A great tool I learned about in one of my favorite Method classes was using “substitutions”. Using a substitution isn’t only for creating realistic emotions in a scene (which I have described in another post) – it’s also a simple, easy way, to break yourself out of pre-learned vocal patterns, and keep your lines sounding real and fresh. They can be great too, for delivering lines in classic drama, lines you’ve heard a million times (like the famous Hamlet monologue!)

What’s so fun, and so fascinating about using random substitutions, is that they’ll often give you ideas about how you can deliver lines in ways you’d never even thought. How do you do this? Well, let me try and give you an example.I learned that going back and forth with how I was feeling, in between some boring lines I wasn’t connecting …

The more traditional way to use substitutions to create realistic moments in scenes and monologues is to remember a similar conversation you may have had, from your past, which had the same kinds of emotions and feelings, and then go from that conversation, to your lines.

For example: If I was going to play Hamlet, and had to say the famous, “To be, or not to be” speech, I’d work very hard at trying to find a time in my life when I was wondering what life was all about. I’d try to remember how I, myself, would talk about living and dying, about the possibility that life can be crazy, that maybe it would be better just to end it.It’s important to just totally forget how you’ve heard other famous actors say these words…I’d study the famous speech, and try and not only re-write it …

All actors want to keep it fresh, as if every line we say has just come off the top of our heads, (like we do in real life), and hasn’t been something we’ve been thinking about during our scene partner’s previous line. Let’s face it. This is a basic element of good acting, and it’s one of the hardest things to do.

One of the main problems I always had, as an actor, was saying the lines exactly the same way, time after time. I found that once I’d memorized my lines in a particular rhythm, I had a hard time saying them any other way. It didn’t matter how the other actor delivered his or her lines to me, or even if they changed them, made their lines more angry, more sad, or said them more quickly, or softly – no matter how …