Unlocking Actor Potential with LA Acting Coach Murisa Harba on The Entertainment Business Podcast

Hello and welcome everyone to the podcast. I'm your host Tisha Morris, and I'm so excited about today's guest. Um, it's the first time I've had an actor, uh, as my guest, so I, I can't wait for this conversation. Marissa Harbaugh is an award-winning actress, director, and one of LA's most in-demand acting coaches. She's the creator of the Chakra Approach and the Macro Method. She's helped thousands of actors unlock their artistry, get out of their heads, and book more roles. Her company About the Work and her bestselling book Acting with Energy have made her a thought leader at the intersection of craft, energy, and career success. By blending spiritual intelligence with professional rigor, she has empowered a generation of performers to elevate their artistry, sustain powerful careers, and thrive at the highest level of the industry. She's been featured on the New York Times Square billboard, Deadline, Max Backstage, and numerous podcasts for her expertise in the entertainment industry. Welcome, Marissa.

Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.

Well, how did I do? I've taken hosting classes in the past, and I'm a terrible reader.

That was awesome.

That was rockstar. Loved it. My notes were always like, you need to up the energy, up the energy. I'm like, Really, it was really just because at the end of the day, I'm just a business person. So, um, um, yeah, I wish I would have taken your classes. They, they seem awesome. Um, and I want to dive into them in a little bit and get to hear about your method and all, all of that fun stuff. But first, I want to hear how you got in the industry, um, a little bit of backstory.

Yeah, so I'm originally from New Jersey. Um, I went to undergrad for acting and directing at Boston University. And then I made my way to New York City, which was about 20 minutes away from where I grew up in Northern Jersey. Um, and I did the Off-Broadway thing for a while, um, and it was great, but there was something pulling me to LA that I needed to explore. Um, so I hopped in my Volvo sedan with one of my best friends and we drove out to LA about 17, 18 years ago. And, um, yeah, right away, you know, I had already had the, the directing— I'm so sorry— I already had the directing bug from, from college. And I was in an acting class, and they kind of noticed that right away. And so they were like, hey, do you want to teach a class at our studio? And I was like, yes, most definitely. And around the same time, um, I had sort of just been asking the universe for a technique that could work all the time. I had been trained in all the methods— Stanislavski, Meisner, Adler, you know, all the things— and it, it only worked like 80% of the time. And so I was looking for something that was gonna get me there all the time because I left everybody back in New Jersey. I left my family to come out here. I didn't know anybody except for my friend that I shared a ride in my Volvo with. So, you know, I had to make it count. And, and that's how I actually stumbled onto one of my, um, techniques that, that allowed me to then open up my own studio a year after that.

Oh, very cool. All right, well, I'm going to get to the technique in a minute, but we have, we have something in common that we both moved from the East, um, to LA to pursue some, some pursuits in the entertainment industry. Um, yours sounds a little more direct than mine. I went through the self- author route for a while before I ended up landing where it was. But the first thing I did when I got to LA was I joined an acting class, and not necessarily because I was trying to be an actor, it was just really a social outlet. But I was always so intrigued by actors and, of course, the entertainment industry in general. But what I quickly learned that I would have not otherwise known was just how Um, you know, people think actors are acting, but they're really feeling.

Yeah.

And the embodiment of that process is like some of the best healing work I've ever done. And I feel like your approach, um, probably really go— goes into the deep end of that. So tell us how— what your technique is and how you kind of— sounds like you kind of, uh, took a little bit of everything and made it your own in some ways.

Sort of, yeah. So, you know, people had always said, you know, your body is your instrument. That was a phrase that I had heard over and over again. And, you know, I was fairly musical growing up. I sang, I played the cello, a little piano. And I remember learning those instruments and obviously voice lessons. And what's the first thing that you do is you learn the notes, right? You learn the notes on your instrument and then you learn how to play chords and then you learn how to play songs and then you learn to play those songs with nuance and impact and feeling. And that was such a sort of a linear process that made sense to me in my brain. But then when it came to acting, it was like this nebulous thing that didn't have that process. I was like, okay, my body is my instrument. Where are the notes? Where are the, like, how do I, how do I play my body like a concert pianist? Right? Like, how do I do that? I want to do that. And I had come across the energy centers in the body, and I had learned that each of the centers have a quality of emotion or a set of quality of emotions that are associated with them. And so through some voice work that, that was sort of inspired by Kristin Linklater and my voice and speech teachers at Boston University, I combined some of that work with some gestural work that I had brought on, and then combined that with the chakras. And I came up with this new— what was my technique being born in the chakra approach. And so, it started out by, you know, just experimenting, like, what is it like to speak from a chakra? What is that like? Because usually when we think about chakras, we're thinking about, okay, you're in yoga class and this and that, and you have to think about it, and it's this spinning disc that you're not really sure about what, what's happening there. You know, it's a color maybe, I, you know, and it just felt again sort of nebulous. It's, it's sort of imaginative work. But when you're speaking from an energy center, it's very real, it's very raw, it's communicative. It starts with you and it has an emotional transaction, which means it starts with you and it ends with somebody else. Which means it has impact and it reaches them and it does something to them, which is what we do in everyday life when we communicate with people. So that, you know, that just blew my mind away right away. And, and I just was so excited about what all of this could mean because it felt like I had cracked the code that I had spent my life trying to learn. I knew the notes on my instrument. I knew Okay, you know, let's walk the path. How do we play then chords of emotion? My brain literally exploded. And it was just so exciting to be that specific with my craft, to be able to speak about it clearly to other actors in my class and direct them with something that they could digest immediately and implement immediately. And then be able to do it on repeat, which is the best part. It's not a hope and a pray. Okay, you nailed it once. Whew, we got it. Okay, but we got to do another take. Ooh, let's hope you get it there. Okay, maybe you got it. But now 3, 4, 5, up to 42 takes, you know, because over a 12-hour period, if it's a 3, 4-person scene, it's an emotional scene, that's a 12-hour shoot right there. From all the angles that you have to cover. So if you repeatedly have to drop to your knees and wail and cry, and how, you know, how are you going to hit that, right, 40 times, right? And, and this does that, and it's amazing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it totally makes sense to me. I used to work, do energy healing work with the chakras, uh, so I have a pretty deep understanding of them. But I'm just thinking about what a gift that is to your students, um, that— I mean, because, you know, the The mind is so powerful, just thinking about the chakras, even if it is conceptual, and thinking about the colors does do— like, does help open those chakras. That, um, just that alone, let alone, uh, doing the— what you call speaking through them.

Yeah.

Yeah. Um, is it as nuanced as like kind of, uh, working with the chakra that, that matches the role of the person?

Totally, yes. So, so I'll break it down in two ways. Um, we as humans, you know, we communicate in many different ways all the time. It's— so that means energy is zinging up and down our spine all the time, right? If we have an aha moment, that, that's our third eye. If we're unsure about what we're saying, or we are lying about it, or we're being fake, it's in our throat. If we're trying to relate to someone else, it's from our heart. Right? If we're off balance, it's in our sacral. If we're in a fight or flight, that's in our root. Like, those are immediately things that everybody sort of understands because we talk about those things. Oh, you feel a frog in your throat or cat got your tongue. Like, these are colloquialisms that we say every day and people know what that means. They know that there's an energy attached to that. So when you know how to then use that on repeat, it's super helpful for you because you can be a conscious creator of your craft. So that happens. So that's the first part is the energy goes up and down all the time. But you're absolutely right with a character sort of has a lean into— they sort of present, I call it your public-facing chakra of how they show up. So like, you know, like Phoebe from Friends was very crown and third eye. Like she just was connected to the cosmos at all times, right? So you could just— all of her gestures were up. All, like, her, her voice even went up a lot. Like, she just lived in this space, so that's how she presented. And then the other side of it is what— and this is what gives a character depth— is what are they hiding? So what are you presenting? This is what you want the world to know about you. But what are you hiding? What do you not want people to know about you? Which gives you the measurement between those two places. That's your character's depth.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I love that. Joey would have been working through his sacral chakra. Yes, how you doing?

Yep, absolutely.

Uh, probably hiding his heart.

Yes, that's exactly— you nailed it. That's exactly it. I actually use him as an example in my book Acting with Energy, and he's one— you just nailed it. Good job.

Well, you know, another reason that's coming to mind of why, why this method is so important, especially now I've been kind of on this internal journey of my own recently about how can we be better than AI. And it's through these types of techniques where we are connected to source energy or whatever you want to call it, energy, because that's the one thing AI doesn't have. And we don't have to go down the whole AI rabbit hole, but I'm just curious if you have any thoughts about the current landscape with regards to acting and the AI?

Yeah, I, you know, I think you're absolutely right. And I've heard even— I'm a part of a few different business masterminds, and they've said the only thing that AI cannot replace is human energy. You just can't.

Yeah.

So that's going to become a commodity. That's going to become so valuable that if you don't know how to curate your own energy and show up in the way that you want to be very intentionally and be able to express yourself in the fullest spectrum of your capacity, you know, that you will fall aside.

Yeah, yeah, you can be replaced.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, um, you know, in the, um, connection with, uh, creativity or whatever you want to call it through the crown chakra, um, And that's where, you know, or the Ajna, the sixth, the third eye, sixth chakra, where you can get those insights or it's like that's where the new is created from. And we have, humans have access to that, that AI does not. And so I do think that is one, besides that and a plumber, two things that can't be replaced. Vay-a-yay.

Ah!

Absolutely. So I'd love to hear about how your directing experience informs your acting and vice versa.

Oh, yes. Great question. So, you know, as an actor, you know, we have a sort of a blind spot because we're in it. We have our character goggles on. We're only looking out the eyes of our character, and it's easy to miss the lay of the land around you. And when I started directing over 20 years ago, it became very clear to me what the, what the lay of the land was that an actor can miss very easily if they're not informed or just aware of the landscape that they're stepping into as that character. So actually, I've told this story before about right when I moved to LA, I was holding a casting in Hollywood !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Right? I would have been able to choose from, you know, 25 people if, if they all did those things. But because they were lacking in those elements, like foundational elements, not Acting 101, I'm not talking about that stuff, but director-y deeper things. Mm-hmm. Um, because I found myself having to give them notes, uh, around things that I wish they knew, because if they knew that when they walked in, I could have gone deeper with them on that. And, you know, when a director chooses an actor for a role, I know for me, I can speak about myself only, I'm looking for somebody to bring something to the role that I didn't even think about, right? I want them to inspire me to see what else is possible, right? It's a collabor— very much a collaboration with me. And I want someone who's percolating in ideas and how they can bring out this side of the character or that point of view or this or that. Because that just makes the whole project better. I yearn for that collaboration. If I have to hold an actor's hand when they're walking in the room of saying, "Hey, we have to have an arc," or, "You have to understand how you're different from the other characters in the cast." Maybe you don't even interact with them, but I do because I'm up here looking down at everything. I have to see. You know, and, and it also helps an actor understand and maybe not take it personally why they weren't chosen for a role. Because if they're too similar to another character, I can't cast them. They're gonna confuse— it's, it's like the simplest thing, um, but the audience is going to be confused because their energies are too similar. So I mean, that's one of the things, one of the main 6 things that I teach, that I just mentioned that I teach, which is character differences. Even if you don't have a scene with anybody else in the cast, you need to know who those other characters are because you have to be different from them. Because that's where, that's where the drama lies, is in the space between those two characters. Even from, even if you're not in a scene with them, because from the audience perspective, we're out here, we're looking at the whole thing, we're going on a journey as a whole, and that's the director's job. Is to figure out how to communicate something to this audience, make them think, make them feel, make them question, make them doubt, make them laugh, cry, whatever it is, whatever the intention is. And, and the director has to build that world to then do that. So if your character knows why they're there, right, like simple things like what's the purpose of your character? If we took your character out of the script, what would we lose? And when you answer that question, you know how to fulfill your role as an actor. You know what to give in your audition.

That's like the best auditioning advice I have ever heard. That is— wow. Yeah, yeah. Because I think it's, yeah, it's easy to get so, um, self-reflective of, of the role and yourself and, you know, oh, I didn't fit the role, or I did fit the role, or whatever, and not thinking about the whole the bigger cast and seeing it from the director's POV.

Yeah, yeah, this is actually what became that from that one event that I just told you, that audition that I just mentioned. That's where the macro method was born. That's my other technique. So I have macro method, which is left brain. That's all sort of strategy, thinking like the person hiring you, um, and, and understanding how to compel an audience to the edge of their seats, even hormonally, how to do that. And then sort of the more scientific-y side. And then the right brain technique is the chakra approach, where you then go into your character, embody it, get all the goodness. That's where you can make all your delicious choices, as long as you did the macro first, because the macro sets the container, and then the chakra is the feminine that flows within that I totally get that.

Um, I'm just thinking that the macro method would also be really good for writers. Yes. Um, to learn.

Yeah, I actually, um, when my, um, when my actors are ready to film their reels, we actually use reverse macro to write their, their character scenes. So before we even know what it's going to be about, we decide Are these two characters moving? Are they starting together and ending apart emotionally, or vice versa? We decide what the purposes of these characters are before we even write, what the differences are between them, because that gives us our conflict and our patterns of behavior and the comedy, if it's, if it's a comedy. Yeah. And then when you write from there it, it just like writes itself. It's— it becomes so simple. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaking of writing, directing, and acting, um, more and more actors are doing kind of doing all three, or a combination of two or more of those. Yeah, multi-hyphenates. What's your take on that? I mean, I feel like as on the business side, it's like there's more opportunity now, more than ever, to kind of break in if you're making— creating your own content. What's your thoughts on as far as getting in the business?

I love it, and I'm so behind all of it. And actually, you know, with teaching the Macro Method, a lot of my students then become confident enough to go out and direct their own shorts, their own series, their own one-woman shows, whatever it is, because they know how to think like a director, because that's what I was— that's what I was teaching them so that they could perform well as the actor, but now they've also gained that other skill and they can go and use that. And I love that. I think I'm so proud of my students who have been able to go on and do that. And, and actually a lot of, uh, we have a really strong, uh, community, um, and everybody in my studio will get together for the 48-hour film festival and crank that out over a weekend. Nobody sleeps and everybody just, you know, puts a film together and they'll use Macro and they'll use Chakra and they'll just all be working together. And I just think, I think it's phenomenal.

I love that. Yeah. And you know, you, you never know, you might go into, to the industry thinking you wanna be at, you wanna act, but maybe it's the writing or the directing that really kind of floats to the top of, as far as what interests, interests you, or over time you, you might get, wanna move into something else. So I think it is great to, to be involved in all three, in all, all those aspects, um, even perhaps, uh, producing as well. Um, and, uh, and knowing the overlap of all those is, is just, is very helpful. Um, tell me about your book, um, Acting with Energy. Is it kind of a compilation of, of a lot of what we've talked about, or?

Yeah, so that one's, um, based solely on the chakra approach, um, Acting with Energy, with Yeah. And, um, I really go deep on how you can, first of all, learning each one, how to emote, uh, direct energy, um, harness that energy, focus it, have it land, um, and then tasting those different notes and qualities in your body and when to use them also. So if you have a certain, like if you, if you're playing an addict, you're gonna be in your sacral. For the majority of that character, because that's, that's where addiction lives, because that's where your character is off balance. That's where, uh, they're not in control of themselves. And other qualities of sacral are your sexuality, right? You can't really control who you're attracted to. Sorry, it's just, it is what it is. And then, um, vulnerability. You're not in control of what makes you feel vulnerable either, right? So if you do have to drop to your knees 42 times, guess what? That's a sacral slice right there. That's why I call it, um, slice. It feels like your guts are pouring out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I interrupted you. Uh, do you, when it comes to your students, and do you recommend or, or ill-advise them to take roles that kind of hit those trigger points, emotional trigger points or trauma points? Or how do you work with, um, your students with regard to that, of real— their real life experiences in that of the character?

Oh, I see, I see. Okay, so this is also a great question. Um, so although in the chakra warm-up when you're learning the chakras, when you come to the studio, yes, you'll go on different sort of mental journeys that I walk you through as you're learning how to harness and express, um, you know, emotions from these energy centers on voice and then on text. And, and I'll, you know, I'll use an example that you can cling on to real quick just to harness that energy. You're using it when you're in character. You don't use your own trauma at all, which is kind of the best part, because if you have to do it 42 times in a row like I mentioned before, I mean, you're just reopening traumatic parts of your brain that are probably not healthy to revisit, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So for, for actors that, um, perhaps their, their, um, character is a, is an addict or alcoholic of some sort, but they don't, um, using the chakras and knowing where there's a chakra out of balance can help them get into character of a character trait that they're not otherwise familiar with. Totally, yes.

So it's kind of like doing inner work alongside craft. Yeah, you know, practicing. Yeah, because sometimes you play a character and they need to be really vulnerable, but maybe you, you have trouble being vulnerable, and so now you have to kind of understand, well, what's in the way of myself? Why don't I want to be vulnerable? And then, then it can like bring up, you know, some shadow work that might be worth working on, right? Like, why, why don't I want to feel vulnerable? What, what's holding me back from really embodying that energy? And then when you can clear that, you can step into that role, and, and you've just now expanded you know, your capacity for the, for the roles that you can take on.

Yeah, that's— I, I experienced some of that when I was in acting class, um, and it was like I said, it was such a healing experience, um, during those years. And I, I might— I'm also imagining that your technique is so good for, for folks, um, I mean, just living in LA LA can be a very ungrounding— ungrounded city for chakras, a little out of balance in LA, perhaps due to the topography with the land itself. But it— your method, I imagine, is very supportive for folks coming through LA.

Yeah, actually, at the beginning of of, you know, when I was developing the technique, I had suffered an event that left me with PTSD. And I had kind of avoided the fact that I was even struggling for about a year. And it was like leaking out my energy and the way that I responded to things was overreacting to things. And I remember my mom and my boyfriend at the time, who's now my husband, He, you know, they would talk and be like, what's going on? She's like, something's off, right? And it was this unresolved trauma that I didn't even know that I had. So I finally went to therapy and immediately they diagnosed me with acute PTSD. I couldn't even talk about it. Talk about energy getting stuck in my throat. I could barely even talk to this woman because it was just hijacking my entire body. And the thing with, you know, doing a chakra warm-up in class was I could move energy with what I would have wanted to happen in that scenario, how I would have preferred to show up, right? Um, and stick up for myself in a different way. Yeah. And I'm— I would move that energy like secretly while teaching a shock warm-up. And, you know, it, it took me a while because it was piecemealing, but over, you know, over the course of a year or two, I had gotten over my, my PTSD that, that a therapist couldn't—

yeah, yeah, we're doing the somatic, you're doing it somatically as well, like the acting, acting is somatic therapy basically.

So yeah. And then after, after our, um, maybe a month of classes, I just started my, uh, About the Work, my studio, in 2013. Um, one of my older students came up to me and he, he was crying and he's like, thank you so much. And I was like, what, what happened? I was like, what happened? I didn't know what, what had happened. And he said, whatever that warm-up was, whatever that chakra warm-up was, I, I was able to just let go of 20 years of anger and shame towards my late mother that I had never dealt with, and I feel so much lighter. And he was laughing and crying, and I was like dumbfounded. I had no idea that that was gonna happen for someone else. Like, I had secretly been working out my own stuff. I had no idea it was affecting other people until he said that to me and I remember that was an anvil moment. Talk about like crown chakra, like an anvil landed on my head and was like, oh my God, like this could really help a lot of people where they maybe don't have access to therapy or it didn't work for them the way it didn't work for me. So it was just very exciting.

And it just makes them a better actor. I mean, like you clear out that gunk and you're just more tuned in. So it's gonna help you in all ways. Um, so yeah, all right, so how can, um, what's the best way if someone wants to work with you? Where should they start?

Yeah, so, um, they should visit our, our Actors Studio website, uh, which is about-the-work.com, and, um, they'll do a studio interview with me. We're, you know, we, we, we're really protective of our community, so we interview everybody before they enter, just so that we keep, you know, egos at the door. We know how to protect that safe space because we do go deep in class. It, you know, it has to feel safe for people to be able to continuously take risks, um, because as soon as it feels unsafe, this happens, right? The tension in the body. And then, and then how can we be our most creative, lovely, brilliant selves when we're holding on to tension because we feel like we have to put armor on? So, you know, we, we really work hard to protect that safe space, to let things, um, you know, anything, we just leave it at the door.

Great, great. Um, so yes, about, about-the-work.com, I'll put that in the show notes. Um, and while we're sharing, um, sharing a website, and I'll give you your social media handles, uh, follow Marissa, Marissa Harba and/or @aboutthework, and I'll have those in the show notes as well for people to follow you. And you have a new feature that you directed. Do you want to give that a little plug?

Yeah, sure. So I just wrapped on a feature film that I directed. It's called "Macbeth," and it is a modern-day Shakespeare adaptation of Macbeth on city bikes. It's a road trip movie. Across the United States for this main character who's kind of an out-of-work old sitcom star from 20 years ago trying to make himself relevant again by playing the lead role of Macbeth in Shakespeare in the Park in New York and his crazy journey to make that happen and get his, his ex-girlfriend back who haunts him.

That sounds great. Yeah, yeah.

And actually, I have 44 students in that film. Oh my gosh. Yeah, the whole main cast is, and supporting, and all of the extras, everybody. Uh, it was family, family style feature film, and it was a dream. And I just want to do more things like that because to work with your friends and the people who you have a short language with. You can, you know, I know, I know how they're going to show up on set because you've already auditioned them a lot of times.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. Well, wonderful. Well, this was so fun, Marisa. Also, don't forget to get Marisa's book, Acting with Energy. You can buy that online wherever you buy books online. And again, aboutthework.com. And yeah, thank you so much, Marisa. This has been so fun.

And oh, I also want to give you the, um, the 6 keys that I mentioned that I wish everybody did when they walked in the casting room. Yeah.

So, uh, okay, is that a link to a download?

Yeah, yeah, I'll get you the link to that so that can be in the show notes. Okay, great.

Yeah, that sounds like a little piece of gold. Um, so yeah, wonderful.

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.