Types of Role-Play Acting

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A role-play actor is an independent contractor hired by businesses, medical facilities, and companies to portray real-life situations for training purposes. An actor doing role-play work performs their character’s experiences in different real-world scenarios and settings.

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Role-playing work is available for actors in areas including medical, police, law, and corporate. Organizations in these fields hire role-play actors to help teach and train professionals to improve their problem-solving abilities and communication skills.

• Medical: Standardized patients are used by medical facilities and training programs to portray a character’s medical symptoms, personal history, emotional state, and medical queries and concerns. “We find smart, talented actors [to assist] us in training the next generation of physicians,” explained Dr. Sondra Zabar, director of internal medicine and clinical innovation at NYU Langone Health. “We use standardized patients for our learners—whether they’re medical students or residents or faculty—to practice important skills.”
• Police: Actors who do police role-play perform simulations to help officers hone their abilities to communicate, deescalate, negotiate, and resolve issues as smoothly as possible. Actor-psychiatrist Anne Stockton told WitOnline that she conducts role-play simulations with the NYPD as part of an ongoing educational initiative. “I play emotionally disturbed characters in order to help officers hone their negotiation skills,” she said.
• Law: Role-play actors can also help lawyers practice how to respond to clients and react on the fly during high-stress legal situations. “Giving an attorney an opportunity to try a variety of techniques in real-world scenarios can help hone their skills in a safe setting,” according to Legal Improv, an actor group that works with law firms to conduct role-play scenarios. 
• Corporate: Companies hire corporate role-play actors to portray clients, customers, or even employees in workshops and training to help professionals improve their communication and conflict resolution competency. There are “a whole range of opportunities in the corporate world where your skills as an actor can be integral to the job. Jobs around the world, from Reading to Reykjavik. Jobs where the skills that you have mastered will be a revelation to others. Jobs that will pay the bills,” notes Paul Clayton, who worked as a corporate actor at more than 1,400 events, in his book “So You Want to Be a Corporate Actor?”

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Successful role-players are reliable, flexible, good communicators, and strong actors. 

• Reliability: Being late to a role-playing gig helping the police improve their abilities to respond to protests or forgetting to show up to a training session for doctors isn’t a good look. Role-play actors must reliably show up to all training sessions and performances on time.
• Flexibility: Actors might be asked to change up their performance to include new symptoms or scenarios at the drop of a hat, so the ability to think on their feet, adapt, and improvise is vital.
• Communication: The ability to write, talk, and provide feedback to different types of professionals and other actors is necessary for role-playing success.
• Acting ability: Finally, role-play acting is still acting—so the ability to memorize lines, portray complex situations and emotions, and perform with conviction.

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If you’ve decided that you want to break into the role-playing world, following these tips can help pave your path to success.

• Conduct research: You should have a framework for the industry and specific scenario you’re role-playing so that you create the most realistic performance possible. “You want to play the basic framework of the disorder; to present this person in these circumstances,” Stockton said, adding that “the more detailed work I do on the character and the circumstance, the more I can allow for different responses from the negotiator.”
• Practice: It’s important to put in the work by reading the script, rehearsing your lines, and brushing up on your performance choices ahead of time.
• Be professional: Many role-playing jobs entail life-and-death situation simulations, so it’s best to aim to be as professional and respectful as possible.
• Request and respond to critique: Ask for feedback from the people you work with so that you can create more effective performances going forward.