Acting School Notes

[actingschoolnotes]

The struggle of drama, in its own measure the same as the struggle of faith, is to become, and remain, interwoven with the life of the common man.

Contemporary Theatre & the Christian Faith by Kay M. Baxter

[actingschoolnotes]

A student who takes part in the production of a play under really competent guidance gains a training that cannot be duplicated by any other means. It is, or should be, to him an educational experience of a high order, and no less truly educaational because it is pleasurable. His preliminary study of the character that he is to impersonate, his attempt to render that character completely in voice, action, and all the other means within his power, inevitably give him a broader and more searching knowledge of human nature - a keener sense of what is admirable and what is despicable. His imagination is quickened and developed healthily and normally. His sense of the varying values of words and of their expressivearrangement into sentences of speech is also quickened. His pronunciation of words, his articulation, and his enunciation are immensely improved (in all these the American student is notably and deplorably deficient.) His voice is also improved (the average American voice is nothing less than atrocious), and the improvement of this organ of individual expression is of the utmost value to him in society, in business, and in the development of his own personality. His use of his body and the coördination of of speech and bodily action, his bodily poise, his legitimate self-possession, all are immeasurably and beneficiently developed. Nothing can so well accomplish these very desirable results as can acting. In this light, acting becomes not a frivolous pastime, not a form of self-indulgence, not an effeminate diversion for those unable to participate in sterner activities, but an essential art, - dignified, educational, invaluable.

Twelve One-Act Plays for Study and Production by S. Marion Tucker, Ginn & Co. 1929.

[actingschoolnotes]

Here are some notes from Stella Adler on playing Amanda Wingham in The Glass Menagerie and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.

[mttbll]

Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief… Grief and rage—you need to contain that, to put a form around it, where it can play itself out without you or your kin having to die. There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you—may you cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn’t that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy with your own life. Within it you watch yourself act out the present or possible organization of your nature. You can be aware of your own awareness of this nature as you never are at the moment of experience. The actor, by reiterating you, sacrifices a moment of his own life in order to give you a story of yours.

Anne Carson (via mttbll)

[actingschoolnotes]

People laugh at truth.They don't laugh at cheap gags - they laugh deepest and loudest at their own foibles. The same is true in drama: they are looking to recognise human behaviour.

Jason Isaacs, The Guardian 11/5/2013.

[rita-ellen]

[actingschoolnotes]

Rules from John Cage

Actual Acting School Notes!

[my-inner-monoblog]

Growth as an actor and as a human being are synonymous.

Stella Adler (via my-inner-monoblog)

[matryushka-blog]

[T]he hiding must be seen: I want you to know that I am hiding something from you, that is the active paradox I must resolve: at one and the same time it must be known and not known: I want you to know that I don’t want to show my feelings: that is the message I address to the other. Larvatus prodeo: I advance pointing to my mask: I set a mask upon my passion, but with a discreet (and wily) finger I designate this mask.

Roland Barthes, from A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (via earlyfrost)

[theatrecollage-blog]

When artists start taking control of the development and dissemination of their creative output, the system will inevitably change. Ensemble work, collaborative creation, “devised” or “experimental” theater in the 21st Century creates change in two essential ways. First, it allows the group to take control of their life and art, to be the change you want to see in the world. If you want a collaborative, co-operative world, practice collaboration. If you want diversity and inclusion in the wider world, be diverse and inclusive in your practice and engagement. Use your art practice to model the world you would like to see and the art you create will reflect that. The time of waiting for the system to embrace or create change is over, the old top-down model doesn’t work, so take the responsibility into your own hands.

 Andy Horwitz , Culturebot. 

[alanprickman]

[gaiuswrites]

“The philosophical underpinnings of my approach to acting are that there are universal human qualities, and that every character is actually available within each one of us, that if we tap down into that universal humanness, we can find whatever character it is that we need to play already there within ourselves, and it’s just a matter of peeling apart the onion that is you and finding that character within you, because of this universal human quality.”

Misha Collins

[actingschoolnotes]

If there is one among my readers to whom the dim and dingy half-light of the theatre is dearer than the God-given radiance of the sunlight; if the burnt-out air with its indescribable odour, seemingly composed of several parts of cellar mould, a great many parts of dry rot or unsunned dust, the whole veined through and through with small streaks of escaped illuminating gas - if this heavy lifeless air is more welcome to your nostrils than could be the clover-sweetened breath of the greenest pasture; if that great black gulf, yawning beyond the extinguished footlights, makes your heart leap at your throat; if without noting the quality or length of your part the just plain, bald fact of "acting something" thrills you with nameless joy; if the rattle-to-bang of the ill-treated old overture dances through your blood, and the rolling up of the curtain on the audience at night is to you as the magic blossoming of the mighty flower - if these are the things you feel, your fate is sealed: Nature is imperious; and through the brain, heart, and nerve she cries to you, ACT! ACT! ACT! - and act you must!

~ Clara Morris, Stage Confidences: Talks About Players & Play Acting (1902)

[theatremagazine]

I often envy the Impressionists and their school. They select a subject and then paint it in the way they feel it, leaving you to interpret. It doesn’t matter if they give a woman a purple face- they see it as such and therefore you must accept it. Now, if the actor could only get his public to accept what he feels and is striving fittingly to present, how happy we’d all be!

~ Edward Sothern

The Theatre, March 1903

(via theatremagazine)

[eyescreen-deactivated20201122]

To explore human soul.

Marion Cotillard (on why she’s an actress). (via the-world-goes-and-flutters-by)

[actingschoolnotes]

If age may bring respect, then certainly the art of acting ought to rank among the honorable callings. But acting has something more than to recommend it to our favorable consideration. It has been regarded as an exponent of great mental culture among all enlightened nations. Acting is worthy of encouragement, because it is to-day our most intellectual public entertainment, and because it is a powerful factor in the highest and best civilizing influences of the world. Acting is worthy of consideration, because it strengthens, develops, and beautifies mentally all who study it as an art.

~ Frank Findley Mackay, The Art of Acting (1913)

[actingschoolnotes]

An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer. In fact, he must seek out more of life than life puts at his feet.

 James Dean

[fuckyeahgreatplays]

I say, you probably think that theatre, properly conceived, is not an escape either but a flight to reality, a rehearsal for life itself a rehearsal of these human relationships of which the most essential the relationship that defines most vividly who we are and that makes our lives possible is love.

paradise park (via fuckyeahgreatplays)