How To Look Like You Know How To Act

a cheap trick that works

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

In November 2000, I was sitting at my desk at my computer programming job, when the phone rang. It was my friend Jake, telling me I had been cast on a house improv team for the then-still-new Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre.

The company I worked for had six employees. There were no cubicles or offices. Our desks were evenly spaced in this big room in Hell’s Kitchen. The upshot was we could all hear each other’s phone conversations. I whispered “Really?”

Jake said yes. He said to not be nervous, that I just had to show everyone what I could do. But I was terrified. I was thirty years old and had zero acting experience. Outside of the graduation shows for my four improv classes I had never been on a stage.

So I signed up for an acting class, held by a improv teacher I knew.

The class was a monologue scene study class. Since I’d never done a “proper” acting class, he asked to meet with me first to go over how it would go. He told me to prepare a monologue that I could pick from a list he gave me. I picked a Paul Newman speech from Cool Hand Luke, a movie I had not seen. It’s a speech he gives at the end of the movie in a church, talking either to God or his father (I think - still haven’t seen it).

I met the teacher at the end of one of his other classes. It was in a studio in the Player’s Theater on MacDougal Street in the Village, right next to the Comedy Cellar stand-up club. I watched it wrap up. The class had six or so people. They were “serious” actors. It didn’t look like anyone else was just trying to be good on their improv team!

One guy looked like a teenager. He had a thick Queens accent. The teacher asked him if he wanted to go. He said “sure” like “shew-er.” His monologue was something Al Pacino had done in the play “The Indian Wants The Bronx” and it was good. The teacher asked him questions about sense memory, and what his inspiration was, and who he thought he was talking to. The kid did it a second time, and it seemed even stronger.

The class ended and I said down with the instructor. He told me to go through the monologue. I felt like I was jumping off a diving board. I said the words and tried to feel like I was talking to God. Then I looked at the teacher.

He said. “Try waiting a beat after each period.”

Before I knew it I said “That’s it?”

He said “Yeah, it’ll make it sound like you’re feeling it.”

I did it again. No sense memory, no inspiration, no trying to talk to God. I just said the words and when I got to a period, I paused a bit.

I had to admit - it sounded better.

Wait a beat after every period.

“It’ll get simpler,” he said.

Today, I am (theoretically) a professional actor. And I still try this out when I’m not feeling a part. Pause after each sentence.

Pause. That’s the trick. Pause.

A lot of improv groups I see never pause. Pausing might feel like fear, but it sounds like confidence. Just wait a beat.

Plugs, Ongoing

• Screw It, We’re Just Gonna Talk About Comics - Comic book podcast, hosted by my brother Kevin and I. We are examining Bendis/Bagley run of Ultimate Spider-Man.

• Clubhouse Fridays - WGIS’ weekly improv show. Fridays 7pm at The Clubhouse. Free!

• The World’s Greatest Improv School: The improv school I run with Jim Woods and Sarah Claspell. We’ve got classes online, in LA and even a few in NYC!

• How to Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth - My improv book, available at Amazon. Kindle or print. It’s a hodge-podge of advice I wrote in 2016 about doing improv. If you’re broke and want a free PDF version just email me and I’ll send it over.