Acting Techniques --a discussion — Page 3

jrb...be careful of that kind of a reduction...sometimes it works to do drama for the other actors...other times, if you play to the other actors, you lose the story, and you lose the audience to your technique instead of the story. Often, also, comedy works best when you play it to the other actors -- sometimes it doesn't...I've just found these sorts of rules are text-dependent. The only hard and fast rule for me is that it is about affecting the audience.

As a result, I tend to agree with Meryl Streep -- every time I start something new, I have no idea what I'm doing -- I am totally lost...then I pull out a few tricks (aka "technique") and it slowly becomes a cohesive whole.

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jrb...yeah, we definately disagree 100% on this one.

I'm much more of an "actors should be team players" person -- everyone's job is to tell the story, not jus the writer. I think the more you do work, the more you'll realize that the perfect world is when an actor doesn't have to do ANY work...they just have to say the lines, and the story tells itself. Unfortunately, not every piece is written in that style....which makes some choices wrong for the story, and others right -- even if some choices seem "more true" to the character. Often we have to undersell our performance to allow for the main character to shine more fully. It's a tricky balance, but I think telling the story is ALWAYS more important than being "truthful"...because not all plays require the actor to be truthful.

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This bears repeating and is the crux of of what I am saying:

"It is important to be clearly specific, and not specifically clear."

When you try to make things clear for the audience, you are being indicative--YAWN.

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Indicating is not acting for the audience...it is acting for yourself. It means you don't trust the audience to be smart enough to "get it". Audiences are savy, and should be treated as such. I don't mean indicating. I mean there is a different kind of error that you clearly haven't come across -- the actors who act always internally -- they are never concerned with whether or not something reads to an audience...they are only concerned with how they can feel something more fully.

THAT is the other kind of error -- it is a balance...not too much internal...not too much indicative external work. you must find a balance. A delicate balance.

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If you ever get a chance to work on any experimental theatre, or Eastern theatre...acting for the other actors doesn't work as well...

My ultimate point being...I think actors need to shift techniques for the style of the peice theya re working on...and so many actors don't know how to do that...because they get trained one way and become brainwashed by that technique.

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bump

I want to hear from other people what gets them going as an actor--what inspires them.

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sorry, it seems my postings just went to the woods i.e. all gone!
lemme try again:

jrb wrote:
"1. Figure out what the character is literally doing in the scene. What does he want?"

I think this is where I got stumped most of the time..
however, I think one can use a technique to get to know what the character really wants: psychoanalysis.
I recommend Sigmund Freud's book "A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis" it blew my mind

Updated On: 9/17/08 at 09:58 AM

A very useful little guide is "Tips: Ideas for Actors" by Jon Jory. I believe there's also a second one out now. And he has one out for Directors, which is always useful for the actor as well.

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What a blast from the past!

I think that's a fantastic way to be, TtP. I took a musical audition class recently and the ideas presented were very new and went against things I had been taught before. But that's good to think outside what you think you know. And considering she was a major casting director, she was offering advice that was applicable not only for her auditions but likely musical auditions in general based on TODAY's standards. What casting people want to see these days.

So, I'm going to incorporate her ideas into what I'm doing--see how it goes. See how it feels for me. It's exciting.

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I tried to melt. I really did. I should have gone to an acting school, that seems clear.

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Wow, I'm loving this thread, and I feel it deserves a bit of a bump.
I'm only a sophomore in high school, so my acting classes are very much a buffet of acting styles (and a rather laid-back approach at that, unfortunately). So, at this point, I can't really attest to which school of thought I side more with. But I can tell you as I feel out the different styles and exercises and experiment with different ways of approaching a character, I'm beginning to know what I like and don't like.

I hate the intellectual, written aspects of preparation that I'm forced to do for school. Marking beats, writing character histories, writing subtext, I despise it. It seems so extraneous to me to go beyond the text, I have everything I need right there. At the end of a show, my script is destroyed with questions and answers written in every margin, but if something isn't brought up in the play, I don't think its necessary for me to even think about it, because if I make it important enough to my character for the audience to become aware of it, I'm likely to just confuse them. If its just a tiny subtlety that no one but me could possibly pick up on, than all I've done is waste time.

One of the things I love about what Mamet had to say in True or False was the idea of never "Um"ing or adding words in order to save time and find a safe moment. I love seeing an actor take an emotion and run with it, even if its scary or confusing. But I can't agree that going to school for acting is useless, as those startling and fantastic moments just won't come to you every night, and you need something to do in case it doesn't happen.

I also love Viewpoints. I am most intrigued by an actor that is physically in their body and is aware. I am so annoyed by an actor that isn't both physically and mentally present 100% of the time. And I think constantly having that awareness of what's going on in yourself, as well as your relationship to others is half the battle for an actor.

But, I have the feeling that I'm really a Meisner girl, as my favorite exercises that we've done in my class have been, to my knowledge, Meisner exercises. Lots of repetition. Personally, I am triggered most by what I'm given, and I try to allow the other character's lines to guide what I'm doing more than my own.

And I also try to allow what's affecting me at any moment to work itself into the scene, and not deny any emotion, even if I feel it may betray what the character "should" be feeling. No matter what it is, I try to grab that feeling by the balls, and run with it.

My apologies if any of this is obvious or extremely basic, I'm in the very early stages of figuring out my technique.

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Well said, Ahmelie. blue shirt

touchinthemorning, I saw you wrote: "My biggest problem with meisner is that he doesn't speak often enough about internal listening...I've found that most characters I play speak out because of an internal cue combined with an external one,"
I reckon there's an answer to your concern. Meisner once said "you respond to what's happening inside you when you hear your partner" (I'm paraphrasing here). This is on the video that he made with Sydney Pollack. And he didn't teach just the repetition but also "the pinch and the ouch". Maybe this last part is not taught well in the "meisner class" of most theater education?

Not everyone believes in writing out a character history. I think if it works for someone, fantastic. I think any research one wants to do to understand something about the character is great. Especially for externals. And, I say use whatever you can to create a brilliant performance.

But at the end of the day, the writer did all that for you. Your job is to play what's on that page.

Sidenote: one of the greatest advantages that comes from this freedom? Cold readings. Of course, what happens before the scene and after the scene can affect choices made for performance. But if you don't have that information just yet, you can still play the scene.

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