Honest Emotional Preparation is a self-discovery process to activate your emotion for acting. Finding Honest Emotions for Acting is key to adding an undercurrent that joins with what your acting partner puts into the work.

Some Main Quotes from this Acting Article:
“Emotional Preparation is indeed an exploration of those neurotic tendencies”
“Many would call this the ultimate in Creative and Artistic Freedom, welcome to Emotional Preparation.”

Copyright 2016-2020, 2022 Simon Blake

Honest Emotional Preparation

Copyright 2018, Simon Blake
Rough Draft –

About This Book

This is a Draft copy of Acting Book written by Simon Blake. This helps to test the ideas and prove creation of materials for direct feedback. Feel free to contact Simon with opinions about this material and feedback. 🙂

• About this Book
• Classroom Introduction
• What is Emotional Preparation
• Dialogue and Learning
• Assistance and Tools

About this Book
This Book is set up in a series of understandings about a seldom written about topic that underlines the experiences that all actors go through when under a fictitious life situation in any Film, Play or Television scene. The book is an attempt to speed up the absorption of Emotional Preparation and unkey the locks that hinder your true emotional talent from releasing.
The work is set up for a study of between 3 – 6 months of self-examination in an effort to allow a person to gain two years’ worth of Emotional Preparation experience within that much shorter time period. The aim is a thorough understanding of all possibilities and the potential possibilities that are present when Honest Emotional Preparation is an included step in artistic process.
Painters, Writers, Musicians, and Actors all use Honest Emotional Preparation in their fields. It is commonly taught as an Actors curriculum in very select Acting schools. Emotional Preparation is an Artists tool to successfully being able to have both in internal and external process active within them at the same time.
Studying this book in tandem with the concepts discussed in it for a 3 month – 6-month period will improve you as an Artist and Actor. As you divulge into the information and concepts in this book you will start to identify with Art and Acting differently than before. You will acquire insights into things that you witness and observe in different ways than just looking at things as an audience before.
The concepts are designed to get you started and further your studies into what makes acting art to an Actor. Gaining the point of view that Honest Emotional Preparation can backbone the life experience in art you can start to take insights away from artistic experiences. This is by far a different approach than trying to pontificate life experience or force out non internally living things inside of yourself.
You will become transfixed and learn how to constantly be finding things that enthrall you into an emotional experience rather than observatory reality. The journey of entering into an emotional life rather than performing reactions will bring you towards living in experiences when you are acting rather than representing experiences when you are acting.

______________

Advice:
Learn how to utilize this book on a daily basis for 3 months and continue to grow using its concepts. You will find all kinds of information that corelates with the information in these pages and that actually connect to who you are and what you are interested in.

Purpose:
Learning your own individual Honest Emotional Preparation techniques and understandings. Finding what makes sense to you and activates you, not someone else is the purpose.

Instructions and examples of all types of Emotional Preparation is given with a strong emphasis on the ability in appearance of effortlessness that can only come from brutally honest examination and understanding of self.  When you are honest with yourself you don’t have to work logically to make anything up, this is the effortlessness that is needed in acting.  When you work with honesty you don’t need to find the words to express because the words that you have are the expression.  

The preparation leads to the abilities to prime oneself to be able to be affected in the desired way truthfully by another’s interaction with them, not to present the internal process to the audience without a partner’s stimulation.
Emotional Preparation acts as a buffer between the emotional real life of the actor and the emotional life that an Actor brings into the scene. It intensifies and intents the emotional life that is brought into the scene specifying the emotional life that is brought over into the scene or creative work. Bringing over the specific stimulus of the Emotional Preparation can affect and lead another to the finding of the results of the emotional results within the Actor in real time and with the process and direction of timing that the script desires.
Anytime that Emotional Preparation is present in the material creation of an artistic endeavor you will become more aware of the neurotic tendencies that create who you are and be able to confront the neurotic tendencies outside of the arena of Acting on your own personal terms. Emotional Preparation is indeed an exploration of those neurotic tendencies and the ability to harness them into the creative work that you do.

Introduction
Honest Emotional Preparation are the tools of investing yourself into the work of the part of an Actor. It is the meaning of life to the actor that gets attached to the meaning of the life of the script that successfully ties together the world of your authentic self within the scripted materials in a play or film script. Adding a personalized meaning to the meaning that is already present in the writing of the script ties both your personal life to the script keeping the scripts integrity intact as well as invests an amplified version of the meaning within script making it more authentic, genuine and real to life.
It is authentic because you are authentically investing in the material rather than glibly invested in the materials. The result of the scene matters to you in that moment because of the emotional life you have invested with craft into the Emotional Preparation matters to you in real life. On the contrary, if you want the scripted scene to have you appear as you don’t have authenticity towards it, then you are able to adjust your Emotional Preparation to match that which is desired by emotionally investing yourself into the meaning of the scripts meaning a non-cholent meaning or purpose. The adjustment within the Honest Emotional Preparation can result in the scripted realities emotional doings and invest in the scripted materials with the realities of your own life’s goals, purpose and muster.
The mastering of Emotional Preparation is your unique ability to muster into the work the desired emotional life that you actually have inside of you and transfer the scripted material into a real living work of art. Nothing less, nothing more. The reason for describing the doing of gathering of emotional life into the work as “Mustering” is because most masters must muster as they work through any technique or approach because if they are really doing it with an experience, they must the reality into existence and not master it into existence. If you are using Emotional Preparation as a tool that invests yourself into the project within the appropriate places as Emotional Preparation is designed to do than you are an Artist in Acting and not just an Actor in Acting.
Emotional Preparations are the Artistic tools that Artists use when they are dealing with Acting world of Fictional Situations. Bringing the situations to life to make them as real as they are as people in them by harnessing talent, which is their ability to let go of their insecurities and bringing real and genuine only because the emotional life was brought tangibly into the fictional story and the fictional story is being taken as seriously as the meaning beneath it. The fictional story then becomes real because the emotional life of the Actor is real and coming from a real place within them.

Craft
Craft is the ability to work with and within your emotional ranges with the materials and dialogues that have been gifted/available to you as an Actor. Your talent decides your range, not your intellect. The more you utilize your abilities the more your talent expands, and your range continues to expand also.
The goal of working with Craft is to use a tool for what a tool is made for. To use your talent how your talent gets activated inside of the work of acting. Allow your talent to grow by not pulling on it, stretching or trying to poke at it. Crafting is that ability to utilize and work to the edge of one’s abilities and allow the acting experience to build upon one another.

Craft is not finding a process to work outside of your emotional ranges capabilities in a way to fake it until it is really there. That is not Craft. That is Fraudulent technique and usually involves the Actor or Artist convincing themselves that they have dealt with an unworkable issue. Pretending when you don’t really have access to the truthful emotional life is never a crafted event or talent although some may seriously joke that certain people have that ability.

In this book we will thoroughly go through Honest Emotional Preparation. What it is. How to utilize it. How to craft your Emotional Preparation. How to invest more of yourself into your Emotional Preparations. How to tie the script and Emotional Preparations together. We will look at the opposites and how to create genuine surprises and states of being that are seen as being coincidental in film work but can actually be achieved consistently by learning Emotional Preparation and the letting go of it into the workings of a scene. We will learn that Emotional Preparation Tools are the ‘Magician’s Box’ of Actors and the place where Talent actually comes from. Exploring the Inner depths of the Actor emotional abilities and open the doors using the keys that will be taught within these pages.
In Film, the authenticity of self can be realized by the capturing of the intimacy that develops with the starting point of honest Emotional Preparation. Every intimation and emotional realization can be captured through the lens of the camera in a clean and pure way because the emotions match the actions done. The clarity of self is expressed to the full potential because a process is followed that exposes self that the camera lens can joyously capture and reproduce in quality. The effect of ability is no longer a fooled approach within Acting because the reality of being is part of the captured process of film when Emotional Preparation is attained within the Actor before commencing filming.

Getting Started
This initial understanding of the processes available to you in this book is to initially understand that Emotional Preparation is not a put-on thing. This initial understanding of not putting on a mask or layering overtop of your authentic being is a key that is connected to the entire process. You must rely on your own authenticity in order to achieve authentic results of emotional preparation. The process of learning to rely on your own authenticity is the discovery of self that is achieved within the process that feeds the inner dimensions of your work by including all the learning layers of who you are and your actual experiences.
Some Actors have issues using Emotional Preparation because their entire technique involves building up a mask that is on top of their actual reality or only trying to allow the finished version of themselves to enter their work. They curse actors who work with their authentic selves because they themselves are unwilling to be exposed and possibly believe they are unable to drop a fraudulent mask they are holding up over themselves while still trying to do their Acting. Emotional Preparation is actually a tool to address the internal conflicts of self by ways of abelizing the Actor to isolate parts of themselves to self-improvement so the Actor can achieve their desired emotional resolve with the inclusion of who they are.

In fact, the reality is that the more authentically yourself you are in your work the easier and more seamless your Acting will become. The learning of Emotional Preparation is an experimental phase of learning which encompasses the ability of developing your own process that will include as much of yourself as possible. The steps of process are usually in the order presented but are interchangeable to fit the development of the Actor that results in revealing the most and not focused on the polished version of self that is presented daily in most people’s lives. The isolation exercise of Emotional Preparation gifts the Actor with ability to address personal conflict which can both keep that conflict outside of their Acting work or deepen that conflict for their acting work as desired by the focus of the project.
Acting is the process that involves discovering your actual real talent in the present time of doing the work. The importance of unmasking yourself with not trying to impress or place a false impression on another is the vital key to allowing yourself to learn your truthful talent. Sometimes you will discover talents and emotions that you never thought you had or could ever get to by processes of discovery and explorations. Never taking for granted or trying to trick your Emotional Preparation or yourself in the work but allowing the explorations and discoveries to be included in the work is another key. Be sincere in working with it and work with it with the purpose desired for the script, scene, and exercises.
The first thing to understand is that Emotional Preparation is the element of you within the script. It is the part that pinches when the other causes a pinch. It is the real exchange of real emotions that gets bantered back and forth within an exercise that helps to realize a real experience within the exercise or scene. If you do not put a real stimulus into the Emotional Preparation process, then it will not work for you the way it was designed.
The circumstances of the exercises in Acting are not your life circumstance but the emotion of your life circumstance which is a piece of your Emotional Preparation that belongs to your personal feeling of life or is real to yourself. This guarantees the believability of your work as you are already believing your Emotional Preparation because you are working with the reality of your actual belief, just not your actual circumstance. Your actual circumstances story may differ from the scripts but still have the component needed to achieve the emotional activation that is desired within the script or exercise being worked on.

The second thing to understand is that Emotional Preparation is personal and private. There is no need to tell anyone what your emotional preparation is because it is none of their business. If Artistic expression (which Emotional Preparation is) is going to come into the filming of a movie or scene than it needs to be with permission to the artist not to reveal his/her secrets. The magic of Emotional Preparation depends upon you not telling your secrets just as the magic tricks of a magician depends in not telling the secrets. Real secrets, lies, lifestyle choices, past decisions, future wishes, personal wants, personal needs are all examples of what you will Emotionally Prepare using these elements. These elements are secret. Your secret fantasies are no one’s business but the emotional life of the secret fantasies is the backbone to the world of Emotional Preparation as are the real-life experiences of the past which become activated through the Emotional Preparation Techniques and carried into the experiences of the scene.
The third thing to understand is that Emotional Preparation does not (require) want to know your deepest darkest secrets, it just wants the activation quality of the emotional life of the secret. We need the stimulus of the fantasy that you desire to have or the experience of the past relationship failure not the actual history or details of the event or desire. Emotional Preparation is a process that extracts the emotional life of your real life, desires and wishes activating you emotionally so you can place the meaning of that emotional life directly into the exercise or scripted scene. This non personal process is the process of adding personal material to the work of a fictitious story or fictitiously based Acting exercise. All of this is the core of what is talent and the ability to expose your human self without exposing the details of your human self.

The maturity needed in order to achieve the use of the activated emotional quality from a prior life experience is the ability of the Actor to allow the separation of the storyline of their life experience to separate from their emotional response so they can take the emotional stimulation they receive from the recollection, and it can be used as an Activation point of entry into a scene’s circumstance or first moment. The same thing happens when the maturity level of an Actor reaches the ability to leap from the circumstances of an imaginary fantasy and let go of the circumstance of the fantasy and still allow the emotional well-being of the emotion to live within themselves long enough to physically enter the reality of the scene.
Learning to separate emotion from personal experience is a maturity level that well exceeds adulthood and is an ability to let go in a way that allows new perspective and new experience to occur with the same emotion that initially was present in the personal experience.
The Fourth thing to remember about Honest Emotional Preparation is that your emotions change daily, weekly or whenever you change. Whenever you have a change in your life it can affect your Emotional Preparation and how you function within your Emotional Preparation set ups. The reality of a forever changing persona which is you is the reality of including Emotional Preparation within your Acting.
You must adapt yourself from who you are today and right now with what you are working with in your Honest Emotional Preparation, or your Emotional Preparation and your spontaneity may be affected when you are working as an actor.
If you want to remain and stay “fresh” and alive when you act, then whenever you are utilizing Emotional Preparation than you will adapt your Emotional Preparation to be up to date with who you are presently in the moment during your preparation time. It is vital to recall and utilize what you are feeling and how you actually feel it at the time of Emotional Preparation and not at any other time period. In the morning you may have an entirely different emotional response than to the afternoon and vice versa. Being aware of the mood swings of the natural rhythms of life is the building blocks to learning to utilize the Emotional Preparation and keep yourself in the moment of reality and believability as all are affected if you are not up to date.
During times of Emotional Preparation Actors can assume that their feelings for a towards something is the same as it was, which can cause many different things within their work including making their work look stale, unalive and unspontaneous. During the moment that you start your Emotional Preparation into your work you must take an inventory of yourself and who you are in that exact moment in time which will intern allow all of yourself to be included in the work uninhibitedly.
Lastly, if you have done the Emotional Preparation correctly you will find that you have exposed yourself as an Artistic Actor, whom people know little about except the life you have brought into your work or your scene work as an Actor. None is the wiser in knowing anymore about who you are as a person or your deepest darkest secrets, fantasies and past life history except for the emotionally rich life that they have witnessed within the workings of the scenes you have done. In a way you have created a new identity of self by being able to leap from your life circumstance the emotional experiences you have gained from life and brought into your scenes. In essence, if you do this work right, you will end up getting a fresh start in life in every script or exercise you do. Many would call this the ultimate in Creative and Artistic Freedom, welcome to Honest Emotional Preparation.

Acting Classwork Main Storyline

Classroom Sections of this book can be read together or as the book pages turn. Enjoy:

Matthew 19 walks out of an audition for a dramatic role that also had a comedic beat. There is a pit in the bottom of his stomach. He feels surreal as he departs the audition location. There is a sensation of having just lived through a nightmare that his conscious wasn’t sure that he lived through or just dreamt about.
He knows that he wants to achieve realism in scenes, but he is feeling so offput by his own efforts. It takes a couple or a few weeks to get an audition and when he gets them, he wonders if he did them right and how to really do them properly. He pulls over at a local coffee shop / or that night before bed he writes in his acting notebook, which he has gotten in a habit of taking with him places. Even making notes while and after watching films he studies.

-On page format – yellow background notebook lined paper.
My main topic today is – How to audition/ how to act? Or how do I stop failing in auditions? How do you do scenes as an Actor?

List,
So, how do I get a part as an actor?
How to act and learn to act when you don’t know or are doing it wrong.
How to be good enough in acting to be cast in a part.
How do I gain or realize the lines at the audition?

(List
What does the person need or desire to know?
How do they function presently in auditions? )

If I can just figure these things out I am sure I could start getting parts somewhere out in the industry as an Actor.
What do I really need to know and how do am I really suppose to function at an audition? I know I can stop failing at auditions, I just need to figure out how.

Matthew signs the date Jan 20, 2016

— — —— —— ——

( Matthew has been working doing odd jobs for neighbors since he was a child. When he moved to Los Angeles his odd job experience got him a job at the Lumber Store. )
The Next morning Matthew goes for coffee, before his noon shift at a Lumber store he works part time at. Searching for Acting news on the internet Matthew finds an article titled “Emotional Elements of Acting Auditioning” on simonelliottblake.com blog. There is a buildup of information that educates the Actor about possibilities within the industry.

He reads an article on acting from this teacher that talks about having to have real responses in acting that are real time experiences. This is a new piece of information to him. Most of the studying that he is aware of
Post is on How Actors need real responses in acting in real time experiences. He sees a poster like image on the internet saying that classes are about three weeks away from starting. (Or How does Emotional Preparation help you in Auditioning)
At the end of the article, it stated “For classroom enrollment – by interview only – no audition needed”
Matthew’s intrigue heightens. You can get into this class without auditioning and the class will teach me how to audition, I need to try this.

Move to right before Matthew works in this section.
In the Memory of Matthew is his last recollections of his Audition. The feeling in the pit of his stomach knowing that something wasn’t right. He knew he did not get the part and it was becoming obvious to him that he did not know what he was doing.

There were times where he tripped over his own lines, didn’t know what the line was to answer the reader with and there was little consistency. “If I am going to do this, I need to get better at it” Matthew thought to himself. “I need to find at least a place that I can practice or learn something” he thought to himself.

Right then, Matthew had made the decision to be involved in some way to improve himself. Three weeks later he found this acting class that was just starting that was focused on teaching a thing called Emotional Preparation. Actors could learn to use Emotional Preparation to better themselves for their audition and scene works.

Three weeks later after an interview, which he was accepted from, he had his first day and class. He had no qualifications per Sae in acting but was taken into the program which surprised him.
What Matthew has going for himself at this point in desiring an Acting career is that he is open to doing and experiencing many different people and jobs. His active pursuit of doing and knowing how to do odd jobs from wood to lawn mowing gives him diversity in learning several things. Additional diversity is how many people he has stopped and talked with and identified with while having his odd job business his entire years of high school.

---

Fade In:
INT. Setting Interior Acting Class Studio – Daytime.
Setting: Interior Acting Class studio. (At least the film header.
?? – How much of this will be set up like a film script format.
Question: is it a good idea to set up the classroom environment like a film script section.
(Or is that just the 2nd book?).
** Classroom experiences in script format. Rest of the story in Novelist style.
This does both in the same section clearly and distinctly.
(Novelistic form also includes short stories of the other students and journal entries in their acting journals and notebooks). (The lines .. . Were written in the student’s notebook. They stared at the notebook as they interacted with the words as they read them.)

-Describe the classroom. after an example of being kicked out –
Go into the lesson.
A sign overhangs the doorway of the theater “Some learn by doing some learn by leaving.” With a hand drawn encarved burned out smiley face on the wooden plaque. – coin it .
A smaller theater that could seat possibly 75 people opens up with a chair and desk that are off to the side. An old wooden desk with drawers and on one side a drawer that looked like a file cabinet pull out.
Papers were present on the desk with a few scripts piled on the left-hand corner. There was a wastepaper style mesh basket that had all sorts of paper actors’ sides in it.
Some seats had been taken out of the theater to make room for the desk and desk chair in the theater space.
The place was empty as he walked in about 20 minutes early for the class. He chose a seat and waited patiently. After 5 minutes a couple other students arrived. (Name the two students).,
On the walls were 1950’s and 1970’s style film posters in frames that were not ornate, but simple.
There was a sound booth or what appeared to be parts of one over the back part of the theater space. There did seem to be an ora about the place, like it had seen a lot of people and a lot of traffic throughout the years.

                Teacher
We will start in about 15 minutes.  

The theater was lit but the stage was not. Matthew remembered the one time before when they accepted an interview from him which decided if he would get into the program. It was not a signed commitment but a suggested minimum of one year studying to get into the studio if you were chosen off of your interview.

(Past ) could be him remembering the studio – or then jump into the film script part of class.

• This is to establish a narrative of the storyline. And ground the baseline of the scripted classroom of the stories.
  Fade Out:

Student – rushes to class and is driving.

• Introduce another student arriving
  Other students already in the studio
  ??Rebecca/ Becky ?, 23, Remembering her grandmother on her way to class. Sentimental. “I’m doing this for myself and for the memory of my grandma” Becka thinks to herself as she gets out of her car after parking. The memory of having just put away the last remaining things of her grandmother last night is fresh in her memory.
  Rebecca, who calls herself Becka, is sentimental as she arrives at the classroom and theater with notebook in hand. She finds a seat in the theater seats.

Fade In:
Teacher
Two Minutes! Two Minutes.

Two minutes passed so quickly as the student sat there. A few more students enter the theater and find seats.
With a flick of the switch at the teachers desk the room lights dimmed, and the stage lights came on. The teacher was able to be seen by the lights that flooded out from the stage. He turned around with a smile (Stage lights are turned on from the back of the studio. The teacher turns around to face the class of students.)

                    Teacher 

Welcome. You all made it through the interview process and now we are all here to learn. Great.
Just so you know I selected all of you based on your passion. So, everyone can remember that you are all motivated in some way and that is how you got into this classroom. So, try to get along with one another and respect that you are all motivated. Quite a few people applied.

16 students sit in the theater. Many are anxious and many are just excited with anticipation. Mark, 36, a married toolman plumber in Burbank California anticipates with excitement what will come out in the classes. He really wants to learn acting so he can get in some independent film or get himself into a commercial. Already having several casting directors contacts through his tool craftsman and plumbing business.

Rebecca, 28 has her eyes glued between the stage and the teacher. Listening to every word that he speaks. She makes eye contact with the teacher as the teacher begins to speak.

                    Teacher

The majority of this classwork will be with scripts. We are going to practice without scripts sometimes, for specific reasons. You have the choice to go off on your own and improvise and particularize sections of the scripts so you can better understand elements within them. We will cover all types of Emotional Preparation in this class. Including Particularizations, that isolate emotional elements in the script so you can find those areas in yourself and thus have them available to you for the scene.

Matthew raises his hand. The teacher nods to have him ask his question

                    Matthew

Will we learn to audition in this class?

                    Teacher 

We will learn how Honest Emotional Preparation helps you with auditioning. Part of your learning will teach you how to audition and we will emphasize how to put an undercurrent to your scenes which will help you get auditions. We will help you discover your own personality which will also color your work.

Matthew responds with an appreciative smile. The teacher continues to introduce the classroom environment

                    Teacher 

In this class we do not limit how you rehearse your scenes, but we will encourage you in certain areas. We want you as Actors to experiment in ways that will help your scripted materials become alive. “I will guide you towards rehearsing elements that you need to have alive and awake in yourself in order for the scenes to function. This means that if you do not have the Emotional Preparation of a Raging love lost fool that is heartbroken in a scene that requires it, I will steer you towards awakening that part of yourself, so you have it available for your work. This is the benefit of Emotional Preparation techniques that can awaken the inner depth and inner life of the scene.

Mark thinks to himself, ‘this is exactly what I need. To learn how to access my own emotions for film’.

                        Teacher 

When it comes to both Acting and scenes, if you do not have the emotional dynamics alive and awaken inside of yourself you will not be able to do the scene. The key to participating in the scene naturally is to live in the interaction of it.
If we focus on Honest Emotional Preparation techniques, we will nearly always have a living dynamic internally while doing scenes. This is the goal of the classroom, to discover and have internal living dynamics when we are acting.

The classroom adjusts itself. Many people are wondering and anxious about their upcoming experiences.
Angela, 32 is a housewife who recently moved to the Los Angeles area. She lives in Bel Air with her husband that is into financing. Her interest and attention are drawn into what the teacher is describing. She looks forward to this class and preparations for it taking up her time and giving her something interesting to do while her husband is away at work. She is happy that such a simple reason was somehow enough to get into this class. She was very forthright during her interview about wanting to do something interesting and extracurricular.

                        Teacher 

Please Additionally understand. We do not do scenes the same way that others may do them. We want to improvise the life beneath the lines and not plan out our actions and expressions ahead of time. Our expressions and behaviors come from the other persons responses to us, not out of our logic because we feel it is the time in the script to do that action.
We will cross out all stage directions in every single scene to find anew the life of the scenes and their undercurrents. To be very clear, do not follow stage directions or plan when you are going to do something unless it is an absolute necessity of the scene for the scene to function. As much as possible be clear from our own intellect in acting.
Even when we are limited as Actors physically, we will be free emotionally to be affected and alive to each other.

• Or have this be all about doing scenes – or improvisational exercises.

Ashley, 22, is a semi-professional dancer. She has done professional shows but has not gotten lead in those shows enough to say that she is a professional. Her goal in taking acting classes is to gain the edge that she needs so after about a year of study she can use her acting to combine with her dancing techniques.
Last night Ashley lied awake wondering if her taking these acting classes was going to be a benefit to her. She feel awake and alert, ready to learn. What she was really sensing is that they are about to have a different experience in this classroom compared to others they have taken before.
Some of the things already being mentioned are with a different emphasis than just acting or performance classes she has taken in the past. All the performance classes were about executing the perfections of dance routines or in mastering the acting expressions. She is realizing already in the few classes that this class is different, way different than her past classroom trainings.
She allows herself to realize that it is an accomplishment to be willing to subject herself to an alternative experience. She just hopes that this will fit with her ambitions.

[Mark’s class notes so far]

• Some class notes on things said.
  List points of things that need to be done to be able to do a basic scene.

Basic notes of how to do a scene.

• Listen to the other person.
• Know the lines by understanding them.
• Understand how each line connects to the next to memorize them.
• Allow yourself to fall into the emotional way of how the other affects you.
• Be Real
• Don’t fake emotion, only feel what you feel when you feel it.

Mark’s
Note to Self: If I could do all these things I am sure to book some sort of independent film before the end of the year.
Practise, practice, practice.
Mark

ADD FURTHER DOWN:

• Script in that he gets a part in a horror film. – And he started to laugh, then out of nowhere he started feeling terrified. Scene worked. – Fell into an imaginary circumstance and for the rest of the day I just believed everything that was supposed to be happening in the script. It was an incredible experience for someone with no experience.
  Teacher – Don’t say you don’t have any experience. This classroom gifts you experience every class.
  —— — —— ———

?is this an acting journal or Is that too complicated.
The first few classes introduce the basics of acting. Paying attention to the other person rather than focusing upon yourself. Being alive to the understanding of the scene and other basic principles that don’t pertinent to Honest Emotional Preparation aspects but baseline in the roots of acting itself.
It is interesting how many actors don’t intuit that the simple common-sense work of acting needs to be done on each scene you do. Understanding what it means and how you relate to it being a commonsense principle.

(Is this another actors notebook section?)
Example – gets ready by reading the scenes to the mirror to be sure that they know the lines. The teacher in one of the first classes said ‘try not to use mirrors and watch yourself work’ but she is doing that anyways.
She considers the teachers advice and practices her lines to her dog fluffy like the teacher suggested. There is a bit more spontaneity with focus off of watching herself. It drives her a bit mad to not know what she looks like, but fluffy is a cute dog and is fun to tell her lines to.

Student Journal : or thought –

Example – student goes out and does an activity that they know will relax them before the classes begin. They can’t understand it, but they know that if they go out and really participate in a good activity, they will be more relaxed and focused for classes.
(Important example)

FADE IN:
INT. ACTING CLASSROOM – DAYTIME
The teacher sits in the old wooden teacher’s chair. It has a swivel and slitted wood in the back of its rounded sides. The chair looks like it was made during the first world war with wooden pegs to hold it together.

                    Teacher 

Remembering that when something is really happening to you, you place your attention on the other and not yourself. If you take a moment to process, that of course of part of the experience. But your overall focus is that the other person should have significance to you.

                    Student

How can you make sure that the other person has significance to you?

                    Teacher

For now, as we begin find an interest in the other person. Simply place your attention on them and find an interest in them. Give in to finding what is interesting about them to you. This way you will start to be with them instead of attempting to do things to them by your actions.

• Scene – work –
  Explore and detail a scene in class in detail.
  ( Each students emotional preparation in boxes,
  then the scene).
  — – One student goes through the motions and believes it logically, but it doesn’t catch them physically. – Example –
• Other student catches an unpredictable emotional life.

Example: preparing for classwork two students get together to read the scenes. Sally has read the entire play as Sarah is still amidst reading it in its entirety. This scene is about two sisters that have opposing views upon their dying father. One sister wants to put the father in a nursing home and the other sister wants to take care of their father at home.

The relationship of the two being sisters needs to be found emotionally by their., but first we need to have each student having a personal connection to their point of view. Is it really their point of view or are they acting a point of view or representing an ideal that is not their own?
Sarah, although she is still finishing the reading of the entire play has had a sick grandmother who she has helped to caretake in her recent past. She knows the tasks of helping her mother take care of her grandmother. This was one reason why Sarah wanted to work on the material. Sally didn’t know what material she wanted to work on and agreed to work with Sarah when she was asked.
Sally at first takes on the role of the part of the sister who defends taking care of her father. Then amidst the rehearsal Sarah confesses that she had taken care of her grandmother over a couple year period before her passing last June. The two classmates decide to let Sarah do the part with the point of view of wanting to take care of her father while Sally takes the point of view wanting to put their father in a nursing home.
This simple adjustment puts experience in a place where they have more life experience. This choice is the students to decide but it makes sense. This adjustment of roles can really help the life of the scene. Now naturally the roles can be done so that Sally can with her prior experience of taking care of her grandmother defend taking care of her father.
To the credit of both Sally and Sarah they intuitively decided to switch roles. Their intuitive adjustment will add the life and spontaneity that they are familiar with. Sally has no idea what it is like to look after an elder or the relationship building that takes place between generations during that time of caretaking.

Example – studying good films. Puts on some good films where the reactions and personalities of the actors really communicate their opinions successfully. This one movie with Actor has the Actor barely saying much at all, yet their actions speak the words they don’t say. Student finds this very interesting to study.
Before going into a new classroom environment, they wanted to really witness some great acting so they can be more inspired as they are taking classes.

Example in the classroom

• Reading of the scene, has no life between them. Limited.
  They – describe what their scene looks like –
• How most scenes look like without an emotional spark in them.
  Now we have not learned emotional preparation yet in this class. You . So, let’s begin with adding a real point of view to each of you. This is part of warming up to the actual emotional preparation training.

Example – student goes to their comedy improve troupe to participate in unscripted comedy. The sections are set up so they can inject words and the planning of the improvisations are where you can inject different phrases.
This is a fun activity that student feels will keep them active as an actor in their own spontaneous ways.
(Maybe this student doesn’t make it?) (marries to their performance?)

Example – goes to their regular job and makes sure the customers are happy.
At the restaurant or bar that they work at ?guy or girl? They have to pay attention to others rather than focusing on themself. Things move quickly within the restaurant bar environment and staying focused on the task at hand and the customers’ needs is a requirement, plus it also makes you better tips.

? – “The customer is always right, Miss Stogie”. “Oh John, you always do me right when you come here to fix things” Is a repair man who focuses on customer service and has a moderate income due to his customer service.
(His arc is dropping politeness, yet he connects very humanly in classes )>

Taken the time to understand the material example
“What we are going to do with you two is gift you the spark that will light up your scene so there is subtext as well as understanding. The dynamics will occur in you rather than just in your understanding.
The two students get excited. That’s why we’re here. They don’t yet know how to access emotional sparks inside of themselves in a way that can fit into the scene.
Teacher replies “Yes you can do both and really succeed later on even having more than one emotional spark beneath the words of the scene. We will get into that, and you will learn it.” Amy “I have tried in the past to do or be emotional in scene work and it seems that the entire scene then becomes about the emotion rather than what the scene is intending. If by learning emotional preparation I can do both, that would be exciting.”

Example – Charlie and monologue.
He has been doing work for years and knows that he is struggling with the emotional components. Wants to jump into the work in the classroom with a monologue.
The teacher agrees to let him do it and start the process of adding an emotional element.
Teacher – point out – You were trying to convince us with your mind rather than being self-evident. Honest Emotional Preparation and awakened emotions within an Actor will take away the need to intellectually convince the audience of the experience because you will have the experience. It is great that you have worked on this piece. Now let’s make it better.

• Finding a meaningful element that is really meaningful to him than putting his attention on the audience.
  You have also just started learning the value of being still. Being still until the impulse activates within you again, which is the time you begin. You did that well and you will learn to make it easier and easier.

Journals of Julie – student notes about watching the work and adjustments they have seen in classroom.
‘I can’t quite describe what the teacher said, but there was something that was done to Charlie during his monologue that really proved the value of adding an emotional element. It was as though the teacher isolated a part of Charlie, making him aware of it and then somehow it activated it inside of him. He looked like a lightbulb had just gone off, then the teacher told him to be still in that for a moment. “Based on the next impulse that happens within you come out and do your monologue based off that spark” the teacher said.
It changed everything. The story was the same, but the life was so different. There was something happening in Charlie that was not in his intellect but within his presence. It was charming. I am really looking forward to learning more about these emotional adjustments and understanding emotional preparation because what I saw today in class was remarkable.

Example – working with your personality.
Student is not used to doing anything other than being polite or nice.
The student stops and says to the teacher. But that is not my personality. Teacher – Suzy, I saw you cringe. Why did you cringe. Because I thought the frog that he was dissecting was discussing.
So your first lesson is that tell exactly how you feel regardless of if you think it fits your personality or persona. Suzy looks both perplexed at the reality that this is acting training and understanding of the concept the teacher is explaining at the same time.
Teacher – you do not have to be what you think your own personality is in acting classes. Do you understand that? Suzy is shy about the prospect of telling what she thinks. Now do the first part of the scene again.
The couple does the scene, and they discover a whole new element of themselves in the work. It is surprising to the students. Their emotions were easily accessed when they were honest enough to express them. The dialogue didn’t change, but their behaviors adjusted to each other nicely.

• Example – I kept feeling a concern for the other in this scene. I have not experienced that this same way. Was that correct?
  Teacher – Yes, that is Experiencia acting rather than planned cardboard life that does not vary life inside of you. What you felt is the way that we train here. You gain internal stimulations the entire time you are in the scene rather than just saying your lines and improvising a movement now and again.
  Student – It was different. In a way less rigid.
  Teacher – amazingly, that is what adding an emotional undercurrent will do. Loosen up your experience so you are actually experiencing.

Example – helps her mother take care of her grandmother’s belongings. Getting the rest of the clothing and things to a good will location to clear out the garage. It has been a task that has taken several months but finally they have worked together to achieve it.
“What a funny coincidence” student says to her mother. “We are finally done this, and I begin acting classes tomorrow”.

___________

– Not being personal enough. – Telling what you really think – rather than being polite.

Get them into the classroom.

Maybe two sections of which craft the classroom environment.

Gentle introduction to Honest Emotional Preparation through classroom experiences.

• Then ,

Ideas: / First lesson examples:

• Example of preparing a scene for class. Practices enunciation and vocal specificity to imply the emotional element of the work. There is no experience in the work.
  (Teacher breaks down the scene and brings more life into it)
• Example of gaining the ideas of the script –
• Doing the scene in planned way as other student does it without knowing –
• Emotional life, no emotional life.
• Only emotional with no understanding.
• Trying to find the Rythm of the scene when they are not doing comedy. ?
• Lack of being yourself is a 1st obstacle. – Classroom lesson.
  (Telling your own point of view regardless) .
• Discovering your own irony, your own conundrums.
• Being loud to try to be affective. – Doesn’t help to be heard.

What is Emotional Preparation?

What Emotional Preparation Technique Is for and How It Works?
Your acting work is the real time experience of living in the scene. What Emotional Preparation does is it gifts you a depth of opinion to color your work. It grants you an alive and motivated initial point of view. The point of view can be relaxed and conversational or it can be restricting and dramatic. It’s a starting place in your work and that starting place adjusts to whatever reality is inside of the acting work. The art of Emotional Preparation is learning to craft multiple varieties of emotional currents within your acting.

 The imaginary circumstance of your acting world is your real time perspective as a human being.  All that affects you is relevant.  Learning that what does not affect you is not relevant, is the growing past your own ego of what you thought would work and did not.  Learning your own instrument in acting is learning your own emotional relevance.   How you Emotionally Prepare your point of view can color your responses. 

Technique allows you to build living emotional layers into your work and rehearsals. The layering of talent means that many living things are awake in your acting and not just a selected few thing that are meant to represent what you’re outerly involved in. With technique you can learn to utilize yourself in ways that never go old and that never stop layering your efforts into your final product. Technique allows the layering of talent so that many talented things can encompass with each other in your work.
The point of rehearsal and technique is to pour energy into your work in a way that never goes dead because you are always able to add things to gain a fresh experience. It is a matter of putting it into your work and finding that technique keeps you active in your project by your efforts to include it. When you are complete with your working technique, it allows you to then leave what became a living part of your work in your work and to separate yourself from your work.

A good technique will be able to add your efforts on top of one another in an organized way that will still make sense in your art form or acting scene. If you are acting, you will be able to rehearse that special part for endless hours without growing tired of it and without causing it to die within you. You will not exhaust it because you have a technique to keep everything working together in a freedom of discovery sort of way.
A Painter will utilize technique to layers and intermix colors on the same canvas because their technique allows them to layer their efforts into greater artistic expressions. The Actor layers their emotions amongst each other like the rich colors of that are placed on a canvas. and leaves the experience that they are having in the real time moment in the work that they are doing They have real moments in their work because they allow themselves to be personally affected during it. the time of the real time experience.
The real time experience emulates real life to the degree that it can make life look like it is not lived in comparison because the intensity of the acting work has such depth and attracting forces. Actor’s techniques are the adjusting forces to learning to be able to be free within their platform of artistic expression.
After time of getting comfortable with knowing yourself and utilizing yourself as a part of your technique rather than trying to emulate who you are in your acting, you will become accustomed to doing parts of the technique without conscious effort.
As you learn, individual techniques will become habitual and become a to you and you will develop better technique that can also layer within the platform you have already learned. All platforms of technique are aiming to release your instincts at the timing of your involvement. This is when the advanced section of the work begins, and the artists massive truths start to come out and live within the framework that they have learned.
Real time and real-life artistic growth start to begin unfolding in very safe real time situations, which are imaginary conditions. The actor is responding true to life relying only upon the technique of releasing their instincts as they receive their circumstances and others they may be working with.
The fine line of the tightrope is the Actor learning only to stay connected through their instinctual parts of themselves. Their sheer instinct gives them all indicators of what to do and any information that they require to stay alive during that imaginary situation. When Instinctual communications are achieved between Actors, they are working gut to gut, instinct to instinct and pinch to pinch.

Studying techniques well means that you can learn how to craft your efforts to build up and allow your inward self to build up emotional life into the artistic presence of being instinctual. The roles you take on as an Actor or as an Artist develop you as a person if they are right for you because they develop your internal attraction and repulsion mechanisms of Self without the need for having active Intellect.
Living without active intellect is an immersed experience and is a little different at first to “heady” or intellectually opinionated thoughts. The more you can find rhythms of push and pull within yourself and your gut the more you will be developing your own technique rather than knowledge-based responses. In life much education trains us to control ourselves by use of knowledge-based thoughts and knowledge-based opinions.
In Acting, we encourage instinctual controls and expressions over any intellect. (We want to raw connection to having that sense of life that makes you feel connected to others and to life itself. Life itself is the present experience of interacting.) Felt based techniques that express instinctually what you are feeling in relationship to what stimulates you builds up worthwhile Honest Emotional Preparation technique.

It will be rare for you as an Actor to ever work too much on your part if you are working based on instinctual training. You will consistently discover new things when you are preparing for and involved in your work with the creative technique of craft in acting. There will nearly always be some little thing that you can continue to grow or adjust into working on the acting part of rehearsal. Your Technique will prepare you to the point where you will be full emotionally responsive and ready in physicality to do the role as you are listening and intaking the stimulation of the scenes your involved in.
When you tap into human growth in acting you can grow old doing similar parts that reflect actually who you are, and often even your values, with ease of staying within who you. In truth yourself discovery of your person will expand who you are as you participate with your acting or artistic endeavor.
A comfort can actually be found within you which can rely upon which is called getting comfortable with your own instinct. Being comfortable with your own instincts will help you come across with grace that you may have been unaware of until this training.
With techniques you will be a relaxed essence of self that will be present in the work. Some say that staying in the comfort of your own skin takes years to be able to achieve fully as an Actor. The only way to learning to be comfortable in your own skin is to train learning techniques that put you working within your own instinctual patterns.
The fear that you will be staying only within your range as a person as a regular disposition is not accurate as the self-discoveries of your actual self will lead to greater abilities to express yourself.
Rather than expanding your range by faking your reality you will expand your range by human development which will credit your abilities to take on a wider range of roles as an Actor. You will not have panic when taking on deeper roles because although you may not know that you are the best you will at least know that you have some idea what you are doing. More advanced training will let you know that you have an incredible command of the material but that comes later on. The instinctual technique approach layers on you as you learn the technique.
Learning any technique requires that you learn who you yourself are and to get to know who you are in relationship to others. It is not about how you could be able to lie to others about who you are that will matter when you take on a film role. It is the reality of who are able to develop into, not represent. When you have a familiarity of self which supports your comfort in relating to others your presence will speak for itself without the need to impress upon others what you want them to notice or believe you to be.
The technique of gut level training is having the familiarity or knowing yourself and your normal range and being nurtured in ways to work just beyond that range. Working just beyond or on the line of your actuality in a way that makes sense and builds up with your actual comforts, relationships to things and personality traits brings a fullness and reality to your work.

The biggest thing that you are learning overall with any technical training is your own responses including your responses to not want to listen to others. Repulsion towards someone is just as great of a teacher as Attraction.
It takes a technique in your artform to bring in your inner personality and the comfort of your own drama of experience rather than leaping too hard which takes you away from experiencing your own experience.
The most common way to leap too hard into or inside of an experience is to listen to your head and just do what you head tells you to do without experiencing what your gut tells you. The training in this book teaches you and examples how to consistently work in a way that will give over to listening to your gut over your mind. Listening to your gut over your mind is not the religious way but it would have avoided radicalism.
You learn to be present and aware because you enter into relationship with other the moment you start working with them because you no longer are just objects or things to each other. Your relationship to those you works with at the gut level starts building a relationship with them the moment that you begin. When working with gut-to-gut trainings, you take away experiencing your own experience over not experiencing your intellects experience.
Lastly, having and knowing technique means that you don’t overwork yourself or your talent instrument. You don’t over expect yourself to commit to action without a relay off of your partner or commit to an action because your scripted to do an action. You learn that because you know techniques enough every time you put yourself through an exercise you will gain furthering experience without having to be something other than your true self and your own authentic self. There is no commitment needed to put on a persona of someone else or need to overcompensate. Knowing technique saves the heart ache of rehearsing without variation and trying to perfect.
Rehearsals are used when using acting techniques actually find new behaviors rather than perfecting olde gestures or experiences. The only moment that you have an obligation to is the present. The only obligation you have is to your gut response. Is your gut attracted or repelled by your experience?

When you really learn to work with technique involving instincts you learn that deceit no longer is part of you. You place yourself in the truth and keep adjusting to what is external to you. There is no tricks or mimicry. You learn to trust that the actuality of art is the trust of living life in real time experience of the scene. Art mirrors the real time experience of life in that the movement of the dance is instinctual rather than planned and that instinct grants you further life within the art.

The Gain of Understanding of Emotional Preparation:

Understanding to relax your brain enough to let the work of your Honest Emotional Preparation affect you and result in contributing to your work is key.
Allow the results of the work to educate ourselves rather than the intellect of our minds. The minds intellect to quickly comprehend issues and elements in acting work is fantastic and will automate if you allow yourself not to draw conclusions to acting predicaments. Let the writers scripted conclusions decide your work without redeciding or predetermining their onset. We utilize Emotional Preparation to rid ourselves of intellectual pursuits. (But the best understandings always come from results.)
let go of the emotion enough to have it effect you then carry the remainder to a single action within your exercise. Knocking is an action. As soon as you have the other person to interact with you focus on adjusting to them, not on your own emotional conundrum. Force-Feeding the person to take in your desired emotional outcome is not working with the freedom that will build brilliance in your work. Interaction is the most direct way to be activated, open, alive, yet responsive.
Emotionality without responsiveness is self-limiting. Emotionality with interactive adjustments have no limits.
Playing around with arriving at a scene after activating a lifeforce within you or bringing that entire life force with you into the first action of the scene is advisable. The delicacy of sensitivity of how much emotionality to allow to be expressed within you and how much to carry into your initial spark of the work is a variable, not a set pattern to initiate. It is a variable because it is the adjustment of the emotionality that will keep the rehearsals of the same scene fresh and alive to both yourself and your partner.

Without the variation that Honest Emotional Preparation permits you to do because of its design of flexibility you would only have the same level of emotional pattern to initiate with.
Releasing to activate means you permit with full allowance of your emotional spark to resonate you into expression. Obviously before interacting with someone there is only so much expression that is common that you would do with yourself given a circumstance. Attempting to use the emotional elements in your work rather than express them outside of your work is the preferred way. However, when learning you want to permission yourself to actually living in the reality of your predicament. For some that will mean feeling fuller emotional realities just before they work and for others there may be very little outside expression, yet internally once they start to interact it will be evident that they have a depth beneath.

Biggest Myth Of Emotional Preparation
The biggest myth of Emotional Preparation is that you must exit from it externally expressing emotion. This is myth is very far from the truth.
You do not need to be crying or emoting after exiting your Emotional Preparation stimulation. You need to be internally stimulated not externally convulsive. In many cases external expressions of emotion can affect being able to receive the other while in your acting scenario.
The key is to affect yourself and then leave yourself alone. You do not need to ‘uphold’ the myth that have to be upset in order to be in the reality that you have already internally affected yourself. Often the quite calm before the storm as the outward emotional state after Emotional Preparation is exactly what you need rather than being in an overt emotional reaction.
Do not do Emotional Preparation to put yourself into a reactionary state, do Emotional Preparation to put yourself internally awakened state. The goal of stimulating yourself emotionally is to prepare yourself for the potential of an emotional experience if it occurs in your acting, not to fake that your partner has done stuff to you that does not come off of them during your acting.
The more grounded you are in achieving the interaction between yourself and your partner being the cause of your emotional outbursts the more realistic your acting will become.

Emotional Preparation is not always a noticeable result

(Many times, the subtleties are the craft of adding Emotional Preparation to your work.) Most people will attempt to achieve Emotional Preparation by getting themselves reactive and into an emotional reaction. Often this will be followed by an attempt or effort to blame the other Actor for their already active emotional life. However, this is only one way to utilize Emotional Preparation.
In fairness to the artform of acting the Actor may want to try more Suttle forms of Honest Emotional Preparation. The main key is the reality that just because the untrained eye does not see it does not mean that it is not active in the Actor.
Using Honest Emotional Preparation techniques in less externally dramatic ways and discovering it as an inward stimulated drama will achieve very interesting results. The audience will intrigue towards the subtleties and the interest of the Actor on stage. Often not over doing the emotional element will result in a more fluid connection in the film.
If you hinder yourself with blaming the other for your emotional state, you will tire your own interest in acting. The redundancy of watching one Actor blaming another actor for their emotional state has limitations. The exploration of awakened emotional states is far more advanced than the single notes of blame. Finding those variations often means that your Emotional Preparation will activate you but not catapult you with emotional tremors that you blame the other for already being in a state of.
Remember that when you are learning Emotional Preparation or working with it, as you advance the employment of it within your acting, you will often not feel shocks but sometimes you will. Often times you will not be certain that you have activated a subtleness within you but later discover that you have when interacting in your work.
In order to find out if your Emotional Preparation has activated a subtleness within you must live within an imaginary acting circumstance. By putting yourself into an interactive circumstance you will find out if the proof of your stimulation is in the pudding of your own work.

Assistance and Tools in Honest Emotional Preparation

Assistance to Emotional Preparation:
EMOTIONAL PREPARATION INTRODUCTION:
“Emotional Preparation is an added process (to the work) of an Actor that can add a certainty to the actual emotional life within their Acting.” Simon Blake

Emotional Preparation is not a replacement for doing the preparation of an Actor for a scene or scripted material.  Emotional Preparation is the added process to the work of an Actor who desires certainty in including themselves and their actual emotional life within their Acting.  Normal preparation work is still required with the added component of Emotional Preparation as is written about in this book.   

Repeat in stylization statement :

Emotional Preparation is the manifestation approach that is a deliberate effort to create an emotional life within an Actor.  Prior to the start of a scene or segment of scenes an Actor goes into personal places within themselves to activate an emotional stimulation to warm up and ready themselves within an emotional ballpark or range required or expected within a scene.  Often times a history of prior occurrence is emotionally added to the Actor which gives believability to the reality that the Actor has come from a prior circumstance or experience.  A series of preparations may have to be layered in order to achieve full preparation for a segment of scenes or scripted materials.  
Emotional Preparation in film depends upon the emotional continuity and stable belief that an Actor attributes to themselves during the filming process.  Honest Emotional Preparation is the attribution of continuity to the work as integrated with other normal emotional stimuli that affects the Actor as the present happens to them and intermixes with their prepared self.  

Honest Emotional Preparation In, Honest Emotional Preparation Out!

It is key to understand that Emotional Preparation and Emotions felt during acting experiences are realized. Sometimes realizing emotion will bring out long lost effects of the Self that were forgotten. Sometimes realizing emotions will create lasting emotional affects by the doing of the work.
Regardless of reasons and intellect the fact is that emotions are activated when we work as Actors. Emotional Preparation is the crafting of emotional aliveness. Learning to activate and deactivate exposure to emotions is key as an Actor.
It is crucial to understand the following about yourself when working with emotions. Both learning how to relax when going into an emotion and learning to relax after your work coming out of an emotion is a skillset desired to be learned.
These following techniques are related to Abling your abilities to relax from having an emotional experience. It is not necessary to do therapeutic techniques after using Emotional Preparation but there may be a high value to knowing that techniques exist.

EXAMPLE:
THE ROUTINE OF TIEING SHOES OF THE FOOTBALL COACH. THE ROUTINE HELPED TO SET THE SOLITARITY BETWEEN THE PLAYERS AND ENSURED THAT THEY DID NOT HAVE BLISTERS FROM THEIR SHOELACES ENTWINING WITH THEIR FEET.
THIS HAD EXAMPLES OF BOTH MUSCLE MEMORY WHICH IS ROUTINE AND ALSO PRACTICAL ELEMENTS THAT WERE PUTTING THE SIMPLE THINGS FIRST. (FORCING THE PLAYERS TO TAKE CARE OF THE SIMPLE THINGS TO BE CALM AND PAY ATTENTION TO THE DETAILS OF THEIR OWN EQUIPMENT) >
MUSCLE MEMORY AND BEING ABLE TO RESET YOURSELF FROM EXPERIENCES IS WORKING WITH SIMPLICITY, NOT COMPLICATED INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVORS.

• A FALL DURING PRACTISE ON A TRIPPED LACE OR SLIP OF THE FOOT IN THE SHOE WOULD CHANGE THE MUSCLE MEMORY OF THE PLAYERS FOOT GRIP. THE COACH NEW AND HAD PRACTICAL GAINS FOR HIS PLAYERS TO BE ABLE TO ASSIST THEM.
  Many Actors as they learn Emotional Preparation techniques for themselves will discover valuable principles that when they upkeep their habits, they benefit from being free from the worries of their mind or practical things like tripping over their own intellect. The Consistent ability to allow habits to form as they most naturally can will assist you in developing your own Emotional Preparation techniques and finding what works for you best.

Understanding Muscle Memory:
(?- ADD – MUSCLE MEMORY DETAILED EXAMPLES; including the examples of an actor trying to control their own muscle memory.
ALSO, EXAMPLES OF HOW TO REORDER MUSCLE MEMORY IN ORDER TO RESET YOUR EXPERIENCES. )

Muscle Memory in acting is a real thing in Acting and in life. There are between 650-800 muscles in the human body which are holding together over 100 billion neurons. There are 43 muscles in the face and 8 muscles in the tongue.
Many times, when new Actors learn Acting, they believe they are going to learn how to control their faces and reactions. This is a vaudeville style and approach of acting that was famous during the vaudeville era. Even the best Entertainers of the Vaudeville era relied on improvisational techniques along with the stylization of Vaudevillian Theatrics.

Also, at the time when silent films were being made and talkies were just coming out there were exaggerated faces as part of Acting techniques. These techniques of performing muscle memory planned expressions became amateur hour as time passed and realistic acting started to be captured on film. The entertainment industry started to change from comedy entertainment to exploration of depth and sadness that had subtleties and nuances.
It is essential to realize that muscle memory controlling techniques are performing mechanisms and tricks which don’t apply to realistic experiences that are sought after in today’s films.
Any effort to control any individual muscle memory or neurological effect of the human body without working with personal ”Meaning” is a suicide mission for modern Actors. Attempting to control neurological impulses in acting may be the quickest way to gaining neurotic behaviors which are not helpful during acting scenes.
Honest Emotional Preparation is the tool to working with meaning without spending a lifetime trying to master muscle memory techniques. However, knowing that muscle memory techniques resound in you naturally can be quite helpful to understand what is going on with yourself.

The mastering of muscle memory is usually the ruining of your own truth if you perform it rather than live it out freely. Understanding Muscle memory is a commonsense ability which informs you of your real and genuine responses. Attempting to control neurons and all 100 billions of them and how they interact individually is beyond human being comprehension and is only the work of intellectual efforts.
Artists who attempt to perform rather than experience tend to be over the top personalities and unpresented in the imaginary conditions of their Acting scenarios. In other artforms performing while doing usually takes away attention to detail such as sculpting, painting or musical endeavors.
Muscle Memory techniques rarely improve the craft that is designed to build up as they gain experience in their artform. The reality of inwardly exploring the experience rather than outwardly pontificating it usually deepens the talent of the artist rather than distracting them.
Traditional Performers in Acting including Mime, Vaudeville style acting, or performance art have their work cut out for themselves as they often work to have control of their muscle memory to be able to make faces of expression. The opposite approach is taken in this book by working with Meaning over performance mechanisms.
The human body has inherent responses and considerations that it is capable of and unless injured or conditioned its natural response it to remain open as openness is a very protective state of existence. Depending upon your 100 billion neurons is a wiser approach and much more involved than a calculated approach of presenting a false self which cannot listen and respond at the same time.

Example:
In amidst the African Rainforest Jungles lives a village of traditional net hunters. The night prior to their hunting they have a ceremony that is believed to better their luck of the bounty of the next day’s hunting. The ceremony involves dance and songs that relax the hunter’s impulses and releases their emotional blockages into the ethers.
As an acting tool you can learn that the muscle memory of the hunter gets affected in a positive way by the release. The releasing during their ceremony better equips them during their hunting making them more impulsively available to their instincts. This clarity assists them in gaining more alertness the following day when they are requiring focus. There are many cultures that have similar qualities that relax muscle tissues, emotional tensions, and mental worries. Dance is also an often a technique of release that will enhance future concentration.

• Addition of instinctual touching. This is following your instinct to find the inclination of a feeling. Then try to let that feeling of inclination turn into an emotion. If you are a couple , the need not to be freaked out by instinctual touching. Instinctually you may want to touch the other Actors in scenes and you will develop your own timing and appropriateness of how you can do that and still stay professional.

Journal Entry: Susanne: I came back from Acting Class this afternoon. My Entire Body felt like I had been in a rollercoaster, and I couldn’t figure out why I was feeling the way I was feeling. The classwork was personal, but I have never been affected like this in another class.
After eating a small dinner, I realized that my appetite wasn’t as large either. I realized that in the exercise my mother got mentioned in a sarcastic way. I kept thinking about why that would affect me. In the work Benjamin said, “Your mother never taught you to have manner’s either”. The reality is that I was so busy and involved in that moment that I didn’t realize Benjamin standing there and I got really embarrassed.
My embarrassment reminded me of when I had weight problems when I was in high school. It might have been about 15 lbs. but I thought it was much larger so I wouldn’t eat. Writing this down know helps to release the feelings about it. It was as if I had jumped back into high school and felt that embarrassment.
His comment about my mother really added to the coincidence of the experience. My mother would always tell me to eat, and I wouldn’t eat much in front of others, but I would snack later at night until I learned that there were better ways to not be so concerned.

Copyright 2016-2020, 2021 Simon Blake

Honest Emotional Preparation

Honest Emotional Preparation is imperative for acting.

The more honest you can be with yourself the cleaner you will be able to re-access or access your emotions. This is why it is important to use Emotional Preparation for your acting and artist work and not out in life, unless its and exercise.

Honest Emotional Preparation is an advantage that an Actor can give themselves to really achieve in acting.

About Simon Blake

Simon Blake has studied OVER 30,000 – 40,000 acting exercises and studied over 8-10++ thousand acting students and professionals. Studying over 1000+ famous names in the industry learning techniques that are keys to unlocking their talents.

“Meisner In and Out Exercise, which was later known as Doors and Activities give a basic building block to modern day acting” Simon Blake’s training includes every aspect of Meisner Training.

Studying every area of Meisner Training with well over 30 Teachers including himself.

Simon Blake runs and operates the website EmotionalPreparation.com which teaches Actors how to add Emotion to their acting using improved acting techniques.

Don’t Miss the Acting Lists !
Over 900 Meisner Independent Activities
900 + Emotions for Acting List