Tom Todoroff series, article 1 of 4
In the fall of 2024, the 15 Guideposts were not yet part of my vocabulary as an actor. I had no idea at the time that Tom Todoroff’s approach would profoundly change the way I read and approach a text. I already understood, of course, the importance of preparing a scene, understanding a character and making choices, but I had not yet encountered this very structured way of questioning a text until it begins to reveal more than it does on a first read.
I discovered it through Elite Casting in Montreal. Nadia Rona and Vera Miller, in collaboration with the Tom Todoroff Studio, had organized a free online Master Class for actors on November 20, 2024. You could attend as an observer or submit yourself to work directly with Tom. That invitation was my way into his world.
After that Master Class, the Studio team invited me to observe the Monday Workshop on December 2, free of charge. I accepted, then enrolled in the program. A few weeks later, I was already taking part in the Studio’s audition exercises, with sides distributed ahead of time and a scene partner assigned for the work in class.
I do want to make one thing clear from the beginning. I did not study with Tom long enough to present myself as a specialist or as a keeper of his method. Suggesting otherwise would do the work a disservice. I took part in his workshops, watched a great deal of work, experimented with some of his tools and discovered an approach I continue to find extremely relevant. I fully intend to work with Tom and his team again when my schedule allows it.
This series is therefore the point of view of a curious actor who spent time in this training, appreciated it and wanted to understand more clearly what it had changed in his own process. The more I return to the Todoroff Technique, the more I see that it is much broader than a collection of tricks for getting through an audition. It is a way of preparing the text, the body, the voice and the attention so that, when the moment to act finally arrives, the actor can stop showing the preparation.
From the Master Class to the Monday Workshop
The November Master Class was a real entry point for me. Actors who wanted to work directly with Tom could submit their names and prepare a monologue; those who preferred to observe could simply attend. I already liked the idea that you could learn an enormous amount without necessarily being the person working on screen. Watching a scene, hearing a note, then observing what changes when the actor goes again can be every bit as educational as receiving the note yourself.
A few days later, Emily Moulton invited me to visit the Monday Workshop. Before I had even begun working actively, I was directed toward two books that would become important to the approach: Michael Shurtleff’s Audition and don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements. I was also sent material outlining the Todoroff Technique. At that point I began to see the larger architecture behind the exercises: a method of text analysis, certainly, but also work on the body, the voice and the attitude with which an actor enters a rehearsal room or receives direction.
That progression suited me. You could begin by watching, learning the vocabulary and becoming familiar with the tools. Only then came the moment to use them in front of Tom. The technique was not presented to me as a magic formula to apply immediately, but as a language you first had to learn before hoping to speak it fluently.
Before Todoroff: Michael Shurtleff and Audition
To understand part of Tom’s approach, you have to talk about Michael Shurtleff. Shurtleff came from casting and became an important Broadway figure in the 1960s and 1970s. His credits included productions such as 1776, Jesus Christ Superstar, Pippin and Chicago, along with work for film and television. His perspective on acting was therefore shaped in a very particular place: the audition room, where an actor has little time, a few pages and almost none of the support that will later come from sets, costume, editing or music.
That is what makes his book Audition so interesting. Shurtleff is not simply trying to explain how to “act well.” He is asking why some auditions come alive while others remain competent but somehow unnecessary. He organizes much of his thinking around twelve Guideposts: twelve ways of looking for relationship, conflict, the moment before, humour, opposites, discoveries and several other elements that give movement to a text.
Tom worked with Shurtleff for years while also drawing from other major influences. His training includes Juilliard, Stella Adler, Edith Skinner, Kristin Linklater, Harold Guskin and Cicely Berry. That variety helps explain why the Todoroff Technique cannot be reduced to the Guideposts. Shurtleff is an important part of its lineage, but Tom built around that analysis a method that engages the actor’s instrument much more broadly.
A technique much broader than the Guideposts
The Studio presents the Todoroff Acting Technique through four major pillars. The first is Text Analysis, built around the fifteen Guideposts used in the Shurtleff-Todoroff framework. The second is Physical Awareness, including the Six Viewpoints. The third is Vocal Awareness, which looks at elements such as pace, inflection, pitch and changes in vocal intensity. The fourth is Work Ethos, bringing together the Four Agreements, the Three Tenets and the Three Techniques.
I liked that structure almost immediately because it avoids reducing the actor to the intellect. You can understand a text with tremendous precision and still remain completely frozen. You can also feel a great deal and communicate almost none of it. The work asks for thought to move through the body, for the voice to carry change, for attention to remain on the scene partner, and for the actor to have enough discipline to go again without clinging to the first idea that felt good.
In the material I received, Tom also speaks about the Physics of Performance, a way of approaching acting through observable elements and concrete questions. I like the idea because it removes some of the mystery from preparation. Instead of waiting for inspiration or desperately searching for “the right emotion,” I can return to the text and ask: What do I want? Why does this person matter so much? What has just happened? What changes now? What am I revealing, or trying to hide?
Learning to become a text detective
One phrase comes up often around the Studio: “Be a text detective, then take the trip of that text.” I find the image especially accurate. The first part asks you to investigate. The text becomes a crime scene in the most playful sense: it contains clues, contradictions, silences, shifts in power and details that can disappear on a first reading.
Being a text detective, for me, means refusing to stop at what the scene appears to say immediately. “He’s my father” is not yet a relationship. “I’m angry” is not yet an action. “She’s leaving me” does not yet explain why this conversation has to happen today. The Guideposts keep you asking questions until the situation becomes specific enough to produce behaviour.
But the second half of the phrase matters just as much: then you have to take the trip of the text. Once the investigation is done, the actor cannot remain above the scene, demonstrating everything they understood. They have to enter it. That is where the technique begins, paradoxically, to disappear. An audience does not want to watch my analysis. It wants to watch someone trying to get something from someone else, being surprised, resisting, giving in, discovering and changing.
Fifteen doors, not fifteen boxes
The Todoroff framework uses fifteen Guideposts: Relationship; Conflict — What Am I Fighting For? / How Am I Meddling?; The Moment Before; Humor; Opposites; Discovery; Communication & Competition; Importance; Find the Events; Place; Game Playing & Role Playing; Mystery & Secret; Mischief; Vulnerability; and Architecture.
I am not going to unpack them one by one here, because they deserve an article of their own. What interests me more in this first part is how quickly they begin to speak to one another. The Studio uses the phrase “The moment before is an event!”, which immediately connects The Moment Before with Find the Events. Another phrase, “My response is in the other actor!”, naturally brings relationship, listening and communication together.
That is where the method becomes more interesting than a checklist. The Guideposts are not fifteen effects I have to squeeze into a scene. They are fifteen doors. Depending on the text, some will be wide open and others almost irrelevant. If an audition feels flat, I can examine the relationship. If I know too well what is going to happen, I can return to Discovery. If everything is being played in one colour, Opposites or Events can bring movement back. The point is less about using everything than about knowing where to look when something is not working.
Looking for action before emotion
Another Studio phrase captures an idea that has had a real influence on my preparation: “Intentional action produces emotion.” I do not take that as a rejection of emotion — quite the opposite. It is an invitation not to begin with the result. If I start by trying to “be sad,” I may end up manufacturing the image of sadness. If I am trying to convince someone to stay and they keep slipping away from me, emotion can arise from something I am actually doing.
That way of thinking constantly brings the work back to the other person. An objective is not a sentence written in my notebook; it has to meet resistance. I want to make you laugh, impress you, calm you down, push you to confess, stop you from leaving, make you admit that I am right. With every attempt, what you give me can change my tactic. Emotion stops being a number prepared in advance and becomes the possible consequence of a living struggle.
For an audition, that shift is valuable. It helps me move away from “How should I play this scene?” and return to something more concrete: “What am I trying to do to this person, here, right now?” I do not pretend to find the perfect answer every time, but the question itself already makes the work more active.
What a few months of work had already changed for me
By February 2025, my schedule had become difficult to manage. I was juggling my day job, auditions, rehearsals for a musical production, text, songs, choreography and another show I was preparing. I eventually asked to put the Workshop on pause — not because I felt I had exhausted it, but because I could no longer give it the energy I wanted to give it.
I remember telling Emily that, despite the pause, I had learned an enormous amount in just a few months and could already see a meaningful difference in the way I approached auditions. That feeling stayed with me. I felt better equipped to enter a text, less dependent on my first instinct and more able to defend a choice while remaining available to direction.
That is also one reason I remain careful when I write about the method. I do not want to turn a few months of training into a claim of definitive expertise. What I can say is that the work made enough of an impression to keep serving me and to make me want to return. That feels like the fairest position: an actor who seriously experienced a method, recognizes its value and knows there is still a great deal left to explore.
One method among many
I do not believe any one school owns all the answers. Stanislavski, Adler, Meisner, Michael Chekhov, Shurtleff, Chubbuck, Practical Aesthetics and the many traditions of physical and vocal work can all contribute something. Every actor eventually builds a personal toolbox — sometimes keeping one technique for years, sometimes borrowing a principle here and a way of working there.
What I particularly like about Todoroff is the practical, diagnostic nature of the approach. When a text resists me, I have questions I can ask. I can examine relationship, event, danger, opposition, vulnerability and structure. I can look at what I am doing instead of waiting for some mysterious “right emotion.” And the more I work as an actor, the more valuable I find that ability to return to the text, the partner and the action.
Why I want to go back
I am not writing this series because I have “finished” my training with Tom. It is almost the opposite. The further I go in the profession, the more I understand the value of having a place where you can keep training. The Studio describes the Workshop as a kind of weekly artistic gym, and the image feels right to me: you do not lift weights for six months and then announce that your muscles are finished. Habits return, listening can become lazy, and every new text exposes different weaknesses.
When my schedule allows me to return regularly to workshops with Tom Todoroff and his team, it will not be to add another line to my résumé. It will be to keep working. In the second part of this series, I will move into the heart of the text analysis: the fifteen Guideposts, what they are actually looking for, and above all how to use them without turning a scene into a classroom exercise.
