Categories: Movies

Advanced Acting Exercise – Finishing a Thought

Advanced acting exercises delve deeper than simply warming up your body and voice, and work to uncover your hidden talents and strengthen these abilities in order to help create a realistic and sincere performance.

The “Finishing a Thought” exercise is derived from a basic Stanislavski acting method in which actors are responsible for improvising thoughts to complete a sentence.

The purpose of this advanced acting exercise is to create an uninhibited mind and allow you to delve deep into yourself in order to respond with conviction while simultaneously teaching you how to move forward with an original train of thought.

You may perform this exercise alone, or as a group in acting class. The primary objective within this exercise is to strengthen your advanced improvisational skills, and it works best when you already have a character you’ve been developing for a play or film production.

If you do not have a character you are currently working on, create a character instantly; do not complete these thoughts based on your own “personal” feelings, but on a completely different personality.

Instructions

You are given the first part of a sentence, and upon reciting these written words, you must complete the thought through improvisation based on a character. Do not limit yourself to simply completing the sentence, but try to say several sentences that help move the initial words forward.

Example Phrases

Below are several example phrases you may use to complete this exercise. Feel free to use these examples or come up with your own. If you are doing this as part of an acting class, allow the students to come up with the first parts of a sentence themselves.