Tell the Story

The story is more important than the words. You have to know what story you are telling. Whether it’s a story about love, about power about heartbreak, about desire, the story must be told. When you know the story you want to tell, then you are free and you don’t’ have to try to be a good actor or to make it happen. These are two acting concepts that lead to indicating and mucho snoring!

No, the beauty of acting is telling a story, your story as told through the character. Yes, it comes down to you, your life, your imagination, your talent and nobody else’s! Don’t wait for somebody to tell you what’s right or wrong, if you wait, it’s too late. You make the choice, you express the truth, and you create beauty.

• Art is the search for beauty, as religion is the search for truth” – Peter Ouspensky

• Don’t worry about keeping up with the Jones’ the only Jones you need to worry about is you – Tiler

If you haven’t had a chance read what an Oscar winning actress says about self-discovery: Ellen Burstyn’s autobiography Lessons in becoming myself www.ellenburstyn.net

Special thank you to our amazing “Dis-Order!” crew:

Adam Philipson-videography:
http://www.canyonspac.com/index.html

Gabor Szitanyi – Editing
http://tenstrongmenstudios.com/

Julianne Figueroa – Stage Manager

If you like the show “In Treatment”, check out the students at Scott Tiler’s acting class.

While working on a scene actors will often say “I can’t relate to this”.

That’s when I start asking them questions. The first question I ask them/character is “What’s going on with you?” Right away they start talking to me about what they’re feeling, what’s happening in their life, what their frustrations are, what their desires are. Before you know it they transform into the character right before my eyes. They forget what it was they couldn’t't relate to. The acting becomes emotional, vivid and powerful. AMAZING! It blows my mind how much the human spirit can overcome. We just need as actors to really understand the depths of who we are and what we have to offer. Our doubts are not our truth, doubts are merely a step on the pathway to greater understanding, not a ditch to “camp out” in.

For us to grow, it often helps if we start from the premise that we don’t know. For example, “I don’t know if i can relate to this” is a perfect place to start. From their you can start asking questions, and expressing the answers in an out loud, in the moment, visceral fashion.

Vegetarian Lasagna: I want to make it but I’m not sure if I can, so I start asking questions like, what ingredients do I need to buy? What do I have to do? How long will it take? And through this process, I will soon be cooking up a scrumptious culinary feast for my wife and myself (I’m hungry now).

It comes down to this: Always be a beginner, always ask question. In this way acting and life become an adventure, a rite of passage.

Cultivate what is known as “Beginners Mind”. “In the beginners mind their are many possibilities; in the experts mind their are few” -Shunryu Suzuki, “Zen Mind, Beginners Mind”

Sense-Memory or Sense-Fantasy are equally powerful tools. They are the key that opens the door to an Imaginal Subspace in the mind. This subspace can also be described as an Altered Reality, Creative Reality or Artistic Reality. Whatever name you give it, it has the power to CHANGE your performance. It also has the power to make you believe you are somewhere else or someone else.

It is in this Subspace that the actor has a fuller, richer experience of the character and a truly visceral understanding of their true capabilities.