Step 1
A performance must engage
Audience will feel empathy and immediacy
Engagement
Acting approach stressed emotion from within, then focused on the physical
Representational
Stanislavski
Almost childlike
Relaxed, playful, non judgemental state
Needed to act
Creative State
Becoming so engrossed in what you are doing that you become fully in action and forget you are in public
Gets rid of self-consciousness
Public Solitude
Considering the thoughts of the character and how you'd act to produce a new version of yourself and transform into the character
Do not alter the character to fit your thoughts, modify your thoughts to the character
Magic If
Ability to see things from character's view
Empathy
Acting approach that was presentational and synced mind and body
Meyerhold
Necessary for creative state
Unnecessary tensions are removed
Relaxation
The ability to function on more than one level of awareness and prevent trance-like state of public solitude
Actors must be engrossed in a character's task, but aware of their performance
You are an actor and a character
Dual Consciousness
Actors must ensure that the character they create performs their purpose in the play
Characters exist to advance the plot or add to the meaning of the work
Dramatic Function
Audience will feel as though they're living in character's world
Immediacy
Blended presentational theatre with Stanislavski's realness of characters
Demonstration
Brecht
Experienced after relaxation
Developing wholeness and working from pure center so your mind and body work in an integrated way
Centerdness
Showing the audience a character's traits instead of just doing what they would do, common mistak
Indicating
1. Realistic and contemporary scene
2. Characters with similar age and body type
3. A short scene
4. A personally significant scene
Considerations when choosing a scene
Actors communicate the truth, they don't reinforce stereotypes or distort reality
Searches for truth are personal, but relate to audience
Done with craft
Truthfulness
How actor's presented characters in Brecht's theatre
Distance from character had to be had so a judgement on them could be made
Demonstration
Tension disrupt the creative state, debilitating tension
Trying to force way out of it worsens it and reduces control
Stage Fright
An objective is of great importance
Leads to stronger actions and a more complete focus
Raising the Stakes
What the character was created to do
Most important job of an actor is to fulfill this
Dramatic Function
Four techniques for actor:
1. Actor sacrifices himself to performing
2. Theatre is mainly movement and sound, not words
3. Actor's movements and sounds have their own meaning
4. Theatre can heighten spiritualness of spectators
Artaud
Produce Empathy
Enable audience to feel immediacy
Communicate a truth
Three things all good actors can do
How you can make a character's objective personable with something in your personal background
Substitute the character's need/objective with something personable to you
Substitution