The Moment Before: An Actor's Warm-up Podcast

This podcast is meant for you to explore, motivate, and challenge your imagination! As actors, one of our biggest assets is creating places, circumstances, objects, that do not exist with us in the moment. Specifically in improvisation, there is a lot of object work, and this exercise is going to explore how you can mime objects, food, and space that is familiar to you. Let's get started. 

In our day-to-day lives, we probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about the texture of words, or the resonance of the sounds we make. In our acting work, however, these are important tools for transformation into characters from every walk of life. Play this episode whenever you're looking for a low pressure exercise geared to invigorate your vocal and physical choices. This is great as a warmup before rehearsals.

By exploring mask work, you can revisit "old" text with a new eye.  Using mask images to ignite and inspire fresh ideas to add layers and complexity to your monologue.  Learn to play and trust your instincts with this new exercise.  

Prepare yourself for performance or rehearsal by challenging your perfectionist brain and promoting self-care and kindness. 

A practical means for an artist or performer to transition out of a character role, especially an emotionally taxing one. 

This simple but effective warmup will cover all the basics for performing classical text effectively. This warmup will help you unlock your resonance centers and engage your full body for a powerful performance. 

The exercises in this podcast span a wide enough range for all voice types. 

Cold read auditions will leave you expected to make bold choices on a moment's notice.  Use this podcast to gain tools to find an entry point into new material.  

A mental exercise that helps transition the actor from character back to self using Laban's States of Mind as a guidepost. For this episode, you will need a place to relax, reflect and de-role. 

An exploration of transferring the puppet's physical expression of emotion into our own bodies in order to establish new characters working from the outside in. For this podcast, you will need space to move about and a free-standing mirror. 

During this exercise you will explore opening up or unlocking different places in your body where we as humans hold a lot of tension: Our hips and our Chest. As human beings it can be scary to be vulnerable, but this podcast will give actors physical tools to allow ourselves to be more open.  Music: Garden Music by Kevin MacLeod.

This kabuki inspired sequence provides a full-bodied physical warmup, that will wake up your muscles, engage your breath, and focus your mind.

Say YES to stretching creative muscles with an improv warm up that creates characters and encourages risk-taking and spontaneity.

This is a stage combat focused warm-up, working on precision, core engagement, and body flow to prepare you for any physically demanding show or rehearsal.

This preparation will help the whole body warm up for emotional and physical storytelling.  No matter the level of intimacy to be explored, this imaginative solo warm-up will prepare the actor through breath and body awareness.

Guided visualization for closure after a show, rehearsal, or audition. 

This podcast will give you a way to step out of whatever it is you have just experienced in order to continue through your day or night. You will work towards being fully present to what's happening, what you're doing, and the space you are in through breathing and awareness. 

In this exercise, we'll be exploring three familiar Archetypes, to play with physical transformation and gesture. These larger than life characters create an instinctual response in us that inspires our choices as actors. All you need for this exercise is a small amount of space, a warmed-up body, and your imagination. 

Music and sound can be wonderful entry points to character. Have you ever heard a song that instantly put you in a good mood? Has a sound ever made you feel like you were going to crawl out of your skin? Music and sound have the power to affect your mood, change your energy level, establish your environment, and impact your inner tempo. In this exercise, explore how to use music and sound as tools for creating emotional, physical, and psychological life for the characters we inhabit. This exercise can be used for character building or for emotional exploration. It's great for rehearsal, scene work, and audition prep.

For this exercise all that is needed is your body and imagination. We will be exploring working with qualities of elements to build specific character choices. It is helpful to have a character in mind here, but not necessary. 

By exploring animal form and behavior, and extracting the basic qualities and essence of an animal; you can build a character or multiple characters, that are distinct and specific. This tool gives you something practical to follow and encourages you to physically engage your body. It's not about finding the perfect shape, or form, but about playing, exploring and seeing what you come up with. 

The Michael Chekhov exercise often called "Stick, Ball, Veil" gives an actor the opportunity to explore physical transformation for a particular character using the self-created version of an object: either a stick, ball, or veil. This exploration will build imagination, inspire physicality, and engage the characters center of energy. It's recommended that you've done some initial work on character, have a line of dialogue chosen, and some space in which you can move about freely. 

People. We're a jumble of needs, wants, complaints, neuroses and opinions. Part of the fun of being an actor is making specific choices about a character's background and worldview that may exist outside of the text. On this episode, we'll go beyond given circumstances, and explore questions that will help awaken your imagination, and bring an arsenal of specific choices with you into rehearsal.

Want to dig deeper into your character's inner life? Use this imaginative warm-up to explore environments that will enrich your character's world. This warm-up is designed for pre-performance emotional prep, whether in class, rehearsal, or production.

Through imagination work and physical embodiment, we will do an initial exploration and warm up into Chekhov's technique of The Three Sister Sensations. This can help with emotional preparation and characterization. This exercise is based on the teachings of Michael Chekhov, Lenard Petit, and Lisa Dalton.

As a form of moving meditation, Yoga for the Actor promotes mindfulness and full-bodied ease in your acting work. Join me in this comprehensive warm-up before your auditions, rehearsals, or even performances! 

Actors need to use their unique instrument (the body) to their full advantage, and ready for anything the world may throw at them. This full-bodied warm-up will allow actors to find power and strength through a circuit of exercises.

Through imagination work, quickly access an empowering, creative mental space for class, rehearsal, or performance. Based on the Michael Chekhov exercise, this episode will help you turn your physical space into one full of creative possibilities. 

This exercise serves as a practical way of radiating your energy to communicate intent and action by awakening, and then utilizing, an imaginary form or body called your “Phantom Body”. This technique allows you to direct or focus energy, and react to or influence your scene partner without needing to do large physical movements or change blocking in a scene. 

Actors will travel through the various elements of the earth in order to energize their imagination as they follow physical impulses between earth, water, fire and air, ultimately evoking the creative power in their bodies and acting space. You will need ample space to physically explore. 

Activating Imagination: A sense of playfulness is necessary for being receptive to scene partners, making character discoveries, and inspiring creative choices. This guided visualization warm-up can not only get you focused on the work to be done, but it may also awaken playfulness in your acting.

These episodes are about Preparing more specific techniques, or Special Skills.  At times, performers may require a particular emphasis during a warm up, and this season will create the opportunity to explore focused topics.  The following warmups will get you ready for concentrated storytelling techniques such as combat or staged intimacy, working with Shakespearean text, cold read auditions and more.  It's time for Preparing Special Skills.  

These episodes are built to help the actor Find Closure.  As performers, it is important to have techniques for not only warming up, but cooling down.  This season will provide pathways to release emotional and mental tension post rehearsal or performance, and help to create metaphorical “bookends” to separate real life from your artistic practice. Overall, these episodes are about guiding the often-overlooked transition from the imaginary world to a healthy, grounded state of self.   It's time to take time for yourself, and explore Finding Closure.   

These episodes are built to help the actor Discover Characterization.  How do you bring your character off the page and into the artistic space, mentally, physically and dynamically? These episodes focus on multiple skillsets needed to analyze, embody and perform unique transformations.  Through inspiration taken from animal work, Archetypes, elements of nature, and more, we explore multiple vibrant pathways into characterization.  After these episodes, you'll be on “a role.”  It's time to jump in to Discovering Character.  

These episodes are built to help an actor Explore tools for manifesting emotion on stage.  Vulnerability, availability, accessibility-- all of these are expectations for a fully realized emotional artistic practice.  However, creating the emotional life of a character can also create a challenge for the performer.  This season gives you tools to build emotional flexibility through imagination, work with sensations, tools for physicalizing the story of an emotion and more.  These episodes will leave an actor more confident to dive into a character's emotional arc, and leave a performer more vulnerable, available and accessible than they were the moment before.  It's time to be guided through Exploring Emotions.  

These episodes are built to energize the actor; invigorating your mind, body and performance work overall.  From more vigorous physical warmups to those based in flexibility and breath, this season has something for everyone.  In every episode, our trained coaches will help you reengage with your body as a vessel for physical storytelling, and prepare your dive into an energized, full-bodied theatrical practice.  It's time to get up and move with Energizing the Body.  

These episodes are built to Activate the actor's imagination.  As actors, we often create something from nothing; embodying people, places, objects and ideas on a moment's notice.  By working fully with our imagination, we have the opportunity to make the invisible visible to our audiences.  The focus of this season is to encourage and revitalize a vibrant “inner eye,” and give you the artistic fuel needed to manifest dynamic imagery for your next class, rehearsal or performance.  It's time to Activate Imagination.