エチュード

エチュード – echūdo. lit. Etude. These are improvisation exercises done by seiyuu as part of their training or as segments in programs. They are normally carried out in pairs (groups also possible) through prompts of mundane everyday scenarios (“14-year-old girl, 17-year-old boy,” “junior-senior relationship,” and “school commute”), or a starting point and a goal (“innocent girl talk stumbles upon a forbidden topic involving a teacher”). They are free to act out the scenario, playing off each other as they attempt to put out a convincing performance. It trains them to get used to acting on the spot as well as expose them to the interactions that occur when acting with someone else. It exercises them to adapt and think of different approaches as they are forced to draw from personal experience and observations related to the scenario. Since much of acting comes from one’s knowledge of the world, this encourages them to seek out and absorb experiences that they can incorporate into their acting.

While it is essentially theater improvisation and a seiyuu normally reads from a script and acts out relatively fewer ad-lib sections, it hones their ability to quickly think of multiple takes of the same line.