Simmering Emotional Preparation is the Actors skill of staying emotionally ready even after Emotional Activation. Activation of Emotions Occur and then the skill of relaxing them until used in the acting exercise prevails.

Simmering an emotion is needed as you wait to do your acting an a film set.

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Some Key Quotes from this Acting Article:
“Emotion available and ready for final activation until the desired time.”
“Simmering Emotional life during Emotional Preparation parallels that of balance.”

Emotional Preparation Technique Chapter Six

Copyright 2018, Simon Blake
Draft Copy

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Simmering Emotional Preparation Technique

Technique 4: Simmering Emotional Preparations
~(AFTER PREPARING FOR EMOTIONAL PREPARATION):

Allowing it to be there but not further stimulating it. — –
The action of Simmering Emotional Preparation is the ability of doing that which involves keeping the Emotional Preparation alive, emotion available and ready for final activation until the desired time that the production or when the Director decides to start rolling camera. Typically, on a film set the desire is to have your emotional preparation simmering until the organization of the crew is prepared to capture the desired moment on film. The wait during preparation can kill inner life or deepen it depending upon the reality of handling your own simmering technique.

Simmering Emotional Preparation life during Emotional Activation parallels that of balance. It is important to allow yourself to balance out your emotional life and keep yourself ready. Activating your emotions during an Emotional Preparation time period is often unavoidable. Your emotions are not available to you to control but there to be present with you.

Befriending and accepting that your emotions will activate with very little influence during Emotional Preparation is part of learning the craft of Emotional Preparation. If your emotional life is exhaling before the call to take part in the filming event than it is the sole job of the actor to redirect and keep redirecting their inner emotional life keeping themselves prepared internally yet not expressing externally what they are going to in complete fullness.

Simmering is not about control as it is about balance. Understanding what you can tell yourself that will level out your emotional life and what you are able to do to stay calm holding back larger activating factors that you will use right before having to release your Emotional Preparation into a scene or an exercise.

Simmering Emotional Preparation Self stimulation of Inner Emotional Life or what is referenced as Emotional Preparation is one of the hardest actions of an Actor that can even exist. The only thing harder is holding yourself back from being physical with the other actors if they stimulate you strongly emotionally.

The truth about this action is that in fact it could be considered in action. But for all those who are familiar often times the things not said can speak volumes and the emotional life of the ‘unexpressed’ often is picked up on camera without physicality needing to be present, which is far less true in theater than film.

Emotional preparation for film and theater both involve and use the Simmering techniques in order to achieve fullness in actualizing the internal life of the Actor. Often times the element of calmness is the added ingredient that helps to weave all the other emotional aspects together that both deepens the preparation as well as holds together the preparation until the desired time of the production.

Sitting within the environment of reality is the actuality of Simmering. You don’t know how long you will be Simmering unless the production is willing to act on your cue and you get to go when you are ready as you do in classroom environments. Younger talent often gets to the place of emotional overwhelm more quickly so there is a careful thing that Directors and industry people must understand when working with talent.

The delicacy of emotional life and patience needed to learn to provide an emotionally rich ballpark of emotion nearly on cue for a Director and Production is a skillful and artistic endeavor that only the brave will achieve. It is however achievable to many who are willing to put the work in and that is the reason why the teachings in this book stress the reality of having to learn about yourself as an included ingredient in Emotional Preparation.

We each sooth our internal selves differently. We become adults over our own emotional lives during the preparation of Emotional Preparation. We accept what we are going through as we layer and skillfully craft our abilities to

Emotional life is authentic. There is no need to castrate yourself emotionally feeling or adding more pressures to yourself in trying to find a more authentic emotional life to work with. That deepening of emotional life will occur in natural due course as you work with the simmering techniques of emotional preparation.

Emotional life tends to take place in times that are inconvenient and inconsistent until you are able to work with yourself in a way that grants yourself both acceptance and patience towards your craft and art of Acting and Emotional Preparation.

There is no expectation that is warranted except for the focus of desire to be open and honest with yourself and what you are going through during the period of self-stimulation. The authenticity of self-stimulation is enough to accept yourself as who you are and realize the reality of your emotional preparation only after you leave the stage of this self-stimulation process.

Only after the work has been leapt from and you have entered into the reality that is right in front of you within an exercise or a scene can anyone really be aware of if your emotional preparation was successful or added colors to the artwork in film or stage work that you have contributed.

Regardless of how many generations you have done this work that will remain consistent that it will always remain a self-discovery or a shared discovery process.

If you simmer your work to the point of dissipating it, you will undo yourself in a way that will leave yourself emotionally exhausted and empty before you have started the exercise or the scene. Simmering is the technique of finding the activation desired in the ballpark of emotional life that is expected or desired, not about control but balance.

If you are not finding activations within your time of simmering you may not be in an active state of Simmering Emotional Preparation. The tricky thing is that you need to ride the lines between what it is to find activating qualities and ride the line of what it is to balance the emotions that you have discovered.

The simmering has to be included in the ability of self-discovery and self-stimulation in order to mature the emotional life of the desired ballpark as well as to time the preparation with the desire of the production or film set you are Emotionally preparing for the scene or exercise. If you are not in an active state of self-discovery than you are not in a state of active Simmering Emotional Preparation.

Self-stimulation during simmering moment is the reality of doing the work and not escaping the process of staying ready for the emotional ballpark desired by the production or the Director. If you are not involved in an active process during the Simmering state of doing of Emotional Preparation than you are cheating yourself from adding more of your inner emotional life that you have to offer into your work.

It is vital to expressing your entire talent to stay active during the simmering process of Emotional Preparation and to continue to balance the unbalanced emotional aspects until the final conclusion of yourself stimulation process.

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This simmering process of active doing is another building block of realizing not only your inner talent but the ability of naturally implementing dichotomy into your work and complexity into your work. There is an awe of realization that can occur when you are willing to explore so freely realizing that you do not need extremes in order to achieve the balanced state of being within the emotional ballpark of existence.

This balance regards your acting partners to be able to pull from either side of your Emotional Preparation and allows literally your acting partners to influence the expression of yourself through the interaction with each other, whether your acting partners are skilled in doing so or not.

The gift of the preparation of the simmering and balancing of emotional life is the building block of all sorts of reality building procedures that you can discover within the Emotional Preparation processes. Many of which, the processes, that you will be able to feel as though you are inventing yourself because your ability to so personally intertwine with the learning process itself.

You will be able to achieve your own version or your own tweaked version of your own Simmering process within the very active doing of Emotional Preparation.

When one realizes that the Simmering process which in action holds back your emotional life from expressing in fullness your inner expression is in fact an active process of widening and deepening your ability to balance the inner expression of yourself, the maturity level of oneself really develops into their full selves within the Emotional Preparation process.

The Simmering Emotional Preparation process at this level in the work which takes time to achieve, and much practice allows the Actor opportunity to arrange their talent which would not have been possible if they have just had acted upon their very first real impulse.

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The self-stimulation of Simmering allows the opportunity to the Actor who is told to wait by the production instead of the hinderance that often frustrates the Actor as productions often stall during filming or theater runs.

Without the correction of balance, the self-discovery process ends, and a waiting game only takes place within the Actor. The truthfulness is that every delay within the filming procedures and theatrical stage levels is a delay and opportunity to deepen, widen and strengthen your inner emotional work for the part that you are about to do.

The real talent of being able to gift all of your inner stimulation during the Emotional Preparation and Simmering time period to the other actor is the freedom to let go and trust that you were actually actively doing something during the Simmering process.

Often times when you do this technique correctly the Director or crew might at first believe that it is the other actor that is so good at pulling out emotional life from you, but in fact it was your own inner stimulation that created the moments of spectacular Ness initially, and that assisted the other Actor to achieve the results that you both achieved together.

Waiting Before Activation, Waiting after Activation, Then Entering the Imaginary Circumstances and Interacting in Acting.
Make the point also that Impulse | Activation has not yet been hit, during this waiting periods.

Needs cleaned up. – –
Adding Timing:
This is a really personal thing to advise on, but the understanding is simple and doable. The point here is that you are staying relaxed in the emotion and allowing yourself to saturate in it. Secondly you are being patient with it and not pushing into it.
Your emotional life floats otherwise it would be hard to be a human being. There is an inherent quality to yourself that stays consistent as long as the pressure is kept off the topic. Waiting to keep the pressure off the topic is a key to prolonging its need to output.

• Make the point here that minutes are not a long time to wait on an Emotion.
  Make the point also that Impulse has not yet been hit, during this waiting periods.
  If you think that waiting on an emotional element for five minutes is a tough endeavor, you can really wonder what actually happens in your body when you wait for one week or a full month.
  When we really look at Simmering Emotional Preparation and break down that we are allowing our state of being to stay relaxed.
  Let’s look at an example that a man has to go to a practitioner because he has grief.
  He goes to the muscle emotional testing responder and tests for why he is unable to express his grief. After a series of questions

Clearing Yourself to have an Experience

Clearing yourself to have an Experience

In an order format- 1st Clearing of self – , 2nd is allowance of discovery?
ORDER THIS NUMBER 3
Emotional Preparation – for a prior event – rename this :
Being Prepared for inviting a new experience in your life is the Action of Clearing the Self and allowing new discoveries.

Carrying over an emotional experience without the experience will result in a flatline of inner life that does not have deep influence over the reality of the real time scene. Often times ‘dramatized’ gossip or events that do not actually have a rich experience in fact are only storylines of intellect that the Actor has belief in. The convinced aspect of the Actor will carry over from Emotional Preparation, but the experience aspect will be flatlined because no actual experience happened.

The reality of real-life experiences and if they were experiences or just gossip events is critical thing to understand. Often times people come close to having the experience and escape the experience of an event due to personal fear or they were just capable of escaping from the emotional happening.
The experience part of life is the storyline and complexities and details to the experience and not the essence of the emotional experience.
When to use Emotional Preparation: (all ways utilizing Simmering Emotional Preparation)
Emotional Preparation is the time that you stop or slow down your life to readjust yourself to a state of being that matching or works with a scene or exercise. It is entirely the work of the Artist or Actor unless receiving help from an assistant like a director or Acting Coach.
One can utilize Emotional Preparation time periods for a varying degree of results and a wide range of set ups and states of beings. Mastering the use of Emotional Preparation is a key to being thought of as being a professional Actor and being thought of as having ‘talent’.
Additionally, one can utilize Simmering Emotional Preparation to add an entire set of circumstances which occurred prior to the scenes entrance. The illusion that you have just came from a place of being elsewhere or having had a prior experience is the illusion of being capable of bringing over the threshold into the imaginary circumstances the emotional being and experience of the prior occurrence or place that you have just came from.
Note: Many actors at best only utilize the Emotional Preparation principles when there is a strong situational occurrence just prior to the beginning of the scene. As it is the actor’s choice to choose when to utilize Emotional Preparation it is recommended to always use emotional preparation even if it is only to relax before the scene. The emotional consistency and relaxation benefit will still occur even if there is no drastic emotional event prior to the scene.
Understanding that a quiet time before every scene does nothing harmful to the Actor is a maturity in stature of the Artist who understands the subtleties of the Artistic world of Acting. The range in which the Actor can utilize the Emotional Preparationary time period is so wide and stretches so far.

Simmering Emotional Preparation is an incredible unlimited canvas with no restrictive limits. It can range to simply a quiet break or breather before entering a scene to an inwardly explosive Emotional outcry which will commence as soon as interaction with a scene partner commences.
PART OF 3RD SECTION

The Isolation Exercise

The Isolation Exercise is part of the Simmering Emotional Preparation Technique because it is the self-study of the Actor. Learning Techniques that can create the Simmering of Emotion during the Isolation of Emotional Preparation.
Isolation in order to Achieve Emotional Life
(Isolation to gain concentration, Isolation to intensify Emotion)
IF: This exercise is done safely and properly no harm no fouls occur

Goal: To be able to hear everything around you but not respond to it. It is the ability to stay in a non-reactive place of being. 2nd goal: Be in a place where you can start to affect yourself internally and start to do your Simmering Emotional Preparation 3rd Stay in a place where you can be ready to be activated, but in a relaxed zone until you are needed.
-whatever you initiate with the isolation exercise it will expand within you. If you leave someone and isolate yourself into a condition than you will expand the work of
The Isolation Exercise is the 1st step to the series of steps above. Getting to the place of isolation where you are not being stimulated by outside stimuli is the step that is the exercise. Never taking for granted this initial procedure is a wise idea for an Artist or an Actor questing to really discover the work that is inside of them.
Isolation is encouraged in most cases during times of Emotional Preparation as long as the isolation is for the purpose of concentrating the intension of the filming emotional life. In most cases Isolation and time away from regular life can be and assist you in achieving a richer emotional life and help to ready the Emotional Preparation that is desired for the production.
Isolation is a component that involves no stimulation in order to achieve. Isolation is the blank canvas of quiet that allows your own thoughts to linger about within you without the added input of others who are around you.
Timing isolation to occur just after having an experience can illuminate the experience for incredible internal reflection and realization of self and experience. The reverberation of the experience can be clear to you in a placement of self-isolation.
Isolation can ensure that the thoughts and ideas that you have are genuinely part of your own ideas and stimulations. Isolation is sometimes the only way to do certain things that can ensure that you are working from yourself and not others’ ideas or realities.
Isolation can be an incredible asset to the Emotional Preparation process and can achieve internal reset to ascertain a depth of reality that may be difficult to achieve without isolating yourself by yourself or in a private setting with another who is helping you to achieve your emotional level of difficulty.
Isolation is not for a permanent life condition but for a discovery of what remains after a time period of isolation has been solidified an emotional level.

Example: For instance, an Actor needs to achieve their ability of true loneliness for a part in order to achieve the ability to find that loneliness they partake in an isolation. The isolation takes them away from daily stimulation so they can establish a pattern of being without the regular day to day influence that they are normally used to.
The achievement period is the time they realize that they have found their own way of doing something that was not normal to them before the period of isolation. They work hard to establish new ways of being so they can achieve new ways of being still. In this stillness they achieve and develop into a slowed down approach and way of being within the new set of circumstances or explored emotional life. The period of time of isolation is not a period of time of inactivity with self but a time of inactivity from others.
Many times, Actors take time away like this they will turn to alcohol or narcotics to fill voids they don’t want to or are uncomfortable dealing with. This is a time to not explore substance stimulation but instead time to assure that you are choosing the choices and influences that are decisions that you are making. Or in a way of a part that you can examine the reasons why you are feeling the way that you are in relationship to a part that you are currently in preparation for.
Utilizing Isolation technique after finished a part is also a useful way to get back to your own normal way of doing things again. A highly recommended way of returning to your normal self is to take some time in an isolated environment to readjust yourself to your normal behaviors and way of being.
Isolation is not an inactive doing but a reduced stimulation environment that allows you to find yourself better by yourself without the influence of others that may also influence your behavior.
Isolation in order to achieve solidarity:
Isolation to achieve solidarity of a part or a piece of your Emotional Preparation is often a wise thing to achieve. It is important to understand that while building up emotional life within a role that layering is unavoidable to the skilled and artful Actor. The desire to include all possibilities of the script will leave you with a desire to achieve every possible aspect and combination of possibility of it.
To the most thorough Actor who wants to achieve their abilities to the maximum abilities of their talents they need to understand that strategic isolations can help to build up roles as well as dismantle them after the part is finished.
Isolation to achieve the ability of new habits after a series of exercises and improvisations to continue to work out a part to find the behaviors that allow the Actor to express more of who they are under a certain life condition is acceptable way of exploring Isolation.
During times after a role is completed it may be very important to take the isolation period seriously enough to simply do it. Simply take yourself away from daily stimulations that were a norm around the part that you were partaking in. This is also a great time to review the experience of the part that you went through and to without taking a break take a breather back into the life that is yours to live.
Assimilating the changes to your own person that were achieved from the part that was entailed is a wise way to update to who you have become from doing the role that you have just completed. This process will also make more up to date future efforts for parts that will encompass more of yourself in the future and will achieve the ability to include the new version of yourself which will always occur after each role you do if you are really actively involved in the role of the parts that you do. Human growth will always result after a role if you were really in the role to begin with.
Taking Isolation time will also allow you to achieve an accounting of the effect of having done the part and allow your own assimilation of how doing that part has affected you. Again, this has to do with finding a balance and not undoing an experience. Finding a balance through the lack of stimulation allows you to adjust to the stimulation of the experience of what you have gone through in the part and allows you to catch up with the growth that you have already achieved by doing the role or part. The finding of the balance after the part has finished is the personal adjustment that you make and the choosing of the decisions of how you will decide to adjust yourself to be inclusive of the experience instead of trying to erase the experienced that you have had is the key.
Inclusive Isolation allows you to fundamentally achieve the realization of the results of the experience that you have in actually already achieved. It also allows you to the realization of the growth from the achievement of the doing that has already commenced. This causes you to allow yourself to take the time of reflection needed to absorb fully the reality of the achievement. Just as importantly this isolation time period allows you to absorb how you could have achieved more with a more balanced approach which is the maturity of having done the role.
This is the step in every process in life that steps back out of a survival aspect and into a un-expectation aspect where you are not being stimulated with any expected result except for the result that you already have experienced.
Involving Isolation to get into a role and a period of isolation after a role is ideal as it can strategically help to build who you are as a person in your own way without the influence and input from others.
Sensory Saltwater Float Tanks can be used in a regimented way that allows the experiences of the previous film or exercises experience to be easily reflectable in the quietness of the sensory chamber. Also, quiet soundproof rooms can also be an added environment that can help one become quiet with themselves during an isolation process. Most importantly is the reasonable amount of time needed to achieve the ability of self-reflection and attaining a normalizing approach including the experience of the filming or theater production rather than trying to subtract the experience from your life integrating it.
The Isolation Exercise is an exercise that can be done on the stage spaces where you plan to film and in spaces that you rehearse. It is an approach to silence that we must cherish in realizing who and what we are as people and how we have been affected by prior stimulation.

• Expand this to actually be an exercise ?
  Examples:

The Study of Simmering Emotional Preparation applies to Visceral acting responses to train Actors how to carry greater Depth of Emotion into their work.

The Visceral Warning, Overstimulation

The visceral Warning:
Visceral Results and Dealing with Visceral Responses

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Stage Freight is often a visceral response that Actors can have before or during a production. The achievement abled that the Actor can success is as incredible as being able to turn the tables on past unwanted successes of Visceral connection to their Art such as Stage Freight. Actors’ nerves can be sought after in a way that helps to propel the Actors capabilities rather than holds back their capabilities by means of understanding and working with Visceral Response. This is truly a victory which enables the empowerment of the Actor to obtain.

Choosing when to exit your visceral Emotional Preparation is a skill that will be learned with time and practice. Gaining the experience of preparation is only in the art of doing it with cognition and awareness where appropriate. Emotional Preparation, especially that which becomes visceral, is an increasing of emotional speed up to your limit where an adjustment will have to be made or a leap of faith into an exercise or scene will commence.
Working up softly to having your Emotional Preparation work become Visceral is key. If you achieve Visceral results too quickly it will emotionally freak you out as it is the most intense ways of Emotional Preparation and needs to be done in a way that you know how to get yourself out of the emotional life as easily as you have gotten into your emotional life.

The study of Visceral Emotional Responses is a HUGE Deal for learning the Simmering Emotional Preparation.
That being said, Visceral Results are Felt Emotional Responses in the work of Acting just prior to doing either scenes or exercise work. Often enough a musician can incur Visceral results while playing an instrument or even before entering the stage to begin a concert even without substances or alcohol. Visceral results during an artistic endeavor are really what is ‘feeling the vibes’ of your artwork or experience.
Rushing to feel the vibes is not recommended as the vibes in acting can leave you in tears for several hours without stopping if you do it with enough intensity and skill. Pushing emotion during Emotional Preparation can cause you Headaches, Panic Attacks, general mood swings can all be results of Visceral Emotional Preparation’s pushed too far. Often times anger erupts within you if you push yourself to expect Visceral results and judge yourself as to not having gotten them.
In truth Visceral Emotional Preparations are a gift to the one who is skilled and crafty enough to be personal to the point of their truthful honesty. It is not an expected result of Emotional Preparation but a gift to the preparer that has accurately accessed themselves. Visceral Emotional Preparation is also a frustration to an Emotional Preparer that thinks too highly of themself or rushes themself to achieve a physical sensation failing to realize that not all Emotional Preparations are equal.
Temporarily losing your logical thinking is a visceral component of the work that few ever speak about. Thankfully we have more than logical thinking capabilities and emotional thinking capabilities unless they get burnt out due to overworking ourselves emotionally.
Shaking during an exercise or during a scene could come from nerves but it could also be a Visceral Emotional Preparation that causes the results of having the shakes.
We train Actors to acknowledge behavior because we are sensitive people. Any visceral signs during the film work, scene, or exercise needs to be an immediately prior to work off to your scene partner. Sweating is another. Profusely Sweating. Vomiting or feeling a need to want to vomit is another visceral response to an emotional life of depth. As rough of a statement and reality that vomiting, or gaging might be it is a rare but an actual occurrence that can be the result of deep Emotional Preparation although most Emotional Preparations are far more Suttle. Blushing is another example that is far more reasonable.
If you have achieved the results of Visceral Emotional Preparation than you are experiencing the height of Emotional Preparation. If you are feeling the effects viscerally of your Emotional Preparation than you can feel free to make sure that the other is acknowledging your behavioral existence. It is your right as an artist to expect them to acknowledge your behavior in this way and even call that out during a scene if they are working without noticing it.
The viscerally of the Emotional Preparation gives you the right to include your own behavior within the results of the exercise or scene that you do because it is a forced action of expression and not a thought doing of self. Your talent has awakened you to the point of not being able to resist your own emotional response. However inclusive you are with your awakened and active emotional life your attention still needs to be inclusive of your partners reality. If you are capable of such high standards than take the chance to stand out because it is a very thin tight rope at that height of reality.
The inclusion of your viscerally cannot be at the cost of being inclusive of your partner or your surroundings. The emotional existence of self needs to merge with the awareness of all that surrounds you and that which is asking of your attention. This is part of the reason why Handicaps are so difficult to include in Acting. If the Actor has truthfully found their handicap, they have achieved it through visceral Emotional Preparation or nearly so. The habitualness of practice of the doing of the handicap becomes intertwined with the emotional condition that accompanies the handicapped state of being. This is a secret to the Actors who perform a state of existence instead of finding a state of being in their acting.
The truth of Visceral Emotional Preparation is the same truth that emotion can cripple the physical well-being of a very happy wellbeing of an Actor without performing emotion. It may take months to a year to achieve but to the right actor to the part it is achievable.
The physical symptoms of PTSD are unhealed emotional components that science is still discovering the truth behind. The physical sometimes triggers the emotional and the emotional sometimes triggers the physical. This Visceral ability of accessing self is the reality of emotional experimentation which allows the limitless ability of discovery. This physical and emotional reality of triggering is a worthwhile study for a keen Actor who wants to better understand the ways that humanity carries scars that bind them. The type of Actor that may be more interested in such approaches and discoveries are Actors who want to achieve closer relations to those they might know with similar real-life issues.
Interestingly Visceral components are possible of achieving using Emotional Stimulation in areas that an Actor has not yet explored in life as well as Acting. The undercurrent of emotional life is always beneath a visceral sensation. The only way to fully explore the underneath’s of the emotional life is by letting go of focusing on it and entering a scenario where there is a possibility of someone becoming sensitive to it without expectation.

Initial Visceral Components
Initially however you will feel tingle or impulse recognitions that occur while you are alone with very little other stimulation during your Emotional Preparation times. It could be a very slight shortness of breath as the reality of the preparation sits in. As we prepare emotionally, we may build up a tolerance to some stimulations which is a natural occurrence the deeper achievement is realized within the work.
Embrace all Visceral components of the work. Don’t feel like you need to deny anything that is becoming actualized or physical. You will notice just after physical sensations that your clarity of focus will intensify if you relax into the visceral reality of the Emotional Preparation. Others will not be able to notice the Emotional Preparation results unless they are really close to you. Most people are not as skilled at reading emotional life and quiet honestly is only a handful of people in the industry that are capable of seeing what a camera sees without a camera Lense to see it. Understand that the camera will pick up what you feel and translate your emotional ability even if others do not notice it.
Visceral contact with or during Emotional Preparation needs to be encouraged as the physicality of the Emotional Preparation experience is its own teacher to the student who is preparing.
The last component of Visceral Emotional Preparation is the certainty that one can understand within themselves that they are doing the work with their emotional being and not their intellectual being. You can achieve the reality of actualizing, knowing for certain that you are not in your head or intellectualizing a result. The Visceral preparation will help to sort the intellectual components of Simmering Emotional Preparation in a way to allow you to enter the work with a final stroke of depth rather than thought. The following of thought is not a visceral occurrence. Being able to sort out the logical component of thinking and take it out of your work before your work begins is a benefit to the Actor who wants to strive to be artistically inclined and not mentally achieving. Mental achievement within the confides of the work at this point becomes counter instinctual and being able to deal with that before entering the scene clarifies the intension of the artist which resides inside of the Actor.
Examples:
Suzanna has an uncle who is a veteran with PTSD. She has spent as much time with him as she has been able to but often finds it frustrating to be with him. She has listened to the lessons written about Visceral response and is open to the experience of experiencing parts of PTSD as a part of an acting role that she is working on.
Being a student of the work, she has written and recorded experiences with her uncle in her journal. She does not understand how it is possible to experience PTSD, so she does more research than just the experiences with her uncle. She is aware however that there will be a emotional version of PSTD within herself if she can study and work her Emotional Preparations deeply enough. Suzanne recognizes that the result of her work may or may not be achievable.
Suzanna knows that this emotional experiment will take month to achieve at the earliest and could take longer including more research than she has already done. Visceral responses in Emotional Preparations often choose the Actors after years of practice and comfortability.
2 months into the work she is doing on the PTSD Visceral Preparation she feels the emotional life take over her body in an experimental way where she kind of has control of it but does not have control of it completely. She speaks to her teacher about the experience and the teacher instructs her to add a physicality to herself once that visceral quality returns in her preparation. Instructing her to achieve the physicality by the impulse of the emotional life so there is a substance of emotional quality behind the physicality. She chooses to shake when feeling that visceral feeling of sensation.
Several times that week she is capable of doing a PTSD Visceral Preparation which she encourages the emotional release of by the physical action of shaking as she has seen her uncle do himself.
During an exercise work in class, she goes to the door and without telling anyone what she is planning she goes into an Emotional Preparation and gets the visceral sensation again. She encourages the emotionalized state of being with the added shaking of her physical state and knocks on the door to her scene partners for a purpose also that achieves all the requirements of a classroom exercise.
Suzanna literally brings in with full life the symptoms and emotional state of PTSD into the classroom exercise which surprises her partner. The involuntary emotional aspects of being get enhanced by the attention that her scene partner places on her. Her mood swings with the attention that her partner places on her as she keeps her attention inclusive of her partner and keeps herself physically safe at the same time. Suzanna tries to empathize with her partners reality of having to do something and the frustrated look on her scene partners face she tries to empathize with., then Suzanna snaps back into a PTSD response to her partners behavior. She is surprised by her own reaction as well as her scene partner. Her mind at first thinks she may have done something wrong, but she focuses on her partner regardless of when her logic creeps into her work.
The sensitivity of Suzanna seems to be heightened as the state of emotional being of Suzanna is affected by all that is real to her. Her partner adjusts to the mood swings of Suzanna as well throughout the exercise.

Suzanna’s experience of several minutes of exercise work has been the culmination of months of work towards the ability to Emotionally Prepare in a Ball Park of being that involves the homework of PTSD and the use of Visceral Emotional Preparation.
The seriousness of approach, research and willingness to be affected if the occurrence happens during the Emotional Preparation is the result that could have been only an education and not a rich experience. However, in the case of Suzanna she was able to experience a result that was similar to living with the symptoms of PTSD. As she works with the Emotional Preparation and the part of the Handicap, she achieves the ability to be more capable of remaining in the effects of her Emotional Preparation for longer periods of time without the initial exhaustion that occurred the first times she was able to reach the emotional level. After the building up of her own ability she can literally achieve a realistic level of being with the state of PTSD for a film in the future. The incredible achievement and effort it took for her to be able to do this difficulty was not only her hard work but the happenstance that occurred within her emotional being that allowed this to happen. If she was doing the work towards something that was less inclined to result within her she would not have the same outcome.
She found a part within her by working within herself.
Example Two:
Suzanna works on understanding cerebral palsy. Does the research for several weeks to try to identify emotional aspects of herself that she can identify within the aspects of the ailment? This does not work the same for her and she becomes aware of the result of her efforts are different than the results of the efforts of PTSD.
The Emotional Preparation aspects that she works upon develop into something that is undefined and unclear. She wonders if she is doing the work wrong but then remembers a thing that was taught in one of her classes which is that not all parts are right for every Actor. She doesn’t give up on the working to understand and gets a fine understanding of Cerebral Palsy and the definitions, experiences and effects of the ailment.
If Suzanna was in another school of Acting thought, she would pursue the physicality of doing the Cerebral Palsy without finding the emotional element of the work. Despite the hard work she has done that has given her an appreciation for human beings that live with the ailment she does not pursue the doing of the Ailment or Handicap.
Suzanna has felt the experience of surprise of the inner life of an ailment working within her when she did the PTSD work. She only wants to achieve levels of work that encompass the emotional aspect of self. For whatever reason she does not emotionally identify with the ailment of Cerebral Palsy even though she empathizes with those who have the ailment. The resolve is an outcome of a beginner’s steps to maturity in Acting which does not push the part that is not emotionally realized within the Actor.

PTSD is interesting studies for Actors learning Simmering Emotional Preparation as they are incredible comparisons to responses that can occur during Actor Preparation.

Actors must spend an enormous amount of time doing the part and learning the parts that they do. The more truthful the Actors are to their natural inclinations the more able they are to continue the success that they really do rather than making excuses for things that they really don’t do well. Some teachers would encourage a physicality to an Actor before the physicality can be developed with a direct link to an emotional aspect of self. Other teachers will respect that not all Actors have the same inclinations and realize that emotionally finding parts of interest is a far better approach especially when dealing with delicate behaviors which also involve emotional aspects of being with an ailment.
Example Three:
Suzanna works with her emotional preparation and journaling and finds that she has written a long segment in her journal when the topic of Drunk people is subject. She does not drink alcohol as she knows that her father drank lots when she was a child because of the stories that have been told to her over her life and the pictures she has seen.
Suzanna has an interest in understanding why people become Alcoholics. She does some initial research by watching some videos of people online under the term “Drunk”. She is enamored by the freedom that she sees within the people while intoxicated and wonders if this might be something that she can achieve in her acting without the substances.
Suzanna’s research tends to really extend in time while studying it. It is clear to her that the possibilities are identifiable to her emotional interests. She isolates some key emotional factors of drunkards that she gets from her research. These dynamics are emotional dynamics of being that she takes an inclination to.
Suzanna Emotionally Prepares on a dynamic of interest which is an attitude that most people experience when intoxicated, the freedom to do or say as they want to without restriction if they are offending another or not. She appetites that element and finds that within her is a very deep attitude of expression. She adds to her experimentation the other dynamics of interest to her that are common amongst those with intoxication additions.
She isolates some of these Emotional Preparations and uses them within exercises in her classwork as she learns the freedom that they offer to her work. Suzanna is usually a very polite student, so the teacher is aware that it is her Emotional Preparation that has caused the difference in behavior within her exercises.
After some time, she learns to include many of the drunk factors into one Emotional Preparation and can feel those elements are resonating within her. She does have a knack for that combination of emotional mixtures. After speaking to her teacher about her Simmering Emotional Preparation success her teacher encourages her to physicalize her balance with a vertigo experience of allowing her attitude to play with her sense of balance.
The achievement of implementing her hard work and drunken dynamics of being within her Emotional Preparation with the added behavior that sends her balance exaggerated when she gets emotionally over the top of expression amplifies her emotional states and activates her voice to even sound drunk without any substances or alcohol. Her sense of being has been affected to that state of achieving the Impediment of Drunken Intoxication.

The real truth from working from an internal place first is the finding of parts that actually stimulate the reality and inner desires of an Actor. How terrific is it that Suzanna is able to achieve the realization of being in a state that has caused pain in her life and conquer the ability to victor over the difficulty through Emotional Preparation. The truth is that the part was in her to begin with and working a process that allowed her to realize the emotional aspects and dynamics of the impediment allowed her even more freedom when the time came to do the physicalizing of the experience.
Finding the parts that are right to do amongst your own inner emotional life is the reality of working from within before building outwards the realities and freedoms that build the role of the Actor. The honesty it took of Suzanna to allow herself to realize that she had an inclination towards in toxification despite her history with in toxification within her family life is the honesty that helped Suzanna to realize her own dreams of Acting.
From this point forward Suzanna is in a place where she has developed two different difficulties that she can bring into her career at any time an opportunity presents itself.

Acting Changeover Step

Changeover Step
(Finding Focus Step)

You can do this ‘Changeover Step’ at any point in your work.

1.) Release your attention upon yourself (it may feel a bit weird and neurotic)
With all access feelings.
2.) Find something to focus upon.

If you remember that at any point in your work, you can do these two steps your work will be added to every time.

The more of this type of transitions you have in your work the more your work will flourish. The more ‘Changeover Steps’ in your work the more your work will have individual moments that add upon one another.

Clarifying the Instruction:
1.) Release your attention upon yourself. Don’t worry about anything about yourself. If you have feelings just let go of them. This is meaning don’t try to express them. You need to let go of them which will mean that they will automatically be expressed once you release them. There is no specific way that you need to speak or express your feelings just release.
2.) Find something to focus upon. Don’t worry about what you notice. Don’t think about what you notice. Simply notice something and focus upon it.

With Emotional Preparation
Initially when you begin working a scene or an exercise this Changeover Step is about putting into action the work of your Emotional Preparation. Since you have now achieved activation through Self Stimulation (your Emotional Preparation) you are in a state where you are intent about something, or you are feeling something internal. You now want to achieve Interaction.
The first step to achieving Interaction is forgetting about your Emotional Preparation and what it is doing to you. Paying no mind to your Emotional State and find a focus upon something that you notice.
Depending upon how much you have a tendency to be a thinker or intellect you may have to practice the first part of the initial changeover Step with forgetting about yourself and about how you are feeling. Don’t pay yourself any mind to what you are going through and trust that by following to step two there will be a carry over.
As Time unfolds working with this technique you first take the brave step of forgetting about watching yourself and then take the step of finding something to focus upon about the other person.
Emotional Preparations carry through and over into what we focus on next the majority of the time. We are building the two-step process of the “Changeover Step” to trust instinctually that our non-visible Emotions will carry over into the scene work. The adjustments to your preparation as we adjust for the roles we do and the scenes we do will be a clear result to what we actively find able to Emotionally Prepare upon.
We must as Artists understand that it is the unconscious emersion of ourselves into our acting that actually resonates when we are Acting. The more we can stimulate intentionally and then just prior to working both relax and forget mental intellect of the more we will carry over unconscious emotional elements into our work.
The less that we track ourselves intellectually and the more we are affected by our focuses of the other person the more emersed we will be in the work. We can trust that the audience sees us even when we are not watching ourselves. Learning not to watch ourselves will take time and patience of working that specific way to achieve it.
Most acting environments do not teach intellectually not to be conscious of yourself. Your goals should be to gain and be conscious everyone around you trusting that your existence is self-evident. The best acting is presence. Just having the answers to the other questions/comments even in unspoken ways is being intelligent during scenes, rather than being intellectual during scenes.

What about Complicated Scenes:

Working with Emotional Preparation means that you are able to keep the simplicity of your scenes about the other person. Fantastic acting is about keeping your attention off of yourself. The emotional substance and points of view of your work are clearer to the audience when you are keeping your attention on the other person rather than yourself.
In complicated scenes you do the work to break down emotional complexities. Breaking the circumstances down into understanding and sections. This way you don’t try to represent the story but instead use Emotional Preparation to stimulate each section of it within you before you let go into living the experience.
The more you can make your work simple the more brilliant it will be. This way because you have done the work to break down the sections you are then able to Emotionally stimulate yourself so that you stimulate the area of interest of each scene and then turn the scene over to your partner and not your own self focus.
Even in a scene where your partner doesn’t care about you and your upset about it your focus remains on your partner instead of yourself. You are watching and paying attention to your partners responses rather than watching and caring about your own responses.
Even the most complicated of scenes you want to find something about the other person. We need to recognize how counterintuitive this may be for some. After spending so much time activating something real within yourself during Emotional Preparation to turn all over your focus and attention to another may seem ludicrous.
It may not seem a natural to do so much work and then release it trusting that it is still active in you but that is exactly how to work the best-connected way in acting. Learning the habits of focusing on the other may take months to achieve of near daily practice.
Emotionally prepare without attempting to emote or put your emotional onto another is the key. You are learning to keep the complicated emotional qualities where they belong which is in your Emotional Preparation rather than acted out gestures.

Training (Trusting) your Neurosis.
When it is instructed as a suggestion that you want to ‘release’ your emotional preparation just prior to work you don’t release the sticky emotional feeling you release the intellectual attention you had on yourself.
Taking intellectual focus off of yourself unless the scenes is written differently then returning to the two-step process focusing on your partner is key. You are training as an Actor to trust your Neurosis.
You have just stimulated Neurotic elements in your work of Emotional Preparation. It may be the middle of the scene where a way emerges nearly by itself that is often unspoken but very clear to the audience and to the happenings of the moment what the clear meaning is.
You need to train yourself to take the uncomfortable step of experiencing the neurotic side in the safety of your own cocoon without harm to yourself. Then allow the ability for the emotional charge to come into your own work.
Train yourself to focus upon something other than your own responses. As you are having responses pay attention to the responses of what is external to you. Focusing outside of yourself will work your acting focusing muscles and concentration.
The more you can practice this switch over the better you will be able to carry over improvisational elements and real emotional elements into the work with fluidity. By practicing this over and over you will achieve less ‘acting’ and ‘performing’ in your acting work. Instead, you will be au natural.
Whether you are actually utilizing natural talent or a technique of the ability to change your focus from your personal points of view over to another focus doesn’t matter to the audience. The result will appear exactly the same as if you were born doing it.
Some of the best Actors ever to have taken to Acting have learned to utilize this technique of redirecting their focus. This is the way to extend your career and create a career in acting.

Changeover Step and Imaginary Circumstances

You must start your work by entering into your own selected Emotional Preparation then enter into the imaginary circumstances. The easier way to do this is to immediately after Emotional Preparation to focus on a detail that captures your interest about the Imaginary Circumstance.
Once you are in the imaginary circumstances you will notice that your thinking has changed from thinking about you own emotions entirely to details about the circumstances that you can’t change or that bother you.
Now that you have entered into the imaginary circumstances you must not stay just ruminating in those circumstances without interaction. Being in a rumination mode with the circumstances will develop neurotic ails and symptoms.
The goal is not to train to become a neurotic but instead to train to learn how to function and be alive being in those circumstances.
If you t- train using isolation methods of emotional preparation you will find that you tend towards neurotic exploration. This needs to be purposed towards the script. The job of the actor is to gain the circumstances of exploring what to do in an alive way under the imaginary circumstances.

Implementing the Change Overstep guarantees that you will not get stuck in ruminating in the circumstances without taking action. If you make an intentional choice to isolate yourself into the circumstances the result needs to be that it awakens the scene within you once you start to interact. There are only a few circumstances where isolation could be justified.
Realizing that the more time you spend in a circumstance without stimulation the less you will have motivation when you are active is important. Empowering yourself to go deep emotionally does not mean that you need to be subdued or in an unfocused neurotic state. In order to achieve a lively response to the imaginary circumstances you can dig deep to find that activation of meaning within you.
Your goal within in a scene is not to release a thought to be accepted emotional state in your acting. Your goal within a scene is to release a personalized meaning within your work. If you understand emotionally the meaning the emotion will be there without much effort.
At the same time if you are being affected by certain things and you are trying to avoid an emotional response interacting with the circumstances or your partner should warrant your expressions. You should be able to count on your partners response to put you back into expression mode even if you want to resist it because of how it is affecting you. Whatever puts you back into the truth about how you feel regardless of how awful it makes you feel is the creative desire of the project.

ACTING CLASSES INFO: HERE!

Note:
Every time that you feel that the ‘focus’ of the work is undirected or ‘not working’ than return to the task of finding a focus about the other you are working with. This is a sure and absolute way to gain back the function that you need to be able to stay alert to what is going on in the scenes.

Question:
What if I don’t want to let go of my emotion or my Emotional Preparation once I have it?
Answer:
Then you will not have the experience of the scene. The only way to have the experience of the scene is to let go of everything prior to the scene and experience it. If you use your Emotional Preparation to activate something in yourself and let it be as you focus on something other than your Emotional Preparation than you can achieve having both your Emotional Preparation and your scene.
There is no way to hold onto your Emotional Preparation tightly and have the full experience. The experience is always about the interaction not the emotion. The experience will be an alive Realtime occurrence. You must be willing to let go of the emotion in order to have the experience.

Change Over Step Summary

If you change your acting technique to allow yourself to have the patience to use the “Changeover Step” you will gift your own acting work more than you will realize.
The “Changeover Step” is both the way to leap from your Emotional Preparation to start your work and the way to get back on track with having a real time living occurrence in your acting.
Be courageous enough to be willing to take the ride without controlling the steering wheel or the experience. Let the real time occurrence steer the mechanism of your acting and influence it as you experience it.
When the experience overwhelms you because it is an occurrence that is happening to you rather than you are controlling it, be patient do step one, then do step two. Allowing yourself to change with the experience and move on through the experience is key.
Don’t get stuck on emotion, release it and be alert and present with moving with it. Often releasing emotion and moving on with the present experience just intensifies the scene, which is a desired thing to occur.

Examples:
Curtis is in the middle of a scene. He is struggling to learn acting. He feels nervous about his own point of view. He also sees that his classmate in the exercise and how they are with an attitude that has behavior like a child. Curtis’s concentration is not that great during this scene. In the back of his mind, he remembers the teacher’s direction “When in doubt just do the Changeover Step”.
Curtis adjusts himself and instead of commenting on his own emotional state of being nervous comments on the present moment of his partner who has behavior like a child. What occurs is that a surprise happens in the acting work. The partner does not expect that Curtis who tends to be a little shy would be so forthcoming.
The comment itself moves the exercise forward. Instead of the work becoming about a self-observation it becomes about opinion that both Actors can identify and have an opinion about.
Example:
Pauline is working with activating her own emotions by the self-stimulation techniques of Emotional Preparation. She remembers the time when she stole her father’s watch to sell at a pawn shop to pay for a car accident repair. Remembering this brings her to tears because she really loves her father and is really still disappointed in herself for doing this.
After stimulating strongly, the emotional life Pauline comes into the exercise with focus upon herself. Her partner in acting can see that she is focused upon herself and has a lot of emotion. Pauline continues to focus on herself.
The teacher stops the work. Reminding Pauline of the lesson above she adjusts her work.
Paulines second time working she activates her emotional life which brings her into the full disappointment of how she feelings about remembering what she has done. She then takes the next step and takes her attention off of herself. Pauline focuses on her acting partner.
Her acting partner can see that there is an emotional element in Pauline, but she is alive and engaged with them. Her attention on her partner brings out the emotion in her partner as well. Her partners adjustment to being sensitive to her strengthens the emotion within her.
Pauline feels even worse than she ever has in her life about disappointing her father, yet it is not just that there is something about her acting partner identifying with it. The connection with her partner makes her an open wound and her attention is not on herself but instead is on her father at times but mostly on a curiosity and surprise of seeing her acting partner identifying with her.
Pauline continues the exercise and scene a small reminder pops in her head to continue to do the “Changeover Step”. She recommits to take her own focus off of herself and put it on receiving her partners response. She makes a comment about her partner rather than herself. Pauline says, “I feel you are very sensitive right now”.
What happens is that her acting partner starts to adjust and open up in a way that identifies with her even more. What is seen by the audience is this undercurrent to the work as if the work is layered.
This layered work approach is so easy to achieve after Pauline lets go of having attention on herself.

The added interest and re-investment into the other Actor create layers to the work that is like ripples on a lake or layers to the depth of an ocean.

recalls the time where she grabbed an ex-friend of hers and told that friend that she was thief. Later she found out that her friend was not a thief.

Simmering Emotional Preparation Summary

Simmering Emotional Preparation is the key moment in time before and Actors Acting where Emotions are active, yet, the Actor has to sit and wait to go into the Scene.

Using Simmering Emotional Preparation Techniques the Actor can get the patience needed for their Activated Emotions to just sit there until their work commences.

Emotional Meditation Technique for Actors is recommended to be used along with Simon’s Book on Preparation. Emotional Meditation Technique invites different specific emotions into the Actor and practices the ability to expand them internally. Thus, finding the Depth for the Actor.

Simmering Emotional Preparation uses some of the techniques of internal expansion and release seeping just a little emotion out until the time to put the full activation into the proper place within their acting work.

__________

Acting Classroom

Teacher – When you take drugs, from what I have seen and not felt, you gain an effect without the hard work. In Acting you want to gain from the hard work of activating yourself and the work it takes to stay connected to the other person. It is not desired to perform a gain without the hard work of it being real.
The hard work that you put into achieving your emotional life is directly related to the balance that you will have when you do your acting work.
It is key to do the work of staying connected to the other person during the scene regardless of just wanting to have an emotional affect. Having the emotional affect is easy, it is easy to just perform that you are feeling something. It is far different to have a response while connected to another. Don’t try to take the easy way, like taking drugs by just shortcutting the experience. Instead do the work of being connected and actually gaining the stimulation before you work.
Being open and being affected by another is not like taking drugs, it is a connected experience not a superficial one.

-Scene –
Student -example struggling with the viscerally of their emotional preparation. After about 4 – 5 minutes they relax into a reality rather than over stimulation.
Lesson is to stay connected even with feeling overstimulated. You will find the relaxedness of the other persons impulses and start to interexchange with them rather than just being overstimulated. This takes time to learn to trust. But trust it.
It is both trusting yourself and trusting the other person.
Student – I just kept my attention on them regardless and you are saying that is correct.
Teacher nods.
Teacher – Yes

Teacher – The question you all need to ask yourselves if you are constantly learning different mistakes? Learning different mistakes means that you are progressing nicely. Learning the same mistakes over and over means that you have not found your own technique yet to that specific problem.
You almost always can adjust your Emotional Preparation to solve errors in the work as long as you ingrain yourself with staying connected to your scene partner. If you allow yourself to change to your partner than you can adjust your Emotional Preparation to adjust your own initial reality.
If you are not listening well enough, maybe you need to back off your own emotionality a little or make another adjustment. Making an adjustment to your Emotional Preparation will likely be the key to solving your error.
Oh course, know your lines like the back of your hand.

Student – (next exercise ) same student that overheard the secret at the nail salon.

Add- teacher – so you are playing the piano differently today, so what!?
Student – Are you saying that this is just part of the learning process?
Teacher – yup, I sure am. Are you willing to experience the other person?
Student – Yes.
Teacher – than you are doing the work of connecting to them. If you feel different from one time to another, be forgiving of that. One technique might work for you one way while another technique will work with you another way. This is part of being human rather than trying to be un-naturalistically consistent.
Student – Well that’s what I was concerned about, was my consistency.
Teacher – Just assure yourself that if your attention is on the other person during your scene and you are adjusting them during your scene than you are doing the work. Enjoy experiencing the other person’s perspective of you and giving your own point of view about their perspective regardless of how different it is than another time you have worked.
The student nods their head at the advice given.
The teacher turns around to the student and says “Enjoy the differences. Don’t worry about comparing. Simply live in the moments that you have that you are in.”

• ADD – SECTION – 1st READS –
• Scene example is so bad that teacher says to get the scripts –
  Now sit down and relax, take a couple of breaths. Wrap yourself around the first thought of the script for each of you.
• This teaches first reads – add one other section –
  ? musician kid and Emelia first read.
  Takes a second and goes into how personal
  Teacher – There was more to see in this first read with these preparations then with the scene that you did for us.
  The students have different reactions of aggrievance. It was very clear that there was an emotional weight that the dialogue floated upon.
  Student – It was so simple yet had its own profoundness.
  Teacher – That was because there was something really happening rather than just done. Doing is a piece of acting that must be married to an essence in order to be effective. Emotional Preparation is one process that can marry the essence with the doing.

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