Rob Adler Interview
Rob Adler on Accessing Emotional Range Through Improv
From the time he was 5 years old, Rob Adler has wanted to work in the acting industry. “I was sitting on the couch with my brother watching ‘Superman 2’ for the 500th time, and I asked him how they made Superman fly.
“It was the first time that I ever understood that there was more to the picture than what I saw, and I got a sense of the magic of moviemaking for the first time in my life,” he recalls. “It was the first time I realized you could grow up and have a job where they would swing you from a piece of constriction equipment and sew a cape to your back and let you pretend to be Superman and I thought, That’s for me.”
Years later, his desire to pursue acting presented itself again while doing a production of “Peter Pan” in the eighth grade. “I desperately wanted to be one of those characters [who flew], and I got cast in the play but not as one of [them],” he says.
“Initially, I was heartbroken, but then I started to get into the work and the rehearsal process and I discovered there was another kind of flight. And it was just as thrilling—discovering what it meant to tell a story with a group of friends and then share it with a group of strangers and friends. It was life-changing and it really set the course of my entire life. From there I just couldn’t get enough,” he adds.
It was at DePaul University in Chicago where Adler was “exposed to an improvisational approach to acting” through the games of Viola Spolin, and he hasn’t looked back since.
Today, as an on-set coach, teacher, director, and founder of AdlerImprov Studio in Hollywood, the experienced teacher brings his knowledge and advice to students worldwide, ranging from beginners to season professionals.
On creating AdlerImprov Studio. Adler says he originally created the studio because he “wanted to have people to play with,” but noticing the power of improvisation, he quickly realized how useful it could be for actors.
“I noticed that this sort of improvisational approach to scripted acting really helped actors with something that many people were struggling with. Many, many actors seemed to have this problem of getting stuck in their heads,” he explains. “So what I found was that approaching acting problems through games and play allowed actors out of their heads and allowed them to tap into a source of creativity that wasn’t available to them.”
On the power of improvisational games and play. “One of the magical properties of play is that it gives you energy,” Adler says, referencing a time he was asked to coach actors in between takes of a television shoot. After some improv games, “these actors came into the room with this newfound energy. It’s really amazing to watch that happen.
“You can watch somebody who’s dead tired get involved with something as simple as a schoolyard game of tag or whatever, and all of a sudden they have energy where there was none,” he adds.
Additionally, as an instructor at the University of Southern California, Adler notes he often starts his classes with a game of tag, which allows them to access emotions including anger, frustration, happiness, and joy.
“It exposes this really amazing dynamic of being an actor,” he says, “which is that we’re the puppet and the puppeteer. It exposes them to the possibility that they can authentically have emotion without having to drag skeletons out of their closet.
“They can play their way to authenticity,” he explains.
On one major improv myth. “Because casting directors and agents understand the value of improv training, actors might think they’re going to be asked to make up lines on set… and that is very rarely true,” Adler says. “Writing is a whole art form, and if you change the words on an Aaron Sorkin TV show, you’re probably not going to last very long.
“It’s about bringing spontaneity and presence to the lines as scripted, so one of the things I help actors to do is find a way to bring spontaneity, bring freshness to every take without changing the script and without disrespecting the writers. [What they’re doing], really, is honoring them by speaking their words as written and adding the actor’s art form, which is about bringing life to the work.”
For information regarding Adler’s ongoing classes, visit adlerimprov.com, and read his Backstage Expert articles here!
Lights, Camera, Relationship!
3 Tips for Developing Character Relationships
By Rob Adler | Posted Dec. 3, 2014, 10 a.m.
Sometimes actors show up to set, are introduced to their co-star and have to hop into bed together like they have been lovers for years. In the fast-paced world of film and television, especially during auditions, chemistry reads and network tests, there often isn’t time for actors to create detailed relationships the way they’ve been trained. Many actors wind up substituting pre-planned emotions/feelings for relationship or otherwise try and cram a backstory into their head, which, in the allotted time, only keeps them in their head.
In my last article I suggested playing a game to help actors get out of their head in scripted scenes for the camera. Several people emailed asking me to elaborate.
Instead of spending your time stuck in your head with relationship backstory or focusing on feelings (which change, e.g., sometimes I love my brother, sometimes I hate him, but he’s always my brother), consider the ways people demonstrate relationship more consistently. Try these tips to stay in the present and truthfully communicate detailed relationships regardless of how you feel in the moment.
1. Name the relationship. To avoid the trap of pre-planning feelings, label the relationship so you can be free to explore the way the characters relate to one another in a truthful context. If you’re playing Hamlet and Gertrude, the given relationship is mother and son. As artists, we can also choose to paint with different colors. As actors in relationships, we may want to use a metaphor. Laurence Olivier explored and heightened Shakespeare’s text without changing a word by famously communicating that Gertrude and Hamlet were lovers. Or in “American Hustle,” Christian Bale and Jennifer Lawrence are husband and wife, but there are scenes where he treats her like his child.
2. Physicalize it. If the scene were dubbed into a foreign language, how would the audience see the relationship? This is important for getting your choices out of your head and into the frame. What can you do to truthfully reveal the relationship? How can you show the relationship so that it’s unmistakable, even if it were dubbed in Mandarin? Even a detailed backstory is useless if it remains in your head. One way to explore this is to make physical contact with your scene partner. So much is revealed through touch. You can increase the challenge by finding ways of making contact without your hands; even if it’s out of frame, it will inform the relationship. Touching toes under the table, for example, can spark a sparkle in the eyes. Watch Richard Button and Elizabeth Taylor in Mike Nichols film “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” on mute. You’ll see every nuance of their relationship.
3. Seek tension. In a recent class, two actors were playing sisters in a power struggle. Tension built as they got closer to each other. They were nose-to-nose at the climax. Although the older sister won the beat verbally, the actor stepped back, so it appeared visually like she lost. In truth, the actor felt the physical discomfort of tension and released the tension by stepping away.
Another common relationship trap is when actors view their scene partner as an opponent on the other side of a boxing ring or chessboard. While this might encourage the fighting spirit, it also may overlook the very important collaborative role of relating with your partner while in conflict.
To explore working together to create tension, play Viola Spolin’s Tug-of-War game. Put an invisible “space” rope between you and your partner. The rope illustrates the high level of connection it takes to relate in conflict. Use as much energy as you would to pull a real rope to your side. If both players pull, but don’t collaborate, the space rope will stretch or slacken and there is no conflict, just sound and fury signifying nothing. If instead, both players are unified and seek to pull the rope (physicalize) while simultaneously maintaining tension in the rope together, a magical thing happens: A previously invisible relationship fills the space between them.
Today’s TV and film auditions are moving at hyper-speed and require quick, clear action to land the job. And when you’re on set, you’re often working with strangers. The next time you need to show the camera complex, detailed, truthful relationships fast, keep these tips in mind. Together, with a partner, you can make something greater than just a winner and a loser. Remember, it takes two to tango.
The 1 Brain Exercise You Need to Create Spontaneity
By Rob Adler | Posted Nov. 3, 2014, 10 a.m. Brains! Ever get caught in your head in the middle of a scene and want to eat your own brain for getting in the way? Or find yourself wracking your brain for inspiration to magically appear? Or pleading with your brain to stop hijacking your performance?
Speaking of brains, I think we’d all agree that playing a zombie is fairly easy. Single focus: eat brains. Why can’t other roles be that simple? They can, actually. Simple. Not easy mind you (pun intended). Like everything else in nature, the mind abhors a vacuum. In the absence of a clear, simple, focused point of concentration, the mind fills itself with whatever is available. Too often that’s self-consciousness, insecurity, and other things that hinder high-level performance. The beauty of a clear focus is it quiets the mind and frees the body to act spontaneously and live truthfully in the scene.
In 1963, Viola Spolin, the mother of improvisation released her seminal book, “Improvisation for the Theater,” and expressed an interest in demystifying the intuitive—refuting the idea that the magical force of intuition was unattainable except by chance or endowed only on a select, gifted few. But for many actors today, intuition remains a phantom.
Because spontaneity and humor are inextricably linked, the comedy world seized Spolin’s games. Her techniques became the engine for developing comedic sketch and the foundation for improv comedy. However, the true power of improvisation for many actors has remained largely untapped. Now neuroscience and psychology are finally verifying things that the great teachers have known for years, and Viola Spolin first wrote about more than 50 years ago.
In his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman describes the mind as a pair of systems. System 2 is reserved for slightly more laborious thinking, like adding 289 + 7853. You can do it, but you have to do it. In acting terms, System 2 typically shows up when you have difficulty memorizing a line or when and your acting teacher tells you that acting is just “living truthfully in imaginary circumstances,” but you are working in front of a green screen that’s supposed to be a chariot race. The mind often rejects imaginary circumstances the way the body can reject an artificial organ.
But the mind’s other system is effortless, insightful, and instantaneous. It is the part of the mind that just knows certain things, like if someone is sad, what color blueberries are, or who your acting coach is. This is the intuitive mind. It’s there for you when, with the camera rolling, you’re fully immersed, playing, and you make some discovery or reveal some new insight and after cut is called, everybody cheers. You were “in the moment” and all the answers “just came to you” intuitively. But how did that happen and how can you make it happen more frequently?
Most of us have had the experience of moving difficult tasks from the laborious System 2 to the spontaneous System 1, like when you first learned to ride a bike. Or drive a car. Or shave.
It was initially in the effortful System 2, then, over time, it moved to the effortless, intuitive system.
In the fast paced world of film and television, we often don’t have the luxury of time to create a role. But total transformation is possible instantaneously if you have a technique for it. So how do you speed up the process? The trick to quickly and directly accessing your intuition and turning the effortful into the intuitive is crisis. That’s right—crisis. When your bike was about to tip over and you suddenly pedaled faster to stay vertical that first time, your intuition saved you, but only because you were thrust into crisis: steady the bike or skin a knee.
That crisis moment is a very creative time. We open up, new choices are available to us, and we do things that were impossible only a moment before. When faced with a crisis, the mind doesn’t have time to think through the problem. It just clings to the most present thought and intuition is released to solve the problem. Intuition comes in the now. If you were about to tip over and felt gravity make its move, but in the distance (or in your mind) you heard your parent’s voice coaching you to “Keep pedaling,” your intuition kicked in and you did something you could never do before—suddenly and completely.
It’s important to understand that the difference between handling a crisis with panic or with grace isfocus. At the audition, you may feel you’re in a crisis when you look over the lens at Francine Maisler, but unless you have that voice steadying your concentration, all you’ll likely get is panic. Conversely, after waiting on set all day for your scene, having fully prepared, there may be no crisis present whatsoever and your performance may be headed for Zombieland. So, how do you find a crisis on set without causing a crisis for others? Play a game. Why? Games create a safe crisis and thrust you into the intuitive.
The next time the camera’s rolling, try to make fresh physical contact with your scene partner for every line of dialogue. Or discover as many objects on set that you can find. Or try and communicate the relationship to your scene partner as if they didn’t know who they were. In addition to adding more fun, one can easily integrate games as part of a scripted scene.
While brains provide zombies with a fine entrée and a simple motivation, they don’t always help actors achieve their desired results. By using a singular focus and tricking the brain into a safe crisis, it frees up the body to tap into its intuition and unlocks spontaneity.
Keep pedaling!
Rob Adler is an on-set coach, actor, director, teacher, and 
founder of AdlerImprov Studio in Hollywood. For more information, check out Adler’s full bio!