Reasons We Don't Start Out Speaking

In many of the acting experiences I've had, including shows, we always started out with activities that did not include speaking. In one particular activity I remember, we had to pick an emotion out of a hat. We proceeded to act as if we were sitting on a bench outside of school waiting for the school bus and we had to sit there and portray this emotion. This particular activity sticks in my head because it really helped us to think about our emotions first.

Speaking is, of course, an important aspect of acting...but it is most certainly not the only aspect. If fact, dialogue can just be distracting when you are trying to portray something. To be able to portray what you are saying, it is important to first focus on what you are doing. You can go up on stage and say the line "I feel sad." but is that what your body language is showing? If not, you won't be very convincing. First, it is important to realize what you are doing physically and whether or not you are really portraying the emotion of what you are doing through your actions. Once this becomes a bit easier to realize, then adding some sort of dialogue will be easier because you will be thinking about the emotion rather than just reading off a page and sounding fake.