WORLD BUILDING — an interview with improvisor Sarah Kirwin

Few people have the imagination for reality

— Goethe

In my practice as an acting coach I like to encourage actors to make a Fact/Fiction Sandwich. I say, “Use as much fact as you possibly can, and as little fiction as you need, to make it true for you”.

Often, I will invite actors to seek out experiences or replicas of experiences in which to immerse themselves, so that they can establish experiential ownership of the character’s life.

In my article PREPARATION/LOCATION which you can flick to here, you can read more about Experiential Blindness, the idea that you can’t know what you don’t know. This is why I am such a fan of research for actors. And also why I am such a fan of experiential research — putting your body inside an experience rather than just your mind inside an idea. This is called Embodied Cognition, an emerging psychological field which explores the idea that the body affects the mind just as the mind affects the body. You can read more about it in this article here, CONN…