THE ACTORS TOOL BOX It is helpful to begin with the difference obvious between reading a script to ourselves, and creating a character in an environment from a script for an audience to interpret. READING FROM A SCRIPT is a cognitive process in which we interpret a narrative by unconsciously imagining characters and relationships in our mind. We do this by responding to the words in terms of our own personal experiences. These signals travel throughout our nervous system producing chemicals associated with emotions that provide substance to the narrative being read. ACTING FROM A SCRIPT is completely different as it is necessary for us to create characters and emotions using speech cadence, body language, blocking, motion, reaction and tears. An audience understands the character in the script solely from our personal interpretation of that character's words. An actor's non-verbal skills therefore provide the intangible frame of reference for the words actually heard and p