Reflections on my actor training and the road ahead

Every actor I've ever met had emphasized training and joining an acting class as the highest priority of any fledgling actor, but precious few had actually told me more about what goes on during those classes. In essence, being in a good acting class is like learning to set your ego, anxiety and self-doubt aside and to embrace a new truth from your own perspective. It's a set of shared experiences where every person has a different takeaway and discovering each other's unique takeaways is in itself a learning journey.

The first time I stepped into Studio 307 in LASALLE's beautiful campus, I was immediately and pleasantly surprised by the size of my class. I envisioned at least eight to fifteen people as most beginner acting classes that I've read about had described, so I immediately knew how blessed I was to be in a class of five people who were all passionate and serious about acting.

The very first thing we did was to sit in a circle, where the instructor then introduced us to the instruments of acting - that we fundamentally had to work with our bodies, our voices and our minds. We then learned the neutral stance, which is the most natural and balanced state of being in a human body in an upright position where the body is in equal parts relaxed and tensed, firmly rooted to the ground, and held up by an invisible string like a puppet. This exercise was evidently meant not just to correct any unconscious habits but also to develop an awareness of ourselves and the space around us.

The lessons were clearly planned well in advance - every exercise and game we did had a clear objective, and I learned many specific techniques from Konstantin Stanislavski's Method to Lecoq's Seven Levels of Tension. We also had a crash course in voice production where we touched on IPA, the vocal anatomy as well as finding our vocal range. Our instructor considered himself to be a teacher with a more physical approach, so one lesson we had 30 minutes to head outside and observe normal people move around naturally before coming back to class and assuming the characteristics of the people we observe. Another lesson had us watching YouTube videos of an animal of our choice and then taking on the traits of that animal, before morphing into a human being with some of those traits. There was lots of walking around, magnifying behaviors, mirroring each other - movement was evidently the core of our actor training together with some of the spontaneity exercises that we did.

At the end of the eight sessions, we were involved in a showcase where each of us performed in a ten-minute scene (I did two of them!). I played Catherine from Proof by David Auburn as well as Laura from The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, and we had about two weeks to devise acting choices and memorize our lines. Due to my prior training in screen acting - I had about two months of lessons with a Canadian coach - I tended to play "smaller" than what is needed for theatre, so space awareness and projection is something I have worked on since I completed the course.

Throughout the course of the eight lessons, I had fortunately already gotten past the fear of performance for the most part, so acting in front of the other students was not an issue for me. As a result, I had more time to focus on what matters - script analysis, character building and reacting to my scene partner by reflex rather than thinking of what I have to do. I learned to make stronger and bolder choices and to commit to them (if you want to slam the table, just slam it! Don't slow down and fizzle out!) as well as being more aware of how I react to sudden changes.

Overall: 9/10 - I'm stingy so this is technically the highest rating any class can get unless I come across something truly phenomenal. NUS, take note.

Instructor: Working with Darren Guo is refreshing because of how genuine and compassionate he is not just as a teacher but as a human being. He provides constructive and specific feedback without ever tearing into who you are as an individual, all while being a conscientious and highly capable mentor who knows what he is doing. As one of my adult classmate has noted, Darren is truly the hallmark of what all educators should strive to be.

Content: For an introductory class with barely 24 contact hours, I managed to fill nearly 10 pages of notes (which is more notes than I ever took down in my 12 years of education for some subjects) so I definitely took away a lot. My only gripe was that I did not have enough time to really absorb and practice some of the techniques that I was taught.

What's next? Actor training is a continuous process, and I definitely intend to continue training with Darren in future. Another class is in the works and likely to happen in June, and I am truly excited to continue training and investing in a career that I actually care about.