The Internal vs. External Debate
The long-running pedagogical disagreement: do you start a scene from your internal state (emotion, thought) or from your external choice (physicality, line)?
Known for
- Internal-first school (Carrane, late Del, organic-discovery): let the truth of what you're feeling become the choice.
- External-first school (Napier, parts of UCB): commit to a strong physical/verbal choice first — the emotion arrives because of the commitment, not before it.
- Most mature performers use both, depending on the scene. The debate shows up in teacher-to-teacher variation more than in blanket school positions.