Theatre I

1. Theatre I Acting

2. About This PowerPoint • The following information matches with your Chapter 4 study guide. • While reviewing Chapter 4, answer the following: • Page 156, Summary & Key Ideas #1-9 • Page 156, Discussing Ideas, # 1-3 • Due at end of class • For Homework: • Commit to memory “Theatre Etiquette” on pages 158-160; there will be a quiz next class on the etiquette roles of the actor and production crew

3. Acting Is a Part of the Theatrical Illusion of Reality • Acting should never be so real that it loses the Theatrical Illusion of Reality • Theatre is not life, and acting is not life • Theatrical illusion of reality is the balance • Both are illusion that are larger than life • If both are too real, the illusion is destroyed and replace by what is normal • Onstage, normal is boring • Too real = Overacting, Bad acting, etc.

4. Two Major Approaches to Acting Emotional/Subjective Acting Technical/Objective Acting • Actors play their parts to where they actually weep, suffer, or struggle emotionally in front of the audience. • They become the part they play and experience all that their characters experience • Personal inner reactions form the actors’ emotional response • Performance based on acting technique; analyze the plays’ structure and the personalities of the characters; Uses the learned skills of acting movement, speech, and interpretation to create the role • Emotional response is not allowed; Actor does not actually live the part but acts it so well that the illusion of living the part is created • The process of study, analysis, and creative imagining forms the assumed personality

5. Konstantin Stanislavski • Russian • The most renowned acting teacher and director; was an actor as well • Created “The Method” – most influential acting theory • Focus is on emotional identification • “The Magic If” • Ask yourself what would you do if the events in the play were actually happening to you and you were intimately involved in them. Online Acting Exercise

6. Types of Roles in a Play • Leading roles = The main characters in a play • 2 Main Types: • Protagonist – main character, must solves the problem that arise sin the play or be defeated in the conflict • Antagonist – opposes the goals of the protagonist • Other types of leading roles: • Juvenile – term for a young male lead; 16-30 • Ingénue – a young female lead • Leading roles can also be referred to as the principals • Supporting Roles • More challenging and demanding, although not the main roles • Serve as a foil to the main characters: • Foil = A character with whom another character is compared (usually the protagonist • Both leading & supporting roles can be one of 2 types of parts: • Straight parts = actors resemble in appear and personality the characters the playwright had in mind • Character parts = include some distinguishing trait, idiosyncrasy or personal type; rarely resemble actors portraying them

7. Characterization occurs in 2 stages • First, you attempt to grasp the fundamental personality of a part • Then, you project that personality to the audience in such a way that your character become a living, convincing human being • Characterization is the substance of acting!

8. Characteristics of Acting • Pause: • A lull, or stop in dialogue or action in order to sustain emotion while the body is still ; also called a beat • Versatility: • The ability to change style or character with ease

9. In order to understand and interpret a role faithfully, you must STUDY the play closely • Know what kind of person you are in the play and why you behave as you do. • Understand what your character what your character wants and stands in the way of getting it • Understand the setting of the play by studying the place and the historical period. • You also will need to know the director’s interpretation of that period

10. Creating a Character Sketch • When studying your character ask the following questions – at minimum: • What does the author say about your character in the stage directions? • What do your characters’ lines reveal? • What do other characters say about your character? • How do other characters respond to your character? • In this class, we use renowned actress Uta Hagan’s “Who Am I?” from her book Respect for Acting to create the biography or sketch of the your character • Another approach to character analysis is called Role Scoring • This process consists of answering a series of questions, similar to the “Who Am I?”

11. Scoring a Script • Scoring a script is another useful tool in Character Analysis. The term comes from a musical scorewhich has similar markings to indicate inflections. • Things marked include: • Tempo • Rhythm • Pauses • Style • Interpretation • Pronunciation • Emphasized words and phrases • Movement • Stage business • There are no strict rules for script scoring….it’s just important that you do it, and you understand it!

12. There are two stages to building up your part: • When the director gives the cast his or her own view of the play, its characters and their relationships, its them, and its style • You study the play and the characters, developing your own concept of the part • 2. • To help you to understand your part better you can use types of sources: • Primary Sources: • Studying a person’s posture, movements, habits and voice inflections that is the same or similar to the character you are playing. • Secondary Sources: • Reading books and researching a character outside of actually knowing the character or a similar person to the character.

13. There are 16 Keys to Characterization • Internalizing • Knowing how the character thinks and feels • Externalizing • Process by which the true personality of a character is made visible to an audience through careful interpretation, nonverbal expression, voice quality, pitch, rate, and physical action • Concentrating • Ability to direct all your thoughts, energies, and skills into what you are doing at any single moment • Observing • Watching others to pick up their characterizations • Emotional Memory • The recalling of specific emotions that YOU have experienced or observed • Projecting • Projecting inner feelings to the audience; “reaching out” to the last person in the last row of a distant balcony • Motivating • The why of characterization and the what your character wants to do • Stretching a Character • The process of making a role unique, individual, and interesting—taking the character beyond the norm

14. Keys to Characterization (cont.) • The Consistent Inconsistency • Emphasizing a characters personality trait that makes him or her different from others • Playing the Conditions • Playing the condition o of the elements of time, place, weather, objects, and the state of the individual—affect eh manner in which characters meet their objectives and deal with obstacles • Playing the Objectives • All the ways and mean that a character use to reach a goal • Playing the Obstacles • Facing the crisis or obstacle that stand in the way of an objective as the character would face it. • Playing the Object • How an actor uses objects onstage to project character – using the literal props • Energy • The fuel that drives acting • Focus • Directs the actor’s attention, action, emotion or line delivery to a definitive target • Uniqueness • The difference that sets an actor apart from anyone else on stage or anyone else’s interpretation of his or her character; shaping a personality that is special unto itself

15. PHYSICAL ACTING According to the experts, the majority of our daily communication occurs through physical action. Another term for this is body language.

16. Understanding Body Language for the Stage, types and uses: • As you work on your physical acting, you will want to develop a Master Gesture -- A distinctive action that serves as a clue to a character’s personality • 2 Examples: • Peculiar walk or laugh • Position of your feet while you are standing, walking or sitting • When moving on stage, actors should “lead” with a part of the body that is appropriate for the character’s personality. • A Leading Center can be either slight or exaggerated, depending on the character and the style of the play. • Common Onstage Movements: • Entering • Exiting • Crossing • Sitting • Standing • Onstage movements send Messages to the audience. • Moving from one stage position to another is called a Cross • For each move onstage, there is usually movement in the opposite direction by another character called the Counter-Cross

17. Stage Positions and Grouping • The positions and grouping actors onstage are very important because they convey the sprite of a situation without any lines being spoken. • There are 4 basic stage techniques: • Sharing a Scene: • In order for two actors to SHARE A SCENE, meaning they are equal with another actor when sitting or standing parallel to each other, they must CHEAT OUT, by pivoting his/her torso and turns their face towards the audience. • A shared scene should be played three-quarter front or in profile. Profile scenes are weak, and do not allow the audience to see you. • Giving the Scene: • An actor crosses downstage and then turns slightly upstage toward the other actor, shifting the audiences’ attention to the upstage actor • Turning the Scene In: • Actors who are not key character shifting the angle of their bodies upstage and look directly at the scene's key character, focusing the attention of the audience on the center of the action • Taking Yourself out of a Scene • Truing away from the audience into a three-quarter back or full back position drawing attention away from oneself • Additionally, Stage Business is an essential part of acting and involves the use of hand props, costume props, stage props, other actors, and even parts of the set.

18. Vocal Acting

19. Pitch and Inflection: • Vocal Response: • The vocalized way you as an actor resend to your acting partner in any given scene • You must match or counter the actions given to you on stage • May not match up to what you have rehearse d on your own. • Most characters can be classified as either “pitch up, "which are confident characters, or “pitch down,” which are self-conscious characters. • Related to the rising and falling pitch are patters are the four Inflections: • Rising Inflection– indicates questioning, surprise or shock • Falling Inflections– signals the end of statement • Sustained inflection– staying on the same note; suggestions calmness, decisiveness, or steadiness of purpose • Circumflex inflections-- intonation of 2 or more vowel sounds for what ordinarily is a single vowel sound. 

20. GETTING ONSTAGE • Your chief responsibility as an actor is to memorize your lines! • There are 2 approaches to memorization: • Whole-part memorization • Learning the play as a whole; focus on individual lines after meaning of the play or scene is understood • Part-whole memorization • Learning the play line-by-line; focus is on the cues • Subtext is “meaning between the lines”

21. Acting Techniques • No actor could have experience every emotion demanded by roles he or she assumes. Therefore, once must use various other acting techniques to portray such emotions. These include: • Substitution • Recalling a similar life experience in order to understand the current on-stage character’s experience • Improvisation • Impromptu portrayal of a character without preparation or rehearsal • Sometimes scripts often include incomplete lines or one-side telephone conversations. The actor must imagine the rest of the line. These are called cut-off lines and fade-off lines