Week 16- Reflection

This week is a free blog to discuss your experiences in the course and your progress in developing your craft. What have you learned? What more would you like to explore? How has this course helped you identify your process as an actor?

Week 15- Rehearsal

This week we are splicing our final scene rehearsals with discussion on how we enter into the industry as professionals. We are exploring audition techniques, head shot and resume trends, typecasting, etc. and how to incorporate all that we learn into our professional practice as actors.
For this week, think about what it takes to be a professional actor. As you refine your craft (which is key), where do you see yourself working in the future? How can you use the skills you acquire here at KU to prepare yourself for the competitive marketplace? Make a list of what you think you need to accomplish and what tools you are missing that you need to acquire to make yourself an competitive "applicant" for semi-professional and professional roles. Get an action plan together and start working it. Bring it to class for discussion.
If the opportunity comes knocking, are you prepared?

Week 14- Cold Reads/Rehearsal

This week were are working on our first round of cold reads for our final scenes. We will begin rehearsals and to start think openly in class about our process in the studio. Blog about where you are in your rehearsal process. Do you ever try what you practice at home? Do you feel that you have to do everything "right" before you can take a risk? Are you willing to follow your instincts in the moment, or are you constantly asking yourself if your work is "OK?" If you feel like touching your partner's hair in a scene, will you stop yourself? Try to drop your inner director this week and just take one risk. See what happens if you stop thinking about and analyzing what you are doing from moment to moment and just do it.

Week 13- Just Do it: Bringing it All Together

This week, we are exploring our final scene assignments with our scene partners. As you begin anew to prepare for your final performance, act as if you have just booked a job performing in the play you have been cast in. What do you do to prepare to work with the director? Have you read the play at least twice? What types of discoveries have you made about your character? What is the play about? What are the relationships that your character has within the world of the play? Have you started to break down the scenes? Do you know what year the play takes place and what is happening in the world at this time? Who is the President of the United States when this play takes place? What does your character want? What obstacles are in the way? Now is the time to do this work, not when you get to rehearsal. It is time to trust your instincts and bring it all together. Just do it.

Week 12- Establishing Reality on Stage

This week we are finishing our mid-term scenes and casting for the final scene presentations. I have selected a broad range of plays that I think help you address some of your acting blocks and technical concerns we have discussed this semester. Bringing us back to Hagen and her work in Respect for Acting, think about your scene presentations. Ask yourself about what you did when your scene partner was not talking. How did you listen? Did you stand, sit, pace etc. Was this movement or lack thereof indicative of what your character was observing and feeling, or do you just do it because it seemed like a good thing to do?

If we consider Hagen's "Outdoors" exercise, how do you bring teh outdoors inside with you? What do you do physically to let us know that you are inhabiting a particular outdoor space? What do you do to make us believe that you are in a bedroom, a department store, a kitchen, a ledge of a building, etc. Think about the small details and write them down. Go back and remember what you did to establish reality on stage in your scenes.

Week 11- Mid-Term Scenes

This week we are presenting our mid-term scenes and beginning to identify our "typecast" in the casting world. As you think about the scene you present this week and the "types" you think you can play, how close or far is the character you play to your type? How much are you willing to manipulate your look to play parts?

Week 9- Emotion Memory Exercises-Rehearsal

Instead of scene presentations this week, we worked on emotion memory exercises. Many of you had important breakthroughs in your ability to identify, create and use existing and fabricated memories to inform your performances. When you write this week about what you experienced and/or witnessed, think about what you can do as a performer to make yourself more malleable. How can you begin to look at your practice as a technique that is used to shape your talent? Can you take the "personal" out of the technical approach, to use the personal to inform how your technique serves you?