Practical Training: A game of 🐍 Snakes & 🪜 Ladders

🐍 A game to crank up the difficulty & fast track mastery 🪜

Hi Actor,

When working away at your practice of a chosen skill use this technique to ramp up the difficulty. As we've covered before, we want to put ourselves into a zone of discomfort to learn at any great speed. This tool can be used widely across many skills, but for the purpose of this post we will put ourselves in the position of filming a self tape. Our Goal? To practice a very technical element of film acting called "eye-lines". So join me for a little hypothetical:

We've hypothetically noted that in the last few weeks our eyes have been darting around quite a bit within our scene work. The acting was absolutely fine but it was hard to connect with the work emotionally from the spectators POV because our eyes are in constant movement. We probably had a total of 30 different eye lines for each take. It's a little messy, and kind of frustrating, because the work itself is good! But have no fear - we can fix this problem in no time at all.

Shrink The Space

We are back at it, working on a new scene, sitting in front of a camera, our reader behind, recording. First step? "Shrink the practice space". Instead of allowing 30 eye lines we confine our eye movement down to 2 eye lines. One eye line for the person just off camera and another for a thinking spot. Place a sticky-note on a wall somewhere close to camera and on the other side of the reader, if that helps.

Note: Shrinking the space is a technique to boost Myelin development (the chemical substance responsible for talent) noted in 'The Little Book of Talent' (Tip #25) By Daniel Coyle . World class athletes use this to up the intensity of their training. If you're interested in reading the book, find it here.

The Rules of the Game

Requirements: 2 players, a timer & a self tape set up.

Player 1: Actor (You)

Player 2: Coach (Reader)

Prep: Set timer for 45 minutes

Player One's Objective: Get from the start of the scene to the end of the scene without the coach stopping you. (You must follow the coaches instructions)

Player Two's Objective: Keep an eye on the Actor's eyes. If they look anywhere other than the two designated spots, cut the scene and start the recording again. "Back to the start" the coach may say to give a heads up, of the error. Don't let the actor get away with one moment of "unsatisfactory eye line". Be decisive. Brutally so.

Game Concludes: When Player 1 Succeeds with three full runs of the scene or when the timer runs out.

Considerations: The actor can even stumble & loose their lines (pausing for something like 30 seconds to try find them) - if they remain with their eyes on the two designated spots - they can still stay in the game and win the point.

3-5 Lives Challenge: To crank the challenge up even further, you could add a "lives" mechanic to the game. Set your chosen lives before you start. Lets say for the purpose of this example, 5 lives are given. Each error/ restart takes one life from Player 1. You'd only have 5 lives to last you for the full game. Remember, scoring 3 points wins you the game!

Final Considerations

Thats just one example of how to use Snakes and Ladders to help build a robust skillset. It can be utilised to develop ability in Accent, Pacing, Word Perfect Memory, Unpredictability, Familiarity, Point of View and much more. The only consideration you will need to make before starting this exercise is to do with the coach. They must have an awareness and understanding of the exact thing you're practicing. They need to be able to identify it very quickly & when the "Actor" is missing the mark. Then they need to speak up when seeing the mistake.

The only objective for the actor is to get from start to finish with a tunnel vision approach. They don't even need to make the scene "work" to score a point. If the goal of the game is "pacing" the duo would decide on a time to beat (One Minute : Thirty Seconds), then the actor just needs to finish the scene within the set time. It doesn't mean the scene is going to be any good, it just means they are practicing to be fast. Later on, if thats too easy for them, absolutely add in more dynamics! Say if you're 2 months into practicing this weekly, you could be juggling 3 or 4 different skills at the same time...

Complete the scene in one minute and thirty seconds, only utilise 2 designated eye lines, be word perfect, all within the confines of using a Scottish accent. Throw in "make the scene work" as an additional pin to juggle.

To make it more challenging, just deep shrinking the space.

I also want to finish off by recommending that you don't utilise this when actually auditioning. The goal of this exercise is to build an awareness of and develop skills. The goal of any audition however, should be to pitch your version of the character to casting. Where the functionality of this work happens is subconsciously during an audition. You will have the ability to do any of the skills you practice when it's required of you in a professional setting.

Leave a comment bellow of some skills you'd like to practice! Are you wanting to work on accent, pacing, intentional movement, other? As always, feel free to share the post with anyone you like! Thanks again for reading and we'll see you next week! Talk Soon,

Lachy

Lachlan is an Australian Actor who has been working within the industry nearing a decade. He’s worked in Film & Theatre.

© Lachlan Stuart 2025