Tom Todoroff series, article 3 of 4
An acting technique can seem perfectly clear on paper and become much less clear the moment you have to use it in front of a camera. That is precisely what interested me about Tom Todoroff’s Monday Workshop at the Tom Todoroff Studio: the concepts do not stay in your notes for long. They have to become usable — quickly, under pressure and in relationship with another actor.
In the first two parts of this series, I wrote about how I discovered Tom through Elite Casting, then unpacked the fifteen Guideposts that structure much of his text analysis. This third part is about putting the work into action. How do you learn the vocabulary? When are you considered ready to work? What happens when you receive sides the day before class? And how do the body, the voice and work ethic fit into all of it?
Observe first, work second
My entire experience with the Tom Todoroff Studio took place remotely, on Zoom. That format might sound limiting for actor training, but I found that it worked surprisingly well, especially for performers who already do a significant part of their auditioning in front of a camera. The eyes, the listening, the ability to receive a note and immediately do a scene again remain very visible, even through a screen.
On my first visit, I could simply observe. I did not have to arrive with the entire Todoroff Technique memorized or every reading completed. The idea was to become familiar with the work before asking to be the person doing the work. Once I enrolled, however, I knew there was a threshold to cross before being considered ready to work actively in front of Tom.
To reach that point, you were expected to have read or listened to Michael Shurtleff’s Audition and don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements, and to know the different elements of the technique well enough to understand a note without stopping the work. The Guideposts, the Viewpoints, Vocal Variation, the Four Agreements, the Three Tenets and the Three Techniques had to become familiar vocabulary, not a list you were still searching for in your notes while the scene was happening.
Learn the vocabulary until it disappears
The day I enrolled, the Studio sent me printable Technique Flashcards. The idea was simple: a number on one side, the corresponding Guidepost on the other. #1: Relationship. You could cut them out, fold them and test yourself until the associations became automatic.
The team compared learning them to learning the plays in a playbook. I still find that image very accurate. An athlete does not study a system in the middle of the action in order to admire the theory; they learn it well enough that it becomes available when the pace speeds up. If I have to mentally stop the scene to ask myself what #13 means, the technique pulls me away from the present moment. If I immediately know it means Mischief, the number becomes an extremely efficient shortcut.
In instructions for the audition exercises, the Studio would give examples such as: “Add some #4 and #13 here!” For someone who knows the framework, that means Humor and Mischief. That is where I really understood that the Guideposts are not only for preparing a text alone at home. They also form a shared language that lets the teacher and the actor work together quickly.
The body: the Six Viewpoints
The Todoroff Technique does not stop at the text. Its Physical Awareness pillar draws on the Six Viewpoints: Time, Space, Shape, Movement, Story and Emotion, in the lineage of Mary Overlie’s work. That part interests me because an analysis can be intellectually brilliant and still remain lifeless if it never moves through the body.
How quickly am I moving? What distance exists between me and the other person? Am I taking up space or trying to disappear? Does my body close when I lie? Am I staying still while everything in me wants to leave? A thought is never completely abstract: it changes the breath, posture, rhythm and relationship to space.
The Studio often returns to the idea that “Acting is a physical artform!” The Workshop environment reflected that: specialists in movement, voice and speech regularly contributed, drawing on approaches that could include the Alexander Technique, Linklater, Feldenkrais and other physical and vocal traditions. Those disciplines belong to their respective teachers, but their constant presence was a reminder that the text eventually has to pass through a real body.
The voice: rate, inflection, pitch and dynamics
The third pillar is Vocal Awareness. In the Todoroff material I received, four variables are used to observe vocal variation: Rate, Inflection, Pitch and Dynamics, including volume and changes in intensity. Together they are often summarized by the acronym RIPD.
The goal is not to manufacture an artificially “interesting” voice. It is to notice our habits. An actor can prepare a scene with great precision and still speak at the same pace, the same volume and on the same melodic line from beginning to end. But thought changes, relationship changes, danger changes; the voice should be able to carry traces of those changes.
Several Studio phrases point in the same direction: “I need to be able to SAY IT to PLAY IT” or “Speak simply & let it flow.” I also like “Acting is energetic and emotional, not literal or grammatical.” A sentence has grammar, of course, but the person speaking has a thought in motion, a need and someone they are trying to reach.
Work ethic: The Four Agreements
One thing that surprised me at first was seeing don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements among the recommended reading. At first glance, the book can seem far removed from actor training. In practice, I understand very well why it is there. The Studio returns to four simple principles: always do your best, do not take anything personally, do not make assumptions, and be impeccable with your word.
For an actor, “Don’t take anything personally” is particularly useful. You prepare a scene for hours, make decisions, invest part of yourself and someone eventually says: no, that choice is not working; try something else. If every note becomes an attack on my personal value, the work closes down. I need to be able to defend a choice sincerely, then abandon it without experiencing that change as a rejection of me.
That flexibility is not passivity. If anything, it makes greater boldness possible. If I know I can let go of an idea without my ego collapsing with it, I can take more risks. Work Ethos therefore feels closely tied to freedom in performance: discipline creates a framework in which the actor can experiment without needing to be right every time.
Relaxation, concentration and imagination
The Work Ethos also includes three Tenets: Relaxation, Concentration and Imagination. The Studio often uses the phrase “Acting is the Art of Relaxation Under Extraordinary Circumstances.” I do not understand that relaxation as softness or a lack of intensity, but as availability.
A scene can be violent, urgent, heartbreaking or completely absurd, and the actor still needs enough space to breathe, listen and respond. Concentration keeps the attention where it needs to be, while imagination gives the text its world, images, history and circumstances. The three feed one another: excessive tension narrows attention, scattered attention weakens imagination, and imagination without presence can turn into daydreaming detached from the scene partner.
Audition, rehearsal and performance
The material also distinguishes three Techniques or contexts: Audition, Rehearsal and Performance. I like that distinction because those situations do not ask for exactly the same thing. In an audition, time is limited and you need choices clear enough for the text to live immediately. In rehearsal, you can break an idea apart, try another, go back and take time to understand what is resisting. In performance, the structure has to be integrated enough to leave room for the present moment.
The tools remain the same, but the way you use them changes. That is another thing I appreciated about the Workshop: the technique was not confined to a school exercise. You could bring in a prepared scene, an actual audition or even material from a role you had already booked.
A scene, a real audition or a role you already booked
One way to work was to choose a scene or monologue and sign up in advance. A partner could be assigned and the work began before class. When our turn came, we presented what we had prepared and Tom could intervene on the relationship, the text, the stakes, the Moment Before, discoveries, the body, the voice or whatever else was keeping the scene from fully living. The actor was expected to have done the first round of work already; Tom was not there to replace preparation.
It was also possible to bring in a real audition when the schedule allowed it. At that point there was no distance between the exercise and the profession: an actual professional audition, an actual deadline, a few pages and sometimes very little time. That is exactly where a framework like the Guideposts becomes useful. It does not guarantee the perfect answer, but it gives you good questions to ask quickly.
I also learned that actors already working on a production could bring material from their role into class. In February 2025, when I was considering putting the Workshop on pause because I was rehearsing a musical production and my schedule was overflowing, Emily suggested I use the class to work on the text I was already learning. At the time I wondered whether my French-language material could be used as-is; I never had the chance to pursue the question further. What stayed with me was that the Workshop could support a professional role you had already booked, not only an audition you were hoping to book.
The Audition Exercises: working almost for real
The Audition Exercises are probably what made the Studio’s logic clearest to me. Members considered ready to work were contacted about their availability. Sides could arrive on Sunday for an exercise on Monday. The document was generally a few pages long, a partner was assigned and a short rehearsal period was built into class. The conditions were deliberately close to a real audition: little time, unfamiliar material and the obligation to arrive with something you could defend.
On January 5, 2025, I received sides for an exercise scheduled the next day. I had been assigned the role of Jeff and another member of the Monday Workshop was chosen as my partner. The instructions were straightforward: print the pages, prepare them as though for a real audition and use the Todoroff Technique to make my choices. We did not have to be off-book and could keep the pages in our hands. But we had to know the material well enough not to remain glued to the paper, and to keep the face available to the partner and the camera.
The next day we had fifteen minutes together in a separate virtual room before returning to work in front of the group. I thought the exercise was very fair because it reproduced a real difficulty of the profession: being prepared enough to be free without having unlimited time. A few weeks earlier I had already been asked to take part in a similar exercise, but a shoot scheduled for December 30 forced me to withdraw. The team had already begun preparing my material and offered other times. That small episode stayed with me because it reinforced that the training was built for actors whose professional lives keep moving around the class.
Watching others and building a working community
One thing it is easy to underestimate in a workshop is how much you learn when it is not your turn. Watching an actor present a scene, hearing a note, watching them go again and seeing how one small change in relationship, objective or rhythm suddenly transforms the work can teach you an enormous amount. Then the same thing happens on a completely different text. Over time you develop an eye. And as that eye becomes more precise when looking at other people’s work, it eventually becomes more precise when looking at your own.
The Studio extended that logic between classes as well. The members’ space gave access to a community of artists who shared the same vocabulary, where you could find a partner to rehearse a scene or record an audition. Resources, weekly videos and archives made it possible to keep observing and reviewing. What interested me was not the catalogue of benefits but the idea that a technique integrates more deeply when it continues to exist between the moments when you are working directly with the teacher.
That may be one of the most interesting goals of good training: gradually becoming less dependent on the teacher. You begin by learning their vocabulary, then eventually you can recognize for yourself that a scene lacks relationship, that an event is unclear, that you are pushing emotion or that the body has gone rigid. At that point the technique truly starts to belong to you.
Prepare so you can let go
There is a paradox I find in almost every major training experience I have had: you work enormously hard to arrive at a moment when you finally have to stop working. You analyze, write, rehearse, identify the events, look for the relationship, build the moment before, explore opposites and understand what you want. Then the camera rolls, and at that point you have to let the other person surprise you.
The technique is not there to lock a performance into place. It is there to provide enough foundation for the performance to become freer. In the fourth and final part of this series, I look at the larger ideas that keep returning around the method: becoming a text detective, humanizing instead of merely memorizing, putting action before emotion, having the experience instead of showing it, looking for specificity and danger, keeping the work open and feeding your artistic culture.
