Deciding What You Do

An actor is a SCIENTIST OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR.

If you were given a job to act like a praying mantis, you'd need to study a praying mantis and learn some behaviors from it.

If you wanted to be a good praying mantis actor, you'd need to study a whole bunch of different praying mantises doing lots of different things. Then you could imitate his physical behaviors. But to be really good, you'd have to understand the MOTIVATIONS OF THE PRAYING MANTIS bug.

Certain movements are motivated by different thoughts WITHIN THE BUG'S MIND.

To really act like a praying mantis, you'd have to think like a praying mantis.

Same with people.

If you want to act like someone, you could imitate how they walk, copy how they talk, and sit the same way that they sit.

ZEN ACTING requires you to BE THAT PERSON. They don't walk with a limp because they enjoy dragging their leg, they limp because they had tuberculosis as a child and his mother was paralyzed. KNOW your character.

Buddha Zhen
Patriarch, shaolinZEN.org