JUSTIN ROGERS

Post Category:

acting

We all have a way in

February 6, 2026

The fact that you’re a human being means you have a way in.

Early on as a teacher I’d easily feel out of my depth when teaching things I didn’t have all the answers to. We get hypnotised in the culture to believing that we have to be experts.

More often than not, we don’t need to wear that responsibility. We just need a way in.

In acting, we’re encouraged to find truth in the imagined circumstances of a character. One of my teachers Miranda Harcourt calls this ‘make it true for you’. The text talks about a cousin? Build an internal reality of that person.

Make it true for you is the secret to finding confidence when we feel out of our depth in other arenas too.

I don’t know about drums and I can’t play the drums. So I have not connection to them right? No way to make it true for me?

Well I’d say the fact that I can’t play the drums is a relationship to the drums. I know what drums are. I had a friend at high school who played the drums. I’ve always liked that drum solo by Phil Collins.

I suddenly have found my way in.

No matter what we bring ourselves to, in any arena, we always have the ability to make it true for ourselves.

Education is about connection. So finding that connection to any material we teach is vital.

Make it true for you and you’ll have a never ending source of connection.

Is it alive?

February 5, 2026

A director I worked with gave me a key question that I use to guide all of my work.

It was after a show and he’d given us all a few pages of notes for things to focus on and improve in the show. A collection of ultra specific tweaks.

He turned to us, knowing that hitting all these in one show was a long shot. He acknowledged this and said simply “All I’m looking for is the life. All these notes are there just to support that. So all your job is is to search for the life.”

“{Is it alive?”

That’s it. We have tonnes of technical moments to hit, emotional beats to play, connection to each other, the material, the audience- one million things that culminate in a single outcome; life.

When I act I come back to the question.

When I rehearse. When I create. When I teach. When I converse. When I collaborate. When I build. When I help. It’s all in service of the same question:

Is it alive?

Actions and outcomes

January 29, 2026

I just watched an episode of Grand Designs UK (my favourite).

It was one of those episodes where the house doesn’t get finished. I think it may even be one of the longest builds on the show.

There was something I noticed in the language of the guy building the house. He said he would ‘tinker’ away at the build over the next ‘little while’.

When I picked up on these language patterns, I understood why the build took so long. Now, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with tinkering or with taking a long time on projects. We can all do whatever we like.

What I’m interested in is effectively meeting our outcomes as determined by ourselves.

All we need to do it make sure our actions match our outcomes.

If you want to enjoy a build that is a long labour of love, then to ‘tinker’ is quite an appropriate verb.

But if you want to get it built in three months and to high spec- you might want to choose another word.

Actors choose action verbs in their work. Different action verbs activate us in different ways.

What do you want and what are the action words you’ll choose to get there?

Games

January 10, 2026

Why playing games is good for families.

-There’s a shared low stakes goal.

-Everyone is focussing on the same thing.

-Different combinations of people have to deal with the difficulty of losing (and winning)

There’s a reason actors use games in a rehearsal process. They’re building connection, emotion and love.

Might be time to get a pack of cards out.

I think everyone should warm up their voice

January 1, 2026

At drama school, the idea of warming up the voice and body was very normal. Before that, I think I’d only heard of warming up in the context of sports.

There is a bit of a belief sometimes that if someone is warming up they aren’t good enough to just do the thing.

It would be great if we didn’t believe that.

Actors warm up to free and flex their voice because they are about to use it.

The reason I think we should all have voice warm ups is because we all use our voices to do things in the world. Sure it’s not in the context of a performance, but we still use it.

Your voice warm up doesn’t need to be fancy. Here’s a really easy way to warm your voice up:

Step 1: Choose your favourite song

Step 2: Do a lip trill along with your song. Follow the melody as precisely as you can.

There you go- you’ve warmed your voice up!

Do and be

December 23, 2025

Here’s a frame to set abstract outcomes succesfully.

An abstract outcome is what I call something that doesn’t necessarily have a finite beginning or ending. Want to enjoy a day with the family? Have a restful day? Feel like a cool uncle?

These are all abstract and so they require a frame that pulls them from the abstract into something you can action while not necessarily being able to measure or quantify them

  1. What do you want to do?

Stealing from the actors’ methodology of objective and action, have a think about what it is you want to do.

-I want to make my mum feel special.

-I want to make my niece feel heard.

-I want my friend to feel inspired.

These could qualify as objectives for an actor to play in a scene. And if they’re good enough for an actor they are good enough for you! They say a good objective for an actor should have it’s test in the other person. Said another way, is your objective set up in such a way that allows you to, at any moment, use your senses to ascertain how successful you are in your pursuit? This is what keeps actors active and it can do the same for you too.

  1. Who do you want to be?

This one is less useful for actors, but super useful to you. The strongest force in human psychology is to remain consistent with our identity. So choose the identity you will live into. I will be a loving son. I will be a strong partner. I will be a playful prince. What ever is is for you! When we are intentional about who we are being when we show up, we are far more likely to act in congruence with it when we pursue our outcome.

So using the frame we put the two together.

“I will make my mum feel heard and be a loving son.”

Or

“I will light my students up and be a master of ceremonies”

-What you want to do?

-Who you want to be?

When the outcome isn’t clear cut, see if this fit instead.

Becoming the phone

December 17, 2025

Opportunity is attracted to movement.

Ever notice how job offers, new clients and requests come flying in the moment you decide to focus on your own creation?

This seems to be true in the acting world. It’s like a Murphy’s law of sorts; you wait for the phone to ring and it never does. Then you decide to go build a sand castle and it’s ringing off the hook.

We have to be careful though…

We mustn’t make the sand castle to try and coax the opportunity; it doesn’t work that way.

We also mustn’t create movement for movement’s sake; creating more busy-ness doesn’t help.

The real secret is building a sand castle so grand and so exciting, that when the phone rings you genuinely consider not answering it.

That’s where the real juice is. When your sand castle is more compelling than someone else’s (and it will be, because you made it the way you like) you end up leaving them to do their thing and guess what?

You’ll be picking up the phone to call in some talented people looking to apply their skills.

Don’t wait for the phone.

Become the phone.

The actor in rehearsal

December 15, 2025

The actor in rehearsal is simultaneously like a kid on a playground and a bomb squad member cutting the red wire… or was it the green one?

Nowhere else have I experienced the utter joy of play and the deepest danger of humiliation.

Actors are uniquely bred to weather both of these.

Play too much and it dies for the audience (you can’t have all the fun, you have to let them it!)

Don’t risk anything and we might as well give the show a miss.

Great actors toe the line.

Andrew Scott said the job of rehearsal is for the actor to try everything they can possibly think of. He often feels humiliated, small, silly or dumb in rehearsal. And the fact that he is willing to do that, over and over again means he gets to deliver ‘Andrew Scott’ performances.

What can we learn from the actors rehearsal room orientation in other aspects o work?

Indirect Paths

December 12, 2025

Some of the most sought after things have indirect paths. I’ve heard it described like a cat- the more you chase it, the further away it runs.

Its difficult to relax by pushing or forcing it- an action directed toward that outcome is counter to it’s realisation.

The same goes for money. If you chase money you will rarely find it.

If you want to be liked by others, you won’t get there by focussing on being liked by others.

If an actor wants a scene to land as sad, they don’t go for the emotion.

Great results come from indirect paths.

To relax we have to let go. To gain financial abundance we must create value. To be liked by others we must care for them in a way that speaks to them. To play the sad scene, the actor must fight tooth and nail to hold on.

What are you going for directly that actually requires an alternate route?

Great acting is unselfconscious.

December 11, 2025

It’s one of the first things I learned from my teachers at drama school. It’s being able to be watched and, like many of the most sought after skills, the path to getting there is indirect.

We cannot push to be unselfconscious and we can’t even pull to do it. When you try to be comfortable being watched, that very tension manifests in the opposite which is self consciousness.

So how do we do it? Well I don’t have all the answers, but there seem to be patterns that help actors get there.

  1. Listen. Miranda Harcourt taught me about ‘reversing the flow’. She said it’s like the selfie function on the phone is switched off and you’re staring directly at the world and people around you. Listen with all of you; your physical senses and your psychic senses. Someone who is listening, truly listening, has a great chance of being unselfconscious. It’s pretty awesome to watching someone who is listening and for them not to be monitoring or adjusting themselves.
  2. Place your focus. All acting is is doin things- it’s in the name. So great actors have the ability to place their attention on an activity and wholeheartedly do it. They don’t feign doing it or display that they’re doing it; they really do it- in the imaginative reality of the piece. Believe it or not those are two different things; You can feign an action in imagined reality (bad acting) or you can really do it in imagined reality (good acting).

We can’t create unselfconsciousness, but we can place our focus outwards and invite it in.

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