How do you make yourself cry on stage?

Question:i'm in my schools play and i have a scene where i completely break down and start to bawl on stage, how do i tap into that emotion? please help!!!

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: i'm in my schools play and i have a scene where i completely break down and start to bawl on stage, how do i tap into that emotion? please help!!!

The technique that most actors use is called an "emotional trigger" and it generally requires an acting coach to help you through it.

The method involves getting into a state of deep relaxation and recalling a time in your life when you felt the emotion that your character is experiencing--in this case, a time in your life when you totally broke down and bawled. Somewhere in that recall is a "trigger", a specific sensory memory--it might be a specific sound, an aroma, a physical touch, a particular thing you saw--that may bring that emotion back. When, in your recall, you break down and bawl and you can pinpoint exactly what memory caused it--maybe you have a trigger. To be sure, you should be able to repeat the exercise a couple more times and get the same reaction.

Then, when you're onstage, if you're properly relaxed and focused, you can recall that "trigger" and it should call up the emotion.

Again, it generally requires a good acting coach to make this work. Feel free to experiment, and if it doesn't work, then fake it--Stanislavski said that sometimes doing the external action will create a genuine internal emotion.

What many actors do is recall a VERY sad time in their lives and think about it until they are overwhelmed with emotion.

I think about the Patriots loosing to the giants. then i think about the movie Rudy and how he wanted to play for Notre Dame so badly. then i think about Saving Private Ryan, and the scene where they take on that german machine gun emplacement, and one of their guys dies. then i combine that with scenes from Old Yeller, the movie. there's nothing more heart wrenching than a man loosing his dog. by then, i'm ususually bawling on the floor

cover your face with your hands, and start bouncing up and down, somethimes i fake it and am laughing, ha, im laughiong at my own joke, now that is sad.

pull out a nose hair.

idk i just have the ability to make my self start crying really hard!! idk how i do it it just comes to me. but try to dry out your eyes i guess

think of something really sad like someone dieing.

i had to do this, and i didnt think my self as me anymore, but i was the character, even offstage, i was the character, just become the character, and if so, if your not crying as much as you want to, make actions that make up forit that show the audience that you are sad