Not Acting Right Now? Try These Activities To Keep Your Skills Fresh During the Down Time!

When you, as an actor, are busy with various projects, you have the pressure of time

and memorization to keep you active. But when you're not in the middle of a job it's important to keep yourself busy, fine tuning your skills and keeping everything fresh! My best suggestion is for you to consider taking an acting class or joining (or forming) a weekly play-reading group. An additional option is for your to set a goal for yourself to read three plays a week and thus have a good working knowledge of your profession. 

Here are some more ideas for activities to keep your acting skills fresh and motivation high during your career down times!

If possible, go to open calls. They require acting. Even if you aren't called back, just view it as active practice. Brush up weekly on your monologues. You never know when an instant opportunity will come knocking. Who knows?  You may land something you didn't expect! How does it get any better than that?

Read. Read everything! In my opinion, that greatest asset an actor can have, aside from talent, is the ability to read and understand the tiny nuances of what you read. Read novels and imagine being the characters. Read reviews on the internet of the plays you are reading. Read poetry. There are many beautifully written poems that are simple to understand. What's great, is these same poems will also change the way you see the world.

Observe the people and world around you. People watch. Read expressions and emotions. All of these suggestions aim to broaden your understanding of human beings and this world we live in. A greater understanding of human nature will make you a better actor. If you take your "downtime" and use it to read, both people and script, that subsequent growth of your humanity will compensate for the loss of growth as an actor.

View downtime as a great gift.  In the ideal scenario, all actors would act all the time while also growing and developing as human beings. In an actor's Utopia, everyone would read often, seek out art and nature and listen to great music and have compassion and understanding. Actors are born actors. But great actors must be nurtured and nourished. Go to museums.  Go to nature.  Combine it with reading and rehearsing.  You'll be so glad you did.

The best person to do that nurturing and nourishing is you. Perhaps the words here will partly act as a guide to that self-nurturing. Perhaps you need to get away.  Get a massage.  Go for a run.  Eat and rest well.  Position yourself in a prime state.  Casting directors can distinguish between those that take themselves seriously and those that are hoping for a meal ticket. 

You are in this for the long haul. All careers have a slow period, so make sure yours is optimized. 

For more information on acting coaches and acting classes in New York City, please get in touch with us at the New York Acting School for Film and Television and we will get you moving forward!