Directors

want it.

Casting directors expected

you need to access emotion instantly.

But how do you do that without faking

forcing or frying yourself?

Emotionally

let's break it down.

This is casting actor's cast.

Welcome back to casting actor's cast.

I'm Geoffrey dries back.

I'm a casing partner with mccorkal

casting in New York.

And today we're diving into one of the

trickiest, most misunderstood

actor challenges,

emotional access

on demand.

The episode that I did last week was

all about silences, those moments,

those beats where something always has

to be continuing.

So I thought that this would be maybe a

really nice sister

of compilation

by talking about that emotional state.

Because maybe

you have a situation where tears need

to fall

in audition, for example, or maybe it's

just pure joy in a Ram com scene that

you have to deliver take after, take,

after take.

Or maybe it's just the ability to feel

connected

in a moment that isn't naturally

sparking anything for you.

That happens sometimes.

But here's the truth.

Emotional access is not about being

dramatic or digging so deep that you

burn yourself out.

It's about building a reliable healthy

process that allows you to summon

authentic emotions whenever you need

them

and let them go when you're done.

So by the end of today's episode,

you'll know exactly

how to do the following,

tell the difference between emotional

availability

and emotional indulgence.

Use your tools of imagination,

physicality,

even music, to access emotion.

Quickly

build your own personal emotional

switches that make audition pressure

completely manageable.

Protect yourself so that you don't feel

drained, fried or emotionally unsafe.

After

this is one of those skills that

separates the amateurs from the prose.

We're going to dig into this.

But first, this is that moment of the

conversation where I get to say, thank

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you so much for tuning into casting

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I love doing these podcasts, and I love

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I don't ask for any money for this.

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But I also love to know that you are

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It makes a big deal difference for me,

and I hope that that makes sense for

you, because we all need an ego massage

every once in a while, right?

Ok?

All right, let's jump into this.

I want to

talk about several factors.

When we access our emotional vocabulary.

Let's put it this way.

Distinguishing access versus indulgence.

See, emotional access means that you're

available to feel something and express

it truthfully in the moment.

While emotional indulgence

is when you get swept away

overwhelmed,

or you get stuck inside your own

emotional storm.

Let me tell you,

casting directors don't want to watch

therapy.

They want to watch choices that serve

the story.

Here's a good rule of thumb.

If your emotion makes you lose

connection with your partner,

makes you lose connection with the

scene or the giving given circumstance,

you've crossed from access

into indulgence.

It's important to keep that in check.

Moving on from their personal trial,

triggers versus craft

techniques.

See, some actors rely heavily on

personal memories.

That's ok,

sense memory Recall,

but it's also dangerous if the memory

is painful or re traumatizing.

So the safer choice is to use your

imagination pretend.

You've just won the lottery.

Imagine your best friend has betrayed.

You

build the emotional circumstance,

not just the words,

when we use our sense memory, and it

recalls

those kinds of

what I call the re traumatizing

events.

That's not impressive.

The most

impressive aspect is that you

rely on other tools that can make that

scene and make that work come alive.

Not indulge yourself in those moments,

please.

So here are some other craft tools.

When we talk about sense memory, for

example, like I said, you just need to

Recall how your body felt in a past

moment of emotion,

the heat of the anger, the heaviness of

grief.

You see, the difference is not your

reexperiencing

the grief,

but you're experiencing that the grief

had that kind of heaviness to it.

There is a difference.

Then there's, of course, physical

activation and sense memory.

So you try a short burst of running in

place to access excitement, or slowing

your breath to drop into sadness.

Think of it like a toolbox.

Sometimes you need imagination,

sometimes physical action, sometimes a

small personal connection is all you need,

moving on from there, build emotional

switches.

Professional actors have quick,

repeatable triggers

that help them

flip the switch when they need it.

So here's an example.

Some of those triggers are as follows.

One is a specific song that always

makes you tear up,

always makes you smile music is very

powerful for that.

I've seen it being used effectively for

when auditioning for a commercial.

For example.

The right energy of the mood

can really be found in music.

Also there's a visual image that might

make your heart swell.

Is it a picture of your grandmother?

Is it a picture of your lover?

Is it your best friend?

If you need to draw upon that

visualization

is really useful.

And so even holding that picture, or

even recalling the picture that made

you feel the way you feel, can be

wonderful for tapping into that

emotional vocabulary.

Now also there's maybe a line of

dialogue that always brings you into

the right head space.

My point here is, and the trick to all

of this is consistency.

If it works once, then test it again,

then you keep what's reliable.

And simply discard what isn't.

Moving out from there.

Stay safe.

I alluded to this earlier, but please

do yourself a huge favor is avoid re

traumatizing yourself.

Your job is story telling, not self

harm.

If a director asks you to dig deep,

you've heard that probably from a

director,

you can, but you must also know how to

close that door afterward.

You see, guys that's about technique

that's not about

indulging.

That's not about

again, that word is so great.

Re traumatizing yourself.

So I suggest a quick grounding

practice.

So after the scene that you had to dig

deep in, I want you to shake out your

body, literally, physically shake

yourself out.

Take three intentional breaths.

Now, if you've listened to the podcast

at all, you know I'm a big fan of

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00:09:39,79 --> 00:09:39,612

square breathing.

Inhale.

Hold exhale.

Hold.

Each one in account of four.

Remind yourself

that what you just did was the

character behaving,

not you.

The healthiest actors are the ones who

can step in and step out of the motion instantly

without losing themselves.

Allow a slight recovery period.

But so I don't want it, when I say the

word instantly, I don't mean like a switch,

but you can have a moment to recover,

but you're not indulging

that emotion

all of the time.

You're not indulging that motion.

So it's something that feels like is

cathartic.

For example,

here's a practiced tool.

I think it's a good idea.

Why don't you build a playlist of

triggers?

Yeah, triggers?

This is where you can actually train

yourself

and so here are some steps that you can

take.

One, pick an emotion.

It can be joy or sadness or anger,

whatever it is.

Step two,

identify three triggers for that

emotion,

right?

For example, a song,

maybe a song that you're currently

listening to, an older song or whatever,

some kind of music that expresses that

emotion.

I want you to do one

out of memory,

whether it's an image, or whether it's

a stuffed animal or whatever it is that

that can also trigger that emotion.

And I also want you to do one physical

action,

something

that is corresponding

to the place you need to go to

emotionally.

Step three,

rehearse, going into the emotion, using

those triggers and then releasing it,

then letting it go.

So, for example, listen to the song,

feel the shift that happens to you

emotionally, and then you need to snap

out of it with grounding, breath,

square breathing.

Honestly, this is not about pretending.

It's about conditioning your

instrument, like

it's just like practicing Scales on a

piano,

your body, your voice, is your

instrument.

So remember

that emotional access is a skill.

It's not a mystery.

It's not about forcing or faking and I

promise you, it's definitely not about

reliving trauma.

It's really about building relatable,

healthy tools so you can walk into any

audition, any scene, and know that your

emotional life is available to you

when you need it.

So I've got some homework for you this

week, as I have been handing out

homework now for the past handful of

episodes, I want you to pick one

emotion, whether it's joy or sadness or

anger, and build a three item tool kit

for that emotion, one song, one memory

or image and one physical action.

Practice shifting into that emotion on

q.

Just as importantly, practice

letting it.

Go

do this consistently.

And I promise you you're going to

become the kind of actor that casting

directors will trust, because you're

not just talented,

you're reliable,

you're reliable.

Thanks for listening to casting actors

casts.

If you found this episode useful,

please share it with another actor who

could use a confidence boost in their

emotional toolbox.

And as always, keep preparing, smarter,

acting better

and the old book more.

I'm Geoffrey driesback.

We'll see you next time on casting

actors.

Cast