Externals

Acting and voice training with Jason Bennett

A walk. A voice. The way someone wears a coat. Study the outward particulars, inhabit them, and investigate the inner life they reveal. Bring those discoveries to the character.

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What is Externals?

You may hear this called an outside-in approach. You begin with a specific physical or vocal adjustment, or with an observed person, animal or object. You study its characteristics and rehearse them. You investigate what changes internally as you make those outward choices.

"Externals" includes any acting tool that begins with an outside adjustment: physically, vocally, costumes and/or make-up.

Jason Bennett, from the original Externals Workshops.

Your observations need detail. You can notice where tension sits in a person's body, the rhythms of their movement and speech, their vocabulary, and how they express feelings. You are gathering particular qualities that can become playable choices. General impressions give you less to work with.

You can also begin with clothing, hair, make-up or a vocal choice during rehearsal. What matters is how the external choice helps you discover the person you are playing. You bring both the outward behavior and the inward response into your characterization.

What happens in the room?

You practice sound and movement, study the qualities you have observed, and experiment with bringing those qualities into your own voice and body. In JBAS classes and workshops, you explore animal work, work based on observed people, and characters developed through costume, hair and make-up. You can use these approaches in combination as you develop your own process.

You rehearse specific physical and vocal characteristics so that you can use them with less conscious effort. As you work, you notice the thoughts and feelings that accompany a change in your presentation. Your observation, rehearsal and response all contribute to the character.

You then apply the work to scenes and monologues. You test your choices with the writing, your partner and what happens in the scene. You keep what serves the material and continue to adjust what does not. You are practicing a route into a role that you can develop beyond the class.

We all tell stories all the time by the way we move, dress, speak, feel and think.

Jason Bennett, from the original The Little Bubbles We Live In.

You can pause or decline an exploration. Your work is adapted to your experience, your material and the process you are developing.

Who is this work for?

You can begin as a new actor or bring an established rehearsal process. You may want more specific physical and vocal choices, or a way to approach someone whose habits differ from your own. You may already use an outside-in approach and want time to deepen it.

You can bring a scene or monologue, or work on the tool before you have a particular role. Your training can include observation, voice, movement and characterization according to what you need. Externals works alongside script analysis, imagination and your relationship with the other actor.

Begin with a conversation

Study Externals with Jason Bennett. Begin with a brief phone conversation.

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Read further

Externals in the Encyclopedia of Acting gives you the definition and its place among other acting tools.

The Little Bubbles You Don't Know You Live In takes you further into observation and the specific choices that make up a characterization.