How to act as though I have severe anxiety?
I need to act as though I have severe anxiety. I’m at college studying drama and performing arts and it’s crucial for this new role. I’m acting the part of a troubled middle age man who suffers with anxiety and Bipolar disorder. Any tips?
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I have a anxiety disorder so if I was you I would be really happy and jolly then sudden outburst with anger at someone or something when something happens, when you are anxious you feel like you are excited about something, remember a time like this then remember the feeling 100x more powerful, it’s horrible but if your acting. You have to shake a lot, be clumsy, talk shakily, move around a lot and try to always sit down. Hope this helps you!
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Cover your body up a lot and use closed body-language. Also, have frequent anger outbursts and panic attacks.
This will be a difficult part to play for you considering -I’m assuming because you are studying drama – that you are very outgoing and bubbly with a lot of confidence. The key things you should do is try to avoid eye contact, use a lot of closed body language, keep your arms tight, shoulders hunched slightly. You need to act is if you are going into yourself. Read up on google about bipolad disorder it’ll give you a better idea of the ‘frame of mind’ of a person with bipolar.
I get very anxious at times and when I do, I stop communicating, except for the one idea that I have in mind. That is, I can ask someone for reassurance/explanation on the thing I am anxious about, but that’s it. I can’t take anything else. If someone talks to me, I don’t even hear them, or I hear them like an annoying hum and I just want to shush them (and I usually do :/
I can hardly even look at the person talking to me.
It’s like the anxiety, the thing I’m anxious about at that time, is like a big fog that’s all around me and with a big effort I can glimpse that someone is asking me something for 2 seconds, but really if it’s not to do with my anxiety I just can’t focus.
Normally I’m good at listening to people, but when I’m anxious about something I’m just so 100% into the "anxiety" of the moment it annihilates everything else.
I guess from the outside I look distracted or "lost".
If there are lots of people around me and I was in a discussion when the anxiety started, I’d say I probably get louder and speak fast, or not make sense.
I also get very active then, I have to clean or "do" something. But that’s more if I’m at home on my own, then I don’t speak, I’m just like a robot intent on "doing" as much as can be done.
Hope that helps.
For a complete rundown of symptoms, go to WebMD and type inn severe anxiety. It will givce you symptoms, remedies, and some of the ways in which a person with it needs to react to live with it.
As someone trained in method acting, that’s where i would go. I’d then "suffer" the symptoms to get my body involved, see how it affects my voice, my gestures, my expressions.
Suggestion, acting as though produces a surface study that will not give a convincing performance. Becoming the part is so much more effective. Act from the inside and then you don’t have to act. All you have to do is learn the lines! The rest weill emerge. Study the works of Lee Strassberg or Sandy Meissner. They afre dead but method is still alive and well and living in lower Manhattan.
"Break a leg" as we say in theatre.