if you’ve seen something, you have to be very skilled to be able to not draw on what you’ve seen. Because I’m so visual and so connected to what I see, that if I see something/somebody does a speech in a certain way, in the back of my mind I’m hearing and sort of seeing that, as opposed to doing something that is spontaneous to me. So I would always refer to a speech or to things that I haven’t seen. Now, having said that, when you’re working something that’s Shakespearian or that’s one of the classics and you don’t want to negate that because they’re brilliant speeches, so you really need to work on your authenticity and your spontaneity in order to make that speech your very own. You know, if you think, anybody, if you think Hamlet’s speech and who’s said it, from Mark Rylance to Laurence Olivier, to all the greats – you know, John Gilbert – it can actually be quite intimidating because you’re thinking, ‘Oh, my God – look at all these people and this speech.’ But actually it’s the bravery in you to say, ‘Right, I’m going to go with this and I’m going to do it my way and I’m going to do it to the best of my spontaneous way and understanding.’

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Brian: I think there’s a couple of things to bear in mind here. What you’re talking about, Joe, is parts that tend to get done over and over.

Joe: Over and over, yes.

Brian: So, for example, some of the classics – all the classics – from Death of a Salesman to Hamlet, they’re going to get done over and over, and different actors are going to play those roles. When you go into a role like that, I think it’s always best never to have seen anybody do it, if you can – not always possible but if you can. And definitely, if we’re not talking about plays that are classics; for example, say you’re looking for an audition speech from a film or from a play that’s not a classic perhaps, that’s not getting repeated a lot, then here’s a thing to watch out, because I’ve seen some aspiring actors make some massive errors in this sort of area, which is like, for example, they’ll look at something like a De Niro speech from Heat or from Taxi Driver or something and go, ‘I’m going to do that speech.’ Now, the problem with doing that is it’s so iconic that as soon as you pick that up, they’re just thinking

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De Niro – and you don’t really want that; you don’t really want them thinking, ‘Oh, that’s from this film…’

Joe: Such and such – yes.

Brian: ‘That’s that person that did that.’ So it can be very hard, if you’re picking up something iconic, for people to forget the original. And by the way, you don’t want to go into competition with Robert De Niro.

Joe: Yes.

Brian: So it’s best to kind of look for things that are less well-known and a little bit more obscure. There’s millions of plays…

Joe: Oh, there’s so much stuff out there, yes.

Brian: There’s millions of great films. I actually saw recently – this is a little titbit for all of the male listeners because it just happened to be a film that had a brilliant male monologue in it – it was called 99 Homes. It’s a recent film – and there’s a brilliant monologue in it for guys. And I thought to myself, ‘You know what? If I was looking to develop a really original, unknown speech that’s probably highly unlikely for people to know, I would pick that one right now.’ And it’s funny; Natalie and I – my wife – we’re always doing this; we’re always watching films and theatre and we’ll turn to each other and go, ‘That’d be a good scene. That would be a good monologue.’

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Joe: Yes – ‘That’s a good monologue’ – yes.

Brian: ‘That’d be good for somebody.’ And you need to do that as an actor; you need to just be aware. Because at the end of the day, if you’re going to have an audition speech – just remember this – the audition panel are listening to all the same speeches all the time because you might think that originality is top of the list, but believe me it ain’t; you do see a lot of the same stuff over and over again. So if you can find a monologue or a speech that is a little bit more obscure but is a really good speech, then that’s what you want – because they don’t have any reference point on it; it’s different from what other people are doing. That’s what I would recommend, Joe.

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Joe: I wholeheartedly agree.

Brian: Let’s move on – we might be able to do another one.

Joe: Right. Brilliant.

Brian: So, this is from Chris, and Chris asks, What advice would you give to a young/teenage actor on ways to gain experience? So, Chris, that’s a good question – and I feel for you, man…

Joe: Yes.

Brian: …because I think that when you’re a teenage actor, you’re in your teens and you’re looking to act, it can be tricky.

Joe: It can be very tricky, yes.

Brian: There was a time when we did some courses for teenage actors – and it can be tricky because at that age there’s not a lot out there for that age group, for serious acting. And you’re kind of in the middle between stage-school stuff that’s out there that, you know, that’s fine…

Joe: That’s all fine. It’s all fine. Yes – we’re not here to, yes.

Brian: But then again there’s that certain age a teenager gets when they want to do serious acting, and I have to say there isn’t as much as you think out there for that age group. So, what do you do? Where do you go? I think you need to kind of get your experience where you can: so there might be local drama groups, school groups that you can be involved in.

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Joe: That’s a brilliant answer, actually: get the experience where you can. You know, look to grab when and where you can. Just be voracious; just go after all the bits that you can, because you’re young enough and you can make lots and lots of mistakes and not worry about it – really, don’t worry about it. Just let the ambition and let the desire run in you, because, who knows, you might be the next Nicholas Hoult or the next Jamie Bell – you know, look how they’ve transitioned from being teenagers into young actors. Or Leonardo DiCaprio – you know, he was a teenage

www.worldofacting.com actor as well. So, look at stuff and look for speeches, and look for things that really move you and get you…

Brian: Yes – I think as well immerse yourself in it.

Joe: Immerse yourself – just go after it, yes.

Brian: Go and watch films. Go and watch theatre. Try to get experience where you can – like we were saying, with drama groups or school groups, and just be in it as much as you can. And then, when the time comes, you’ll transition.

Joe: You’ll be able to make that transition, yes. Just go after it.

Brian: Wow – we’re motoring, Joe. Question number three!

Joe: Good. Good. Wow.

Brian: I don't know if we’ve ever done three before!

Joe: I don’t – yes.

Brian: Anyway, here we are. This is from Simona and she said: What’s the best way to learn different accents and what’s the best way to memorise a long monologue? So, two questions in one – she managed to get two questions out of 140 characters.

Joe: Brilliant!

Brian: Sneaky – but I like it.

Joe: Yes, very sneaky. We like it, yes.

Brian: What’s the best way to learn different accents? Well, I can only tell you from my experience of having done this myself: immersion…

Joe: Yes – immersion, immersion, immersion.

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Brian: It’s about – I’ve used several different techniques to do this – but I think, for example, whenever I’ve wanted to do an accent, I’ve got a film where somebody does that accent and I’ve used that as a reference point to gain the sort of musicality of an accent. And so this sounds sort of a bit dorky but it kind of works: what I would do is I’d watch that film and I would listen to that person say a line, and I’d stop it and I’d try to repeat it the way they said it. And I would record myself saying that line so I could hear, am I getting close to the accent?

Joe: To the sound, yes.

Brian: I’m not getting into the realms of expression; I’m not trying to copy their performance – I’m just at this stage trying to copy the accent. I’ve also used some tapes – you can get tapes; Samuel French, the bookshop, is a good reference point for this. They will sell tapes or CDs probably now…

Joe: You can probably even download it now as well.

Brian: You probably – yes, we are in the 21st century.

Joe: We are in the 21st century, yes. This is one of my sort of not specialities but you might say that I’m quite versed in this because – you guys may not know me but I have a very different look to my sound; I have sort of very much more of a Mediterranean complexion, so I’ve played everything from, in terms of accents, Mexican, South American, American, Canadian, Scottish, all of the Mediterranean including North African, Israeli – I’ve done all of those! [laughs] So the thing that you need to do is immerse yourself in it and practise. That’s what’s the most important, because an accent lives in a different place of your mind, so it actually is a mechanical thing; it’s just pure mechanics. It’s getting your mouth to move with different muscles. So the mere fact that if we live in an urban environment, you usually speak faster than if you live in a rural environment; the rhythm of the city will give you a different accent. So this is one of the things that I’ve really worked very hard on. So, you listen to/if you can download real people talking about real things – that’s one of the best ways to do it. Like get somebody to talk across the table. You know, I’ve literally gone to the Brazilian Embassy and sat with the head of one of the vice counsels because I wanted somebody who spoke Brazilian but with a really eloquent accent – and I found him to speak that way because he was very educated and his accent was ever so slight. He was a very educated man. And we sat and we discussed and we talked about this subject; we spoke mostly about football and

www.worldofacting.com music – and I really got such an eloquent man that the accent just sort of grew out of me. The other thing was, in the same context, I went to try to get a really similar accent but it was much, much thicker. And I practised and practised with this very thick accent – it was a Spanish accent actually – well, it was a Mexican/Hispanic, and it was really, really thick and LA, very drawn out, like really thick and you’ve got to say everything like this – right? And I got to the first day’s rehearsal, a read-through, and the director’s like, ‘Joe – I don’t understand anything you’re saying. It’s so thick that I can’t actually comprehend anything and so I’m losing all of the subtle nuances of all the other work.’ So what we needed to do is we actually dialled it down; it was so strong that we actually had to pull it back and make it so that it was a little bit more eloquent. So, practice, immersion. That’s the two with those – get yourself surrounded with these people. What’s the other part of that question?

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Brian: The second part was, What’s the best way to memorise a long monologue? Well, I was once in the situation where I was doing a Greek Tragedy, Joe, and there were just pages and pages and pages of monologues. And actually I did another play, which was based around an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and really it was just like massive amounts of monologue text. So, how do you learn all of this? Well, one line at a time, basically [laughs].

Joe: Basically, yes.

Brian: The way I recommend actors do this is that initially you read it a lot; don’t try and learn it – just read it over and over and over. Get really familiar with the text. When you do that, unconsciously a lot of the lines are starting to go in without you trying to learn them. Also, it just helps you avoid any patterns as well immediately – speech patterns going into the monologue. So I have to say read it over and over and over, and then you start to go through it one line at a time…

Joe: Yes.

Brian: So you look at one line, you say it, you cover it up, try and remember it. You get it right, move on to the second line, do two lines and progress through like that.

Joe: Progress all the way, yes.

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Brian: It’s not a golden bullet – it’s just hard work.

Joe: Yes, it’s just hard graft. There are no golden bullets for those, I’m afraid, guys. It is just hard graft. If you’re possessed of a good – and I’ve found some actors that have very easy learning line ability but in truth their acting sort of falls short because of that ability to be able to learn something quickly; their acting actually is a bit lazy because they’re able to learn that – whereas someone like me who really it’s a slog, I’ll be honest, learning anything for me is a real slog; I have to do what Brian does – I read it a lot; I also start to infuse a lot of ideas about what I think the scene is about. I don’t give myself any specific reading; I don’t ever say, ‘I’m going to read this line in this way’ – I just try and learn to absorb it as much as I can. And it is a bit of a slog, guys. There’s no easy way around that. That’s the hard work.

Brian: No. The other thing I would say is the more you do it, usually the easier it becomes.

Joe: And the more stuff you have to learn over longer periods of time, actually the easier it becomes to memorise things, because you’re just really quick and get stuck in straight away.

Brian: So, there we go – that brings us to the end of this session.

Joe: Wow.

Brian: We’ll see you on the next one.

Joe: Take care. Thanks for listening.

You’ve been listening to Brian Timoney’s World of Acting. For a full transcript of today’s show, go to www.worldofacting.com. We’ll see you next time.

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