Christianne Tisdale has performed on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regionally. She spent four years at Yale as an undergraduate, but only one in the famous Yale graduate acting program before beginning her career. Finding herself launched as a professional was a mixed blessing. "There I was in 'Beauty and the Beast' with no technique. Just me," says Tisdale, who played Belle, Since then, she has built a flexible and enduring foundation beneath "just me" that has served her well.

Tisdale studies with Sande Shurin, using what Tisdale calls the "10 distinctions" as the steel and cement of that foundation. "The 10 are presencing (or what's sometimes called emotional body), situation, livingness, character, psyche, stylistic and cultural truths, interior monologue, turning points and transitions, intention/action, and taking risks," Tisdale says. As a list, it may not convey much, but as a system of acting it has saved Tisdale more than once. "I was a standby in 'Triumph of Love,' and I got thrown on in previews for Susan Egan. She played four different characters and was always on stage. I kept a piece of paper in the quick-change area (I had lots of costume changes), and on it I wrote the situation, the intention, and the livingness for that scene. It worked so well." Her colleagues, Betty Buckley and F. Murray Abraham, gave Tisdale high praise after the performance, happy to be working with a standby they could rely on to perform.

More than just a tool to keep an actor oriented, the "10 distinctions" have rescued Tisdale in building a character. "I did a beautiful musical called 'Fermat's Last Tango,' a part written for me by composer Joshua Rosenbium and author Joanne Sydney Lessneri. I played two roles: a kinky television news reporter, and Euclid. The father of geometry--that Euclid. I could not get a key into that character. It was two weeks into a four-week rehearsal process, we were opening in New York, and I had nothing. I'm trying, and it's not working, it's not working, it's not working. I went back to the first distinction, 'emotional body,' and I surrendered. I gave up. And then this little obnoxious character comes out and starts making shapes: Look! I'm a triangle! Look! I'm a rhomboid! Which is a tough one, if you've never tried it. And that became my physical body, Euclid's search for the perfect shape. Oddly, I got more TV auditions out of that, doing this huge physical comedy, than I've gotten doing delicate, fine work !"

A far cry from "just me" and yet still very much herself, Tisdale continues to train in the "10 distinctions" technique and to enjoy her time in the studio. She has yet to find a limitation in it. "I've done four new musicals in a row, and it comes in just as handy doing that as it does doing Shakespeare." Every actor wants a toolkit like that.