What can actors learn from Gustavo Dudamel? After hearing him conduct Mahler’s Fifth Symphony with the New York Philharmonic, Milton explores what made the performance extraordinary: Dudamel’s personal connection to the music, the way he included the orchestra, and how that connection reached the audience.

That same expanding circle is essential to acting. This week’s discussion looks at connecting to the idea of a play, building a relationship with your partner, and letting the audience in. Along the way, Milton discusses Talking Out, shopping for choices, and why being truthful is only a beginning. Through practice—and through expanding our knowledge, imagination, and experience—we develop more to bring to the work.

How do you respond to the circumstances as the character? This week, we explore how script analysis helps us discover the character’s nature—and turn that understanding into specific behavior. We discuss how a profession shapes a person, what observing others can teach us, and Stella Adler’s exercise of taking the character into situations outside the play. The work begins with recognizing how you and the character are alike, where you differ, and what you need to build.

What happens when an actor really looks at the person they’re speaking to? This week, I use Edgar Degas’s painting L’Absinthe to help the class build a relationship with a partner. We begin with what we notice about the woman in the painting, then explore how those observations can become a personal attitude toward her—and an impulse to speak.

One actor’s response takes us somewhere unexpected. Along the way, we talk about giving ourselves room to explore, letting the partner affect us, and finding the difference between describing a relationship and experiencing one.