Write at least 1 paragraph (4 sentences or more) responding to 1
of the questions below. Then write at least 1 paragraph responding to
another student's response to 1 of the questions.
Questions from Chapter 11:
1.
"When we act, primarily we perform an action. Our second objective is creating a reason for the action. This is called justification." Drawing from your experience describe your action for your character and your justification.
2.
"I know that sounds obvious, but it's not good. Why is 'I'm thirsty' not a good justification? Because it's too subjective. It's a state of being. You need to find a justification that you can do. 'I need water as a chaser for my drink.' 'I need water to wipe a spot off my dress.' 'I need water to take an aspirin.'" Give your own example of poor justification and strong justification.
3.
"In life, as on the stage, it's not who I am but what I do that's the measure of my worth and the secret of my success. All the rest is showiness, arrogance and conceit." Explain why this first sentence is true in regards to the stage.
4. "In a restaurant a man asks a woman if she'd like some sugar. She says, 'No, thank you.' Her answer has great strength because her inner justification is that she has diabetes." By creating your environment and your character there are some things you understand about your character that others do not -- this allows you to have strong justification. This is what creates a successful performance. Give an example of when you used strong justification for a character you have portrayed. Explain how you felt about your performance.
5. "The objects you choose can help or hinder you. A radio, for
example, something mechanical, is a mistake. Instead, turn to nature. A
radio leaves you stone cold inside." Describe at least one situation
where a property helped or hindered your performance.
6. "Bringing that poetic quality into it, you reminisce about your
high school graduation. 'There it was that day! There was -- an
auditorium!' You don't try to make it natural. So you don't try to
bring it back to a natural tone of voice. 'Was there a graduation? Was
there? There's the apple tree. There's the haywagon.'" Describe why
reminiscing in a natural tone of voice would not work on stage (even if
you were using a microphone.)
My action was making out with baker's wife. My justification was that prince charming needed to satisfy his ego. He has the sexual appetite of a crimson tiger straight slothin' in the jungle. On a lesser extent I constantly fixed my hair on stage. Prince charming has to always look thug-nasty for the ladies.
ReplyDeleteI could see your justification in your performance. Keep in mind that The Baker's Wife was someone who took matters in her own hand -- this is a trait the Prince never saw before. He could have thought "maybe this take charge woman is the one I am looking for!" But she was easily seduced and became clingy so the Prince soon realized that she was not the one.
ReplyDelete3. "In life, as on the stage, it's not who I am but what I do that's the measure of my worth and the secret of my success. All the rest is showiness, arrogance and conceit." Explain why this first sentence is true in regards to the stage.
ReplyDeleteOn the stage, no one cares about who you are. The actor could be a drug-addict, a terrible father, a weird cat-lady, and no one cares. The only thing that the audience cares about is who you portray, which you do through actions. Thus, what you do is what leads to your success. Actors that win awards aren't awarded for being nice, they are awarded for their actions in a play or movie.
In regards to characters, no matter how much an actor develops their character to themselves, and gives them a backstory, etc., the audience will never know unless they do things that show the audience the backstory, and who their character is.
I agree. The audience doesn't care about the charcter-- they care about what the character brings to the story. The only thing that matters to them is how you interact to keep the plot moving. Thats why the only way the audience is going to know who you are is if you actions represent you. On the contrary, it has to fit in with the current situation. If you are playing the drug-addict, it wouldn't be appropriate to shout "where are my drugs" if you are in a calm environment. That may be a bad example, but the point is you have to show the audience who your character is in a smooth appropriate way.
DeleteCompletely agree with everything said here. We're judged on our actions, not just on stage, but in life. We don't care about others' intent, we care about what gets done. So on stage, it doesn't matter how we feel, it doesn't matter how we think about something, the only thing that matters and has significance to it is what we do. Again, it's the simple thing of showing instead of telling. (Not that you're telling them you're feeling sad or that you're a drug addict, but you show you're a drug addict by being on edge all the time, maybe rubbing at the bottom of your nose when you think about your drugs, or whatever, as opposed to sitting down next to someone and telling them "I'm a drug addict, you should feel uncomfortable around me")
Delete2) I am unsure if this justification would be too complex as Adler explains can happen, but here it goes. In Into the Woods, Lucinda was constantly making fun of Cinderella and complaining about her state of being. A poor justification would be that she does not like Cinderella and that she is never happy and therefore is always complaining. A strong justification is that she does these things for the attention of her mother. She is competing with Florinda and Cinderella (even if hers isn't good attention). She works to be perfect and better than everyone else so that her mother is proud of her and hopefully will help her to marry the prince before her older sister. Deep down Lucinda might be a lonely fatherless girl searching for approval.
ReplyDeleteI don't think this justification is too complex at all. In fact, I think this is a perfect explanation. Most of the time, when there are feelings against another person, it is for more than one reason. It is more likely to be complex than not, especially when someone torments another person the way Lucinda does.
Delete5. Probably the biggest glaring prop that killed me was the microphone I had to use as Brooke Bardough in Night of the Living Dead. I was the only one in the entire play to use the sound system and this put my already out of place character even more out of place. Also, the chord was in no way long enough to go the length I was supposed to go. Because if this I was tugging on it and it pulled me out of character because I looked stupid with this mic that was too short to be center stage.
ReplyDeleteMy action was getting on my knees and wiggling my sword immitating a dwarf standing guard, my justification being that I am afraid of dwarfs, even though to others that seems rediculous and funny to be scared of them. The prince charming, feerless leader kinda vibe, suddenly taken away by a dwarf..
ReplyDeleteRyan- So I'm assuming this ins in reply to number 5. Very good! I think the fact that when you get on your knees and imitating a dwarf shows the audience how silly it is for a prince to be so scard of a dwarf. So that helped the audience understand- Dwarves are not these large buff threatening creatures, they are little guys that have wobbly swords. Way to go Ryan!
Delete3. Like I've written at least once or twice about, it doesn't matter what we feel. The audience doesn't care. In the real world, we judge ourselves based on our intent, and judge everyone else based on actions. It's the same way on stage - the audience doesn't care about the internal process, they're judging us based on what we do. They can figure out the internal things based on what we do, because once we've done an action the internal process becomes apparent.
ReplyDelete6. Well, think about it. When you're reminiscing, do you say it in a 'narutal' voice? Is something you reminisce scripted? Not really. It'll make the memories dead. Reminiscing is bringing a memory back to life. It's spontaneous, because you're bringing everything that happened back. "I remember that day! You were there- And so were you! We went on that ride and Mr. Canalia almost pee'd his pants!" compared to, "There was a day when we went to Disneyland and Mr. Canalia went on a ride and he was terrified." It's not a lively. Bringing back the emotion and the experience is what reminiscing is all about.
ReplyDelete3.)This statement obviously has the potential to be taken as extremely negative and depressing, but I think it's point makes it so much easier, for me at least, to be proactive and continuously working towards what I love and what makes me happy. It's the simple fact that, once again, the audience will not get anything out of the play unless they see the actions. Very simple. But the actual worth of the play, in dollars earned or in points made, or even in laughs, those are determined by the believability of the actions and the things that the characters DO. As the people who play those characters, we have to be massively diligent about how our actions come across, because when the play is over and the curtains close, a good portion of the audience will not remember the main character's name. Three weeks from then, they may not remember the name of the play, but they'll remember what they thought when they were watching it. The hardest part of any form of entertainment, in my uninformed and highly inexperienced opinion, is getting the audience to think of it as anything other than just that: entertainment. A movie can be watched mindlessly and the brain feels stimulated by the images. A TV show, if watched extensively enough, will morph its episodes into one big blob of meaningless doggerel. They're stagnant, useless, of no value. But they're only that way because that's how people watch them (meaning there are plenty of films and shows that are highly intelligent and well thought out, but no one takes the time to realize it). In the end, people are just staring at a plate of glass with colors being projected behind it. On stage, I think the same effect can occur, and that is the worst possible thing that can happen short of the show not happening, because there would be the same amount of intellectual stimulation occurring in the theater if the show were to have never happened and the audience stayed home to watch another episode of 'How I Met Your Mother.' We have to make it not just another screen. If the audience wanted another portal into the dimension of vacuous crap they would've stayed home. The play needs to be enormous, explosive, UNFORGETTABLE. Because if the play dies off in the audience's minds, so be it. That’s to be expected. But the inception of the ideas must occur. That's how an impact is made. That's why what we do is important, not who we are (or in this particular example, who we are pretending to be). In life, we die. It happens. But the things we've done are maintained. Plays, they end. It happens. But the impact they make on people is maintained. Get it? Cool. This was a really long comment, sorry about that...
ReplyDelete2. For the Hobbit, I played Tom the Troll, one member of a trio of Trolls who tried to eat the main character Bilbo Baggins. A poor justification for Tom trying to eat Bilbo is "he was a monster" because stuff like that is too general. You can apply that sort of weak justifacation to several other characters in several other plays. A much stronger justification is "Tom and the other Trolls, who liked to eat people, had been eating nothing but mutton for a long while, and Tom had gotton sick of eating mutton every single night, so when an oppertunity to eat something that wasn't mutton(Bilbo) came along, he tried taking it." This one is a stronger justification because it's much more specific, and it actually gives us a clear reason as to why Tom wanted to eat Bilbo.
ReplyDeleteLike Stuart's example, it’s the back story or the motivation that makes an action strong. I think that's specifically important with antagonistic characters because they’re harder to relate to. At first look Tom is an evil Hobbit eating being, but take another glance and you realize he’s just hungry. It doesn’t make Tom less bad in Bilbo’s situation, but it shows that he’s more than just a savage monster. Knowing the back-story also helps to make characters more relatable and human.
Delete4. Although not a sole performance of acting, I think my version of "Mother knows best" from the Disney Showcase was full of strong justifications. If you don't know the "Tangled" storyline, Rapunzel is Mother Gothel's (the character I sang as) life line. Biologically, she should have died hundreds of years ago. Rapunzel is a living representation of the flower that has kept her alive all these years. Anyway, Mother Gothel's justification in that song is, to me at least, to stay alive. If Rapunzel leaves the tower, Mother Gothel's life support would be gone, AND she has the running risk of someone recognizing Rapunzel and taking her back to her parents. I feel like that entire song is M.G putting on her best show so she doesn't lose her life. Overall, I felt like I did really well during that performance, so I think justification helps makes performances stronger.
ReplyDeleteThat is a solid justification. As opposed to just saying that she doesn't want Rapunzel to leave as a justification, the words behind the words are able to pop out from behind the curtain and poke the audience in the eyes (metaphorically speaking, of course). Presenting reasons A, B, and C is providing so much more for you to work with as an actor than simply, "hungry" or "thirsty" or in this case, "lonely." Because it could potentially be misconstrued as that and the malice and evil that is so prevalent in the character to would be lost, leaving the audience feeling a little strange about the character, like she doesn't fit with play or they aren't really sure how to feel about her. It goes back to making things big (or in this case, obvious). The audience isn't stupid, but if you're too subtle about these things they'll slip through the cracks.
Delete3. As an actor you can’t tell an audience who you are—you show them. Therefore it’s through his actions that an actor tells the audience who he is. You can know your character like you know yourself, but your audience wont until you do something to demonstrate the character’s personality. In general we learn who other people are and what their motives are through what they do. It just makes sense that an actor would do it the same way on stage. The audience will learn who your character is by the decisions he makes.
ReplyDeleteIn relating to this in real life, you could be who you are, and your true self, yadda yadda yadda, but if you don't use that knowledge/don't know who you are, the actions that you do can affect how the world sees you. The same goes for acting. If you don't know your character, and portray the true 'self' of said character, how are you supposed to do actions like them? Actions speak louder than words. You character (or yourself) can say all they want, but it's their actions that will really give the audience an accurate idea of what their character is like.
DeleteI agree with both of you. Talking about how actions define a character reminded me of an exercise I did in a class over the summer. Everyone was to lay down and act as if they were waking up in the morning, as their character. We were supposed to go through our morning routine like it was second nature, because to our characters, it is. But not to us. We had to make everything up and really THINK like our characters. We weren't in a scene, we weren't reacting to anyone else, we were just becoming our characters in the simplest way possible. I found this very helpful, I got to know my character so much better than just reciting lines and reacting to scene partners.
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DeleteI agree with what you guys are saying. As an actor, you can't just go on stage and say who your character is and what they're like. That's boring, no fun for the audience, and outs you as a lousy actor. A good actor can tell the audience all they need to know about a character through the actions they perform as that character. A good example of this would be anything made in the silent era of films. Back then, they didn't have dialogue to tell you what was going on, so they had to rely entirely on the character's physical actions to portray the character and tell the story. And the silent actors back then, like Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, did a really great job of that.
Delete1) In Legally Blonde, my character Vivienne was dating Warner. When he proposed to her, she said yes. My action was agreeing to his proposal, even though we hadn’t been dating for that long. I think Vivienne’s justification for saying yes went beyond being in love with Warner. Their relationship was mainly based off of social status. Our families were both wealthy New England families, and it made sense that we would get married because we would both have law degrees and could start the successful cookie-cutter family that we were both raised in as well. I think that they both felt pressured to be the very best from their families too, so marrying someone their families approved of was the only option.
ReplyDelete