Memorize all lines, music, and choreography! Once you've gotten to the point of full memorization with your content, you can begin to use the written words and choreographed actions more freely for your performance!
Consider the emotional circumstances and journey of your character! Next, you can begin to find more ways to connect emotional energy to your character by discovering their character journey. How does your character feel in the beginning? Middle? And End of your scene? What do these emotional changes look like? How are you going to portray these shifts so that they are noticeable to your audience?
Believe! If you're able to suspend your own disbelief that you are not you, and are your character instead, you will enter into a self-enforced perception that can feel akin to an out of body experience. This can feel like you're looking at yourself from the outside, like you're not in your body. It can feel very unreal and you may not remember most of what happened to you while you were on stage. This means that you're allowing yourself to mentally flow as the character and you're able to let go of your true self for the duration of your performance.
Pump yourself up! It's important to remember to bring larger than life energy to your stage performance. You may be playing a character who is sad and you may think this character is supposed to have reduced energy, but this is untrue for stage acting. This can be true for film acting, but for stage you want as much energy as you can bring to your performance, even if the character is somber or depressed! Physically pump yourself up before you walk on stage! Do push ups to get energy flowing to the upper part of your body! The energy in your arms and your face is what's most noticiable on stage and this is useful if you have to perform a character who stays in the same spot a lot!
Find your way back to yourself! It's good to understand your character and how to find them for your performance, but be careful not to remain in your character for too long. Staying in character outside of rehersal can cause you to develop ingenuine habits that are not part of who you really are. This can hurt your mental health and cause you to be unbalanced. At the end of the day, let the character go, and be yourself!
Thank you so much for reading!
Well Wishes,
GCM