(upbeat music)
-: Okay, hello, Steve Sneed here,
acting instructor,
I'm located at South Lake High School
in Seattle, Washington.
Now, today I'm gonna talk about
the physical and physicality
and a little bit about character, right?
Assuming a role and being observant.
The important thing is
to be observant about your instrument,
what it's doing.
A lot of times when I would start a character,
I would, I would first of course,
I learn about the character
and then I would develop the walk,
because the walk to me embodied, you know,
the feel of the character, right?
So, you know, if I had to walk like this or say,
you know, walk on my toes, or if I'm old, right?
That played all day
and I was kind of walking like,
like, I'm real old, right?
If I'm walking like this,
because you see how my feet
are doing something different, right?
They're slapping.
And let's see,
the reason I have to tell this story,
this is a quick story, students, bear with me.
I was in a play, this was in college,
and I was, I'd walk across the stage
and I always do like that.
And it's harder to do with my tennis shoes.
If I had heels on, you know,
back in the day,
you'd have these little metal taps
on your shoes and have a cool sound.
You walk and you have that cool sound going,
you know, but I adopted that walk.
It was how I walked all the time.
The director finally said to me one day,
"Steve, would you please stop walking across
the stage, scraping your feet."
And, I mean, he was, he was frustrated.
He had been listening, and he couldn't understand...
and it shocked me because, you know,
my director, he liked me, he gave me good parts.
And, it made me think,
wow, for the first time,
I actually paid attention to my feet,
and what I did with him,
whenever I did a character.
So, I say that to you, to stress
the importance of paying attention
to what your body is doing.
So, now in class, we do an improv game.
And we do it to develop
the thinking about your facial expressions.
So for instance,
I'll give them a card
and on the card, it will say, "hungry".
So then they have to come in and show hunger.
And the rest of the students
have to guess what they're doing.
So I'm gonna give you a couple examples,
and see if you can guess what I'm doing.
All right?
Let's see.
Okay, I got one.
(grunts)
Okay.
Can you guess what I was doing?
That's kind of easy.
Maybe, maybe not.
Okay, here's another one.
And you do these yourselves, right?
You can do these yourself,
but I'm just giving you an example.
Oh, okay.
Those are a couple examples.
So think of your own words.
Happy, sad, pain, anger, right?
Use these words.
And then and you can videotape yourselves,
and show them to people
and see if they can give you,
if they can guess what it is,
and again, look at yourselves in the mirror.
Okay, so let's do a couple more walks.
Now another way to think about it is,
if I'm a professional,
and I think I'll walk towards you,
if I'm a professional, I'm a lawyer say,
how might I carry myself, right?
If I'm a lawyer, I might carry myself, right?
Like that.
Let me do it, let me do it sideways too
so you can see, I'm a lawyer.
I gotta think about my shoulders, right?
How is my head?
What is my head doing?
What's my neck doing?
Okay, so let's say
I'm a construction worker, right?
I gotta carry heavy stuff.
And I use my hands, right?
So how might I walk a little different, right?
How's that?
Subtle, you wanna be subtle too.
How is that,
does that look like a construction worker?
What did I do?
I just widened my stance a little bit.
Rock back and forth a little bit,
heads down, shoulders,
what are my shoulders doing.
It's one of the things
I really liked about acting,
is that walk really makes a difference,
that physicality.
So explore that.
Give yourself a word,
give yourself a persona, a profession,
and then assume the way they walk.
And I'm gonna ask you to do this.
Don't look at a movie,
about a lawyer and then decide how to walk.
Don't do that initially.
You've already got
all that information stored up,
you already have an image for yourself.
And what you'll find is
you take in a lot of data, you know.
You say a doctor, how does the doctor come in?
Also, pace is really important.
They say, how does the doctor...
I think of a doctor,
'cause the other thing is,
everyone's gonna think, they're gonna
interpret a profession or a type,
a little differently.
And that's all that matters.
There's an interpretation for everything.
It's different, based on who you are, right?
But they're all valid.
So, let's say a doctor,
I'd imagine a doctor and pace.
A doctor might be, that to me,
doctors are always in a hurry, right?
They come in the room, they come to see you
"Hey, Mr. Sneed, how are you doing?
Okay, all right.
Checked your vitals,
you're good, all right, we'll see you."
Doctors, doctors are actually always busy.
I noticed that they're moving quickly.
But pace is an important one too.
'Cause pace just keeps things moving, you know?
Intention, right, What's the intention?
How about if I, if I look like this,
what do I look like?
You know, do I look like I'm gonna do
something important?
You know, like a friend of mine,
I went to New York he said, "Now,
"when you're in New York,
"walk like you got somewhere to go.
"Don't walk like you're looking around
"like, you know.
"No, don't do that in New York.
"You better walk like you got somewhere to go."
So that's a different walk, right?
Like, I got somewhere to go.
I am busy, I am important, right?
I am an important individual here.
I have somewhere to be, okay?
Okay, so you know why
they call them plays, right?
You go to see something
in the theater, it's called the play.
'Cause it involves play.
So the important message today is playing.
Get your body used to playing, have fun.
Alright, Steve Sneed, acting.
Again, I'm at South Lake High School,
in Seattle, Washington.
All right, thanks.
(upbeat music)