Deryn Warren - How to Make Your Audience Fall in Love with You

Table of Contents

How to Make Your Audience
Fall in Love with You

How to Make Your Audience
Fall in Love with You

Expert Advice on Acting Technique,
Script Analysis, and Taking Risks

Deryn Warren

BRALMS BOOKS
166 North Fuller Ave.
Los Angeles, California 90036

Second edition.
First edition published by Heinemann

Copyright 2013 by Deryn Warren

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

The author and publisher wish to thank those who have generously given permission to reprint borrowed material.

Excerpt from Thelma and Louise by Callin Khouri. Copyright 1991 by Metro Goldwyn Mayor Inc. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Excerpt from Angels in America, Part One: Millenium Approaches by Tony Kushner, Copyright 1992, 1993 by Tony Kushner. Published by Theater Communications Group

Credits continue on p.226 which constitutes an extension of the copyright page.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication Data

Warren, Deryn

How to make your audience fall in love with you: expert advice on acting technique, script analysis and taking risks / Deryn Warren

Printed in the United States of America.

To my children, Alexander (Pie) Griffiths, Rachel Griffiths, Maria Springer, Sophie Springer, and Luke Springer; and to my siblings, Leslie Sarn, ChristopherWarren, Gillian Smith, and KevinWarren and their spouses; and of course the cousins; and Pat Price and family; and Sirie and Jay Palmos; and the Fullers; and the adopted members; and the entire huge extended Warren family of which I am so happy to be a part.

ontents

cknowledgments

No author could have a better experience with a publishing house than I had with Heinemann. I want to thank everyone I worked with there especially Anita Gildea, who so kindly made the transition to Bralms books effortless, and Stephanie Tucker (and Gabriel Turner) for the kindness and expert help. Also Aaron Downey of Matrix Productions, Inc. and copy editor, Kate Petrella. I thank my family and friends who read the manuscript and gave me encouragement and advice: Rachel Griffiths, Sophie and Maria Springer, John Griffiths, Bina Breitner, Robin Hiller-Fuller, Catherine Clinch, Laura Olson and Charlotte Hildebrand who also gave suggestions for the structure. And thank you to Twink Caplan and Larry Hankin for their advice to actors.

ntroduction

Early in my career I was looking for a middle-aged German man to play the part of an elevator operator for a play I was directing in Los Angeles. A young African American man sent a rsum with a note saying he knew he wasnt right for the role, but he wanted to audition anyway. I couldnt resist his enterprise (in those days I was doing my own casting), so I put him on the list. The producers and I had finished auditioning many competent but unexciting middle-aged actors with German accents when the young man came in to read for us. As soon as he began we were in love. He was charming, funny, and appealing.Without lines he showed exactly what he thought of everyone who got in the elevator. He brought so much more to the role than I or the writer had dreamed was possible that we rewrote the part for him.

Since then I have watched hundreds of actors audition, but less than one in twenty made everyone in the room say, Bingo! That actor brought something so unexpected and remarkable to the role that hes got the part.

I wrote this book to make you that actor. Whether youre in a casting room, on stage, in film, or in television, whether youre doing Shakespeare, a sitcom, or a soap opera, I want you to be a better actor than you dreamed was possible. I will show you how to risk, how to go beyond the obvious, and how to use your most exciting self in every role. You will learn to make the best out of every script, deepen your choices, perfect your technique, and get hired. Once you have the job, you will make your audience fall in love with you.

Ways to Make the Audience (and the Casting Director) Fall in Love with You

Use Yourself, Not a Character

We want to see your unique self, not your unique selfs idea of a character.

You are different from everyone else. Your parents, your history, culture, friendships, traumas, socioeconomic status, and education all add up to give you a rich background to draw upon. Each actors approach to the circumstances of a role is different. If you use yourself, you are using your rich background.

No matter how much background material you could imagine for your character, no matter how many pages of background you write, your imaginary character will never match your long and complicated history. Use yourself in the circumstances of the role. It is you who are in love. You are robbing a bank. You have only one eye. Use your imagination about the circumstances, but use yourself and your instincts to react.

If you are playing someone with a low I.Q., play yourself having a low-I.Q. moment. We all have times when we cant figure out a math problem, or cant read a map. We feel silly or embarrassed or we laugh at ourselves. Make sure it is you working to understand something that is beyond you. There is nothing interesting about playing a dumb person with no dimensions. You embarrassed that you are not smart, you working to understand what is beyond you, or you trying to cover up that you dont understand, are all interesting choices that involve hard work.

We all play many roles in daily life: employee, parent, lover, friend, party animal, and professional person. In each role we act differently, but we are still the same person. You will feel different in every role, just as you feel different when you are wearing a formal outfit compared to when you are wearing jeans. That is why it has been said that a costume is 80 percent of a character. We assume roles all the time and we are ourselves in each one of them.

Assume a role, but dont play a character. Be yourself in the situation with your own reactions. I call it looking out of your own eyes .

No matter what role you playa superhero, a supermodel, an intellectual, a farmer, or even a psychopath, you want your audience to be thinking, That actor is so exciting, intelligent, and full of vitality that Im falling in love.

How do you make them love you?

Risk!

For every audition and for every scene, never be content with just saying the lines with some kind of meaning and emotion. Anyone off the street can do that. Risk! Add to the scene the biggest gift you haveyourself. Not your everyday self, but your extraordinary self.

Have you heard a recording of Martin Luther King Jr.s I have a dream speech? You could read his powerful words and be moved, but when you hear him saying the words using all his passion, his thunderous voice, his care to make each phrase of great consequence, then you are stirred and changed. He risked because he wanted to make an impact. He wanted to change the world.