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.