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?

Week 8 - The Rehearsal

In this blog, reflect on your rehearsal process. Figure our what you and your partner do to establish a scene. Do you both agree that there is a "mirror" in the corner, or are you living in two different rooms? As Hagen states, work together to "build your space for your game of make-believe"(194). You don't need to discuss your objectives and intensions with your partner. You must use your actions to tell the other character who you are. Remember, just because you have the whole script does not mean that the chracters you play do...they may have no idea what they might say in a given moment, or precisly the opposite, they might know exactly what they will say. The goal is to erase the visibility of the lien between "you" as the "actor" and "you" as the character on stage.

By now, you should have established a relationship with your scene partner and begun the process of rehearsing your scene. Ask yourself how much you rely on your scene partner to complete the tasks in front of you. Do you show up on time when you are supposed to meet? Do you notify your partner if you cannot make a rehearsal time? Are you prepared to work when you meet? Have you done any more work on your scene from the last meeting time? If you answered yes to all of these questions, then you are well on the way to crafting a professional work ethic that will open many opportunities for you as a professional artist.

If you have not done this work, you enter into the rehearsal process at a disadvantage because you have not made the appropriate steps to secure your own success. If you are constantly directing your scene partner, then you are not being professional. In fact, you are asking your partner to play his/her part and yours. As Hagen states, you don't have time to be both actor and director.

Our job is not to guide or direct our partner, but to present our best choices and to repond to the choices that are presented to us. Acting is doing.

Week 7 -Improvisation and Endowment

This week we begin the process of using improvisation exercises to help us find breakthroughs in our work. By improvising based on what we know of our characters, we find the liberty to explore possibilities that are both in and outside the given circumstances. As you write about your experiences this week in class, ask yourself, "What do I do in a scene to tell the audience about my experiences?" What do you use? What do you do to "endow" yourself with particular traits, characteristics, etc. that reveal something to your scene partner? to the audience? to yourself? What objects are used in your scene that help your character tell the audience who they are?
Hagen asks us to link the emotional and sensory relationships ro each object in our scenes that serve us for each character we play (140). Remember--emotion memory tells is the psychological (or emotional) responses to an even while sense memory helps us identify the physiological responses to an event. Do you know what your responses are in a scene from moment to moment?

If we examine all of our scenes, there are objects in them that tell us about the character's lives...what we do with those objects are important in helping us obtain our objectives in our performances.

Week 6- Playing the Character

This week, we will begin to break down our scripts to prepare for scene presentations at mid-term. As you blog this week about your relationship to the practices of substitution, sense memory and emotion memory, think about how your knowledge of the given circumstances help you identify your character's objectives. How do you use these aforementioned strategies to help you identify and obtain your objectives in a scene? What do you do if you do not have a sense/emotion memory that you can use effectively? As you begin to create a score for your work on the scene, think through the varied ways that particular emotions are presented using your bodies and voices. How many variations of a particular "doing" do you play with before you make a decision about your actions and tactics in a scene. Play with your ideas when we do improv work in class. Keep them in your character history file. You never know what will go into the final score.

Week 5- The Actor's Process: Obstacles, Action and Rehearsal

This week, we are working on defining our objectives and the appropriate actions that allow us to achieve them in a scene. Hagen states "If I know what I want and can achieve my wishes readily without a problem, there is no drama" (180). When you begin to prepare your new scenes, ask yourself, "What is in the way of what I want?" "What stops me from getting to my objective?" Start to ask yourself these questions in relationship to your objective. What tactics do you use to overcome these barriers?
Elaborating on how we identify the actions of our character, Hagen argues "The sum toal of the actions reveals your character..."(185). What does this mean to you? use Hagen's questions and see if you can honestly answer them without descriptive adjectives. "What do I do to get what I want?" (187) How do I get what I want ( by doing what?)(187). Acting is doing...so what you do in a scene tells the audience who you are.

As you begin to rehearse and prepare your scenes for midterm, think about the given circumstances of the play and really ask yourself when you are ready to rehearse. What type of work do you think you would need to prepare in order to answer the above questions about your role honestly?

Piecing it Together: Character, Relationship, Objective

As we write this week about bringing the various elements of our practice together to perform scenes, how do you begin your process? When we talk about "characters" we are "playing," at what point do you begin to examine these characters as people who are in relationships? In everyday life, we have things we want--that which we are trying to obtain. For example, think about your relationship with people in your community that serve you, such as a worker at Starbucks. You enter into the cafe, you with the objective (also referred to as intention) of getting a latte. What actions do you take to achieve this goal? What obstacles get in yoru way that can change your behavior? What behaviors do you avoid so that you will not be refused service? Do you know the barrista making your coffee? Is this your first time getting the drink you want or do you do this everyday? As you blog this week about your process, think about details. Look for the small things you do that establish the formality or familiarity of the relationships in your life. What can you draw from these that help you to become a better actor?

"Introduction to Object Exercises"/"First Contact with the Play"

This week we are exploring the given circumstances of our practice and how we approach the play for the first time. In "First Contact with the Play",( in our case scenes from a play) Hagen asks us to think about the possible themes for the play. When you read your scenes, what general themes come to mind? What is the scene about? What human relationships does the playwright explore? What if you just read the scene for the given circumstances alone without making decisions about your part and what you will "play"? Ask yourself, how can I plan a score for a play/scene I do not completely understand?

When you blog this week think about the given circumstances of your scene and how they work together or in opposition. What skills have you developed thus far in your technique that enable you to answer the question "Who am I in this play?" Can you work without the knowledge you as the actor possess through interpreting the entire scene? Before you play particular ACTIONS, do you think you have to know why?

'Identity" and "The Basic Object Exercise" - Hagen Week 2

This week we are focusing on exploring who we are and idetifying tactics that we can use to explore the multiple "selves" that we inhabit on a day to day basis. Uta Hagen argues that the more we know about ourselves, the more we can bring to our work. Think about the two quotes below and ask yourself how much you rely on one particular facet of your idenity while others are rarely used? What might you do to make yourself available to the multiple possibilities of yourself, the good and the bad, that can be used in your work as an actor?
"Your own identity and self-knowledge are the main sources for any chracter you might play."(Hagen 1973,"Identity" pp.29)
"We must overcome the notion that we need to be regular."(Hagen,1973, pp.31)

Welcome to Acting 2 at The University of Kansas, Department of Theatre

Welcome to Acting 2!

This course will help you on your journey as you continue to develop your craft as an actor. I look forward to working with you this semester. This blog serves as a space for you to share ideas about our work in class, obstacles and triumphs as well as the readings we do from Uta Hagen's Respect for Acting. Your first posts begin next week. Start observing the world around you and take notes! You will need them as you go...

Best-
Nicole Hodges Persley, Ph.D.