Acting Tips to Captivate Your Audience in Every Scene

The surest way to keep an audience interested in a scene, is for the actors to be totally engaged with each other. Remember, the more interested the characters are in what they’re doing, the more interested the viewer will be in what’s going on. And of course, the more tension and conflict there is in the scene, the more likely the viewer will be to want to see what’s happening, and anticipate what might happen next. An actor, like the writer, should always be just a little ahead of the audience to keep them interested. The big sin here is to disengage a viewer with predictability and boredom. 

It’s important to never take the viewer out of the scene. One way of doing just that is with extraneous (aka obvious) acting. They must be able to see the character and not the actor. Playing to the audience is the worst way to engage them, because the actor is preventing them from creating the situation and characters in their own mind. Poor pacing is yet another reason for audience confusion and fatigue. Each theatrical style (comedy, drama, etc.) has its own requirements. Quick pacing in a suspense or slow pacing in a farce can be disastrous. Without a pause before the punchline, comedies aren’t funny, and excessive pauses will ruin any scene, no matter the style.

To sum up: anything the characters do will engage the viewer, and anything the actor does will disengage them. Do nothing to convince them of anything, and they will do the rest!