In actor training, the instrument is the performer’s capacity to notice, imagine, respond, speak, move, and act. It includes the body and voice, attention, feeling, imagination, and the patterns that make expression available or difficult. The word is a teaching metaphor. A person has needs, choices, and limits that a musical instrument does not.
In Jason Bennett’s system, instrumental work is the first of three connected phases: Instrumental, Craft, and Business. A performer may understand a scene intellectually while finding that the voice tightens, the body becomes rigid, or the imagination goes quiet in front of other people. Instrumental practice addresses that practical gap. The aim is greater expressive availability, range, and independence.
Eric Morris also distinguishes work on the actor’s instrument from work on the dramatic material. His account places obstacles to expression within the first area and performance requirements within the second. That is one important lineage for the distinction used at Jason Bennett Actors Studio, JBAS. Eric Morris, official biography.
In rehearsal
Rehearsal example: You have prepared a persuasive argument for a scene. During the run, you notice you cannot finish a sentence without rushing. Before adding another psychological explanation, test a smaller change: take an unhurried moment to see your partner and then speak one complete thought. Compare what happens to intelligibility, listening, and the argument.
This example does not prescribe one cure for rushing. It demonstrates a diagnostic question: is the immediate difficulty in the interpretation, in expressive availability, or in both?
Instrumental work can continue throughout an actor’s life. The three phases are a way to organize attention, not a rule that someone must be completely “liberated” before doing a scene. Emotional intensity alone does not demonstrate readiness, skill, or useful progress.
Related entries
Craft, Acting process, Personal Inventory, Archetype Work.
About this entry
This introduction explains JBAS usage and its relationship to the cited Eric Morris account. The rehearsal example is an editorial application, not a quoted Morris exercise.
