EXERCISES
You are sitting at a table or desk. The telephone rings. You pick up the receiver. A person at the other end invites you to dinner. Deliver your part of the conversation.
1. Speak in your own character.
2. Speak as a busy, quick-tempered old man in his disordered office.
3. Speak as a tired wife who hasn't had a relief for weeks from the drudgery of house-work.
4. Speak as a young debutante who has been entertained every day for weeks.
5. Speak as the office boy.
6. Speak as an over-polite foreigner.
7. Delineate some other kind of person.
Improvisations are here given first because such exercises depend upon the pupil's original interpretation of a character. The pupil is required to do so much clear thinking about the character he represents that he really creates it.