The First Step in Acting Coaching Online Training: Why Imagination Matters

You’ve scrolled through our site. You’ve seen that we offer “Juilliard” techniques and that we’ve worked with artists like Aaron Sorkin, Patrick Page, and the SITI Company. You know we’ve taught around the country, won national singing competitions, and are stepping into our Hollywood careers.

But none of that tells you what it actually feels like to be in a session with us. Or how we start to answer the questions every actor asks: What is acting? What’s the first step to understanding a scene? Why am I an actor?

It will take many posts to explore all of that. But here’s the first foundation we build everything on:

Practical Philosophy #1: Imagination

Acting begins with imagination. From Juilliard and Patrick Page Studio, to the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski in Italy and Kathakali masters in India — imagination is the muscle that unlocks truthful, specific storytelling. It’s the deepest magic humans hold.

What my training taught me is that imagination is not just innate — it’s a skill you can build.

At Juilliard, for example, we’d spend three-hour classes imagining a field of grass. Guided by our teacher Richard Feldman, we’d sit staring at a white-tile ceiling and try to feel the breeze, see the clouds shift, or notice the grass tickle our arms. At first, it’s grueling. But with practice, the images become second nature. Suddenly, weeks in, you see the grass twitch in the wind. You notice how accessible wonder is — and how easily you can tap into creativity without dredging up personal trauma.

Imagination helps us find the depth of a character’s experience with specificity and meaning — not a void. Trauma creates a void. Imagination fills it.

How We Use Imagination at Acting Coaching Online

We start every project by mining the text for specific details. Not just "my character loves to read," but what books changed their life? How did it feel to close one of them for the first time? Was the spine bent? Had they picked at the corner of the book during anxious passages? Or is the cover pristine?

This is how we build a whole person — and how we keep ourselves from always playing ourselves.

For advanced actors, the next challenge is choosing details that truly wake up your impulses, not just random facts.

As Michael Chekhov (one of Stanislavski’s brightest pupils) put it:

“Have you ever seen the actor who is himself in every performance? By the end he hates his profession. It is because he is bored to death.”

Let’s not get bored.

Exercise: Waking Up the Muscle of Imagination

If you struggle to “see” things in a scene — like Macbeth’s dagger in "Is this a dagger I see before me?" — here’s an exercise to start waking up your imagination:

1. In your room, close your eyes.

2. Note three things you hear or feel: a breeze, a fan, a distant street sound.

3. Choose one and notice something more specific about it. What’s the pitch of the sound? What’s the temperature of the breeze?

4. With eyes still closed, think about a tiny visual detail in your room you wouldn’t notice at first glance. Picture it.

5. Open your eyes and check. Were you right? If not, what could you have tuned into more specifically?

This is the first step in training your imagination for acting — sharpening how detailed and alive a character’s world can be.

To Kill a Mockingbird, adapted by Aaron Sorkin - Arianna Gayle Stucki as Mayella Ewell, Richard Thomas (The Waltons) as Atticus Finch, Stephen Elrod (Bailiff), Richard Poe (Judge), Greg Wood (Roscoe), Joey Collins (Bob Ewell)

Imagination Makes the Work Sustainable

When I played Mayella Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird on the First National Tour, I performed her painful testimony scene over 500 times. Her life is bleak: a traumatized, volatile racist trapped with her abusive father. It would have been easy to sink into that pain.

But through imagination, the relationship with the material shifts — from one of loss to one of creativity and meaning-making. My job was to let her story be seen with truth. That truth is how we serve others with our work.

Online Acting Coaching for Imagination?

Can you strengthen imagination through online acting classes? Yes — absolutely.

Online acting coaching is perfectly suited for building imagination. It doesn’t diminish the work; it deepens it. I know this firsthand. A significant part of my Juilliard acting training took place online during the pandemic.

If you’re wondering how to build imagination for acting, your home — with a laptop and guided practice — can be an ideal training space.

In fact, sometimes it’s better than a fluorescent-lit studio. When we learn to be specific with our surroundings — even virtually — we deepen our ability to create vivid, believable worlds. This is the skill that makes scene study effortless and helps you bring scripts to life with clarity and vibrant impulses.

We Meet You Where You Are

That said — if your way into character is through personal memories? Great. As long as the moment is full, alive, and repeatable, we’ll be thrilled to see your process. That’s how we were taught at Juilliard, and I thinks a pretty good way to go about it.

Because our most important philosophy at Acting Coaching Online is: follow your impulses. We meet you where you are and we don’t shut down your creativity. We unleash it.

Like the sound of that? Book a session here and start building the imagination muscle today.