THR 321 (3 Credits) Advanced Acting (h)

Refinement of physical, emotional and imaginative awareness. Introducing a variety of character building methods. Study and performance of scenes and short plays. Method Acting, in depth Character Development and Acting for the Camera intensive. (Prerequisite: THR 221, or permission of instructor Next offered: 2005-2006). (1 + 4). Offered Alternate Fall.

Intro

Method acting is the endeavour to apply natural rules and laws to the theatre which can aid an actor with the process of playing a role.
This approach, characterized by any specific or technical approach to acting, is usually the antithesis of cliché, unrealistic, and so-called "rubber-stamp" acting. Depending on the exact version taught by the numerous directors and teachers who claim to propagate the fundamentals of this technique, the process can include various ideologies and practices such as the the extremely notable "what if", "substitution", and "emotional memory".
The modern movement often called method acting is also often referred to as "the Stanislavski System" after Konstantin Stanislavski who pioneered the ideas in his teachings, writings, and acting. His most influential books are the autobiography My Life in Art, and his trilogy of books set in a fictionalized acting school as a pretense for his own teachings, "An Actor Prepares", "Building A Character", and "Creating a Role". [ Wikipedia ]

In BioMechanics Glossary you see "vectors" (easy to understand, when we are talking about physical movement), but it would be really good to apply vectors to emotions. To indicate not the emotional spot, where I am, but where I am going! Objective and motivation would fall in place right away!

I guess, we have to talk first about the limitations...

"He who considers things in their first growth and origin will obtain the clearest view of them," wrote Aristotle. So what are the origins of acting?

[ updates -- 2005 ]

Film & Theatre UAF (catalogue) *

2005: Intermediate and Advanced Acting *

Summary

Bookmark the method.vtheatre.net pages!

TOPICS: Relaxation * Sense Memory * Concentration * Magic If * Objects * Substitution * Animal Exercise * Song & Dance * Private Moment * Speaking Out * Moment-to-Moment * Justification * Affective Memory * Givens * Strasberg

System of the Method is "Stanislavsky for Directors" -- how to work with actors, what both sides should know.

Questions

Why do I need this new directory? Because I move my act.vtheatre.net into a directory, where Method and Biomechanics have to merge!

theatreGroup (link)

Homework

Take one monologue and two approaches: method & biomechanics.

Write in your Actor's Diary why do you want to do acting.

Notes

Main - act.vtheatre.net: BioMethod -- THR121 Fundamentals of Acting

All new pages are from my hard drive and will be organized within THR221 Intermediate Acting and THR321 Advanced Acting

See Dictionary; if you know most of the terms, consider level II or III. Check out the Tests and Exams to determine what you know. You are an advanced actor, use subject pages or go to the Biomechanics directory.

You you feel that it's all above your head, start with the 200X Aesthetics core course.

I do not believe that actor can be developed without some knowledge of the Dramatic Literature and Playscript Analysis; both are in Script Directory.

Also, must know something about directors, right? See Directing Pages.

I still bring in the pages on acting from another server (Film-North): Auditions, Acting and so on.

When I am done with the draft of the book, I will place it as one file.

Next : notes

3 Sisters -- Play: UAF cut

You see, now I have to make extra pages and this is one of them -- a page to organize other pages (in addition to the old Acting Guide page).

There are two main approaches I use in dealing with actors, both are well known: Method and Biomechanics.

Well, I use anything as long as it helps my actors or me.

I never have much time to talk with them. The rehearsal time is always limited and I have to find fast ways for them to get their ROLES.

Remember, director gets the script first, now it has to become yours, not his!

Director is your reading advisor, a performance helper!

He will die in actor, if actor dies in his character! (Stanislavsky, of course)

You die, character lives!

Listen!

HamletDirects

...

ACT III. SCENE II. A hall in the castle.

[Enter HAMLET and Players]

HAMLET. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.

First Player. I warrant your honour.

HAMLET. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

First Player. I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, sir.

HAMLET. O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.

[Exeunt Players]

Hamlet (HamletDreams)
Being another character is more interesting than being yourself. John Gielgud

visual style (changes) :

From lul

After 2009 : Total Actor Files and Theatre LUL School ...