Questions from Chapter 3:
1. "An action has to go somewhere. It has to have an end. It can't just hang. Now if I said to you, 'Count,' it wouldn't work, would it? But if I say, 'Count the blue blouses in the room' it works immediately. Every action has an end, an object. An action is weak unless you finish it." Use a specific example from your life on stage that explains what Stella Adler talking about.
2. "Sometimes, when a husband and a wife go on a trip together, he might say, 'My God! Do you know what that it? Why that's Notre Dame!' And she replies, 'Yes, I know. I can see it.' They are seeing in Notre Dame something entirely different. As actors you must make everything you see come alive." Explain what you think the husband or wife saw when they made their statement.
3. "You can say, 'She beat her baby,' and that's reporting. Or you can say, 'Look at her beat the baby. Isn't it terrible,' and that is still too cool for the stage. One has to put it in the present, placing you there. You particularize: 'Oh, my God, the baby, the baby. . .' And there you are at the place, in the present moment, and we in the audience experience what you see." Use a specific example from your stage experience to describe a moment when you had a limited amount of words to express a big idea.
In night of the living dead, K Low played my romantic opposite. I had to express that I was scared, but was pretending to be brave for her. I also needed to convey I loved her. All I had was a very cheesy, limited jumble of words called dialogue. I used more facials, played off the environment around me, and used K Low to express my message.
ReplyDeleteI used nervous twitches. I interacted with the zombies and the window and created a paranoid vibe. I paused and acknowledged any blood on stage. Kiley and I always had silent interactions (looks, touches, etc.) to build a relationship between us because of our lack of lines
DeleteI think this is a really great example. I feel like having romantic chemistry between characters is one of the hardest things to portray onstage. Also, that combined with being fearful and trying to be brave is a difficult combination. And in a situation where there are minimal actual lines being said, I feel like a connection can really flourish through non-verbal communication.
DeleteI agree with both Evan and Melanie because being able to express emotion with another character is very difficult but in the long run it can create memorable characters. Silent communication is key to creating chemistry. My performance in NOTLD had to really play off Evans character because that was the only person that really created her character. Without Judys boyfriend, she probably would have not been much of a character. When you are not given much dialogue, you must be able to do little things that can make your character stand out.
DeleteKiley, I can immediately see how without her boyfriend she would soon be a completely useless character. I think that it's possible though that her character could have been much more interesting without her boyfriend as well. In relationships you sometimes take shelter under someone else's strengths. I think Judy did this since here boyfriend was around. But what if she stepped up because he wasn't around? Maybe her goal of getting to her boyfriend would have made her grab a 2 by 4 and kick some zombie butt.
Delete3. In the second act of "Noises Off!" there were many times where the character Belinda had to try to keep it all together so the show could go on. However, at the same time, she is upset by all the happenings. In the second act there wasn't that much for the actors at the front of the stage to say, and so trying to portray that sort of inner battle between trying to keep the peace and then wanting to join in the chaos is something a bit difficult to do without words. I find though that oftentimes the best acting happens non-verbally, so that limited communication is key.
ReplyDeleteI agree that most of what an actor convincingly does has nothing to do with the words they speak, but with their body language, facial expressions, and how they interact with others. On an emotional level, I think the words could be discarded almost completely--just enough to keep the plot moving. Non-verbal communication is a kind of instinctive animal like quality we have. I think it is stronger than words. You can hold basic communication with a person speaking a foreign language with only your body language. That is why its neccesary on stage. You might have a terrible script, but as long as you carry your emotion the audience will understand what you are trying to say.
DeleteA terrible script will still make a show hurt. The performances were in NOTLD were great, but a lot of critiques came in about the script. That's out of our control though. I think the lack of dialogue is a challenge but can easily be overcome. A deep character or persona can captivate an audience without words.
DeleteI agree with the comments on script. There's only so much we can do about a less-than-great script to work with... But there is a limitless world (for lack of a less cheesy tone) of possibility with what we can do to EXPAND our character and truly bring them to LIFE. All it takes is our willingness, patience, and practice to find it.
DeleteEmily, you are absolutely right. I can definitely agree that to a certain extent, the script has the capability of hurting the show. Why? Well of course, the script isn't what it's panned up to be. But like Emily said, if the characters are well formed, it can bring things to life. For an example, Twelve Angry Jurors wasn't "badly" written, but it was certainly wordy. It was very wordy, long, boring, and dry. It essentially was people sitting at a table, yelling at eachother. Very, very static. But because everyone put their effort into creating their own character, really putting life into it, the play was extremely dynamic. My adreneline was rushing the whole time. There are so many opportunities to make up for a bad script, we just have to take the time to find them.
DeleteI love this, and what you said at the end. "I find though that oftentimes the best acting happens non-verbally, so that limited communication is key." Acting is showing, not telling. It doesn't matter what you say, how little or much you say, everything is in how you say it. Even silence says something, and I think in a lot of cases, the more natural and honest thing to do in a situation would be to be silent or be very reserved in what you say, or you just don't have much to say at that moment.
Delete2) I think that the husband and wife are a sort of metaphor for what Stella Adler is trying to teach. The wife is how many of us students start out. We see things on their surface, but we don't really "see" it. It makes me think of the moving Avatar. :) There is a word they use that means "I see you". The main character Jake is told the word, but he doesn't understand the real meaning. He doesn't know how to connect, understand, and love whomever he says that word to. It is similair to the comparison of the husband and the wife. The husband in Stella's example sees Notre Dame for its beauty and imperfections. He picks up on the small details that make it magnificent. Relating back to the metaphor, this is how Stella Adler wants us to be. She wants us to not just see things like the wife, but to feel them and love them like the husband. If we do, the audience will too.
ReplyDelete2) The husband and wife are an example of what the meaning "taking life for granted." While they are on their car trip, the husband was admiring Notre Dame and looked at it past the surface; While the wife was not particularly interested in what the husband was pointing out. I think that people see the world from what is on the surface, whether than seeing the beauty within.
ReplyDeleteKiley, you said that the husband saw past the surface. What did the wife see? What was the meaning of the surface for her?
DeleteI think that the husband is seeing the Notre Dame as the historically significant and amazing monument that it is. The wife, however, didn't. Perhaps she was preoccupied, or maybe she was upset with her husband at that moment in time, or maybe she wasn't feeling well. From that one line, there are so many possibilities of what the wife could be feeling, and I think that's what Adler wanted to get out of it. As an actor, you have to choose what direction your character is going in, which sort of ties back to the first question, because your delivery of the line needs to have a very specific purpose and emotion that it is going to convey.
Delete1. I really liked this particular topic that Adler brought up. For me, it brings up the importance of pure focus on your outcome in just about any given situation. That's what can guide us to our desired end, whether onstage or off. Communicating a simple destination to others creates a single focus for all of you to work toward together. It gives you a clear, though maybe not easy path that you must CHOOSE to take to reach your outcome. It's nothing unless you follow through with it.
ReplyDeleteGreat start. Give me a specific example from when you were acting on stage.
DeleteRight off the bat an example I can think of was every single second of "Actor's Nightmare". It was terrifying stepping into a character for the first time just minutes before the show, but everyone in the cast and around me was amazingly committed to just making the show happen, reguardless of the circumstances. Everyone helped me out and we all set an aim for simply finishing the show and making it look good. Which definitely happened. Boo ya.
DeleteStella Adler states that your goal needs to be specific to have meaning. For example: The pigs need to go onstage and create business. The end goal would be the pigs need to go onstage and create the business of picking flowers for their house. Example 2: Rapunzel needs to sing the word "Ah." To create an end goal Rapunzel needed to sing "Ah" that shows the audience she longs to see the world outside her tower. You need to have motivation! Give me an example of how you created your motivation -- turning something general into something specific.
Delete3. Okay, an example. In the production of "Twelve Angry Jurors", there was a point in time where the jurors were trying to decipher how the boy was able to stab his father. If it was possible, so to say. When Juror #3 (Matt) offered to show us all how the boy would have killed his father, he used me as the example dummy. He picked up one of the knives and stood right in front of me. He made himself the same height as the boy would have been compared to his father, and he swung the knife back almost as though he was about to stab me himself. At this point, I pretended as though that comb-thing was an actual knife and I couldn't move. During this scene, every time, my heart would actually be pounding. In this specific example, I had no words at all. Everything had to be portrayed through my body language and my facial expressions. And not just me, everyone at that table made it seem like this stabbing was actually about to happen. Because of this, it was certainly (to me, at least) one of the highlights of the play, and a way to liven things up. It really put us all in the zone, and the energy after that scene just lingered.
ReplyDeleteThe thought that I was relaying at that moment was, "Oh my god, this man is really about to stab me."
I learned a lot about that this year, I think! In the one act that we did, An Actor’s Nightmare, Stephanie told me a bunch of times that I needed to rethink what my character was doing, because nothing had purpose. (I think this is what the question is asking.) I ended up getting even more in character, and I learned that if I was pacing around the stage, it had to be my character pacing due to her nervousness that her counterpart doesn’t know his lines, and not me pacing because I am nervous myself, if that makes sense. All of my actions had to have purpose behind them, but even more specifically, it had to be a purpose of my character and not myself.
ReplyDeletewhoops. I was answering the first question.
DeleteIn into the woods, my character had a scene where I ran into the conversation as my princes is about to go get killed by the giant and I come to stop her. I beleive that if done poorly I could have ruined that scene. If I had come in and stumbled on the lines or done something to mess up the other actors, then the picture would be lost and the image that we were providing the audience would be ruined. I feel like that is a challenge that had to be overcome by me and my character
ReplyDeleteWhich question are you responding to? Make sure that you are specific with your replies -- what did your body/face physically do to demonstrate what your character was thinking or feeling?
Delete2. I think in this case, the husband's focus and perception of Notre Dame was that it was this incredible, exotic thing that he had always read about but never seen. So when he exclaims that, it's because he's saying "Look! It's there in the flesh! Here's the thing we've read about for hundreds of years, look how much it's endured and what it represents!" Whereas in the wife's eyes, she sees Notre Dame as what it is literally - bricks. To her, yes, it's there. It's a building. It doesn't bear the same weight because to her it doesn't bear the same significance.
ReplyDelete3. A time I had limited words to express a big idea was in Othello. I had to tell the audience that my husband was going to kill me. In this example it might not have been particularly a lack of words, but rather a lack of meaning of the words. If the audience understood the old English Shakespeare used, my situation might have been more obvious. However, that wasn’t the case. As Desdemona I had to really work on my voice and the way I delivered the lines so the audience could follow what was happening. One specific part is when I say to Emilia, “If I do not wake If I do die before thee prithee, shroud me in one of those same sheets.” In that line I had to show fear, peace, understanding, and my submissiveness towards Othello. I couldn’t have said the line in complete fear for my life because it wasn’t that simple for Desdemona.
ReplyDelete2. I know the exact feeling that differentiated between the husband and wife, and experienced it myself in Spain. When the husband saw Notre Dame, he saw the ancient, Gothic masterpiece that has been towering over Paris for quite some time now. He saw a place where Kings have been crowned, where a Bishop has looked over the running of all the Catholic churches in Paris, a building that has inspired authors like Victor Hugo, where for 600 years people have gone to pray and make offerings to God, to protect their loved ones, on earth and in heaven. A building that has so much hype, that someone should exclaim, "Why, that's Notre Dame"
ReplyDeleteHowever, the wife saw Notre Dame, the famous cathedral known for it's extraordinary Gothic architecture. I guess the short hand of this difference is that she saw a building, but he saw an idea.
I completely agree with this analysis, as I know for a fact that people don't generally see things the way that I do, and I don't see things the way that other people do. That being said, I think that from an acting standpoint it is important that we convert the audience to our point of view of the character or the situation so that they all get the full effect of the idea and can all say after the show, with equal amounts of invigoration, "That was an amazing performance." It's the metaphorical equivalent of letting everyone see Notre Dame with their specific point of view, but through a pair of glasses that we provide.
DeleteThat's a pretty good summation. Everyone has a different viewpoint on things. To use a non Notre Dame example, imagine two people looking at a tree. One person will look at the tree, and just see a tree. The other person will look at the tree, and see the individual leaves, the holes burrowed in the trunk by birds, the patterns in the trunk, and other such things. The first man sees what the tree is. The second man sees all that the tree is.
DeleteI love how you used Spain as an example. We were immersed in so much history when we toured around, and it was a lot to take in. And I bet every tourist sees historical things differently. You, being really into history, probably saw each castle or palace as it was used hundreds of years ago, in all its glory.But one of those middle school students who could be heard groaning about the 'boring buildings' probably saw just a boring church, not a cathedral with ancient sculptures and tapestries where the people in town go to worship.
Delete1.) Stella Adler is referring to the fact that the audience has dragged themselves out of their houses, dressed nicely, and taken time out of their lives to watch something entertaining. Generalizations are not entertaining. They are broad, boring, and they do not successfully portray the specificity of the ideas that the author is trying to get across. This is why not every part is as easy to play as others, because Stella Adler says we have to make the actions “doable” while still supplying the audience with the little intricacies that make the play truly entertaining. When I played the Beast this past year, there were plenty of opportunities to generalize the emotions and ideas of the character. “I’m sad because girls don’t like me.” “Why don’t people listen to me even though I’m so important?” “I poked myself in the eye with my claw today, and that makes me MAD.” You know, the typically angry and misunderstood thoughts the beast would have. But, while those are the thoughts that prompt the actions, they aren't the ideas that prompt the thoughts. Things like how the Beast is internally tearing himself to shreds because he knows exactly why he is the way that he is, but he is too proud to blame himself. How he is still unaccustomed to his monstrous form which fuels his hatred towards himself. How he knows there was some sort of character flaw he possessed that caused the world to lash out at him in such a horrific way but due to his upbringing as a snooty little prince he just can’t figure out what it is. Those are the things I want the audience to see. I want them to count the ideas, not just the actions.
ReplyDelete3.) During Night of the Living Dead, I played a character called Harry Cooper, who was sort of a jerk. At one point he turns against our main protagonist, Ben, and points a gun at him. Ben manages to wrestle the gun away from me and then proceeds to shoot me. When this happened, I didn't just stand there like an idiot and then say "oh no, I have been shot." No, I backed away and begged him not to do it, saying things like "please no", and when he did shoot me, I clutched the area I had been shot, made a few pained noises, then staggered back a few steps before falling over dead. I didn't outright declare to the audience that I was dead. I showed them, using limited words and many gestures.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good example of using limited words because it was a situation that harbors so many deep emotions (I mean its death). As Stuart said, you cant just stand there and pull the "oh no I've been shot". You have to show the slow process of shock and horror of being shot, to struggling for air, and then to that cold silence when you finally die. That isn't something you can just tell an audience. Its something that MUST be shown.
Delete3) In Night of the Living Dead, I played Barbara, who, for most of the play, barely said a word. She was completely in shock after watching her brother get mauled by a zombie. After having a complete breakdown, she really only lets out muffled screams here and there and traces the doily on the arm of the couch with her finger. And trying to convey frightened, worried, terrified, confused, alone, upset, all through my facial expressions was definitely a challenge. I didn't know if I could trust any of these strangers who just yelled at one another, and all I wanted was to be with my brother.
ReplyDeleteI think this example is a really good point. Terror, confusion, etc. are two very strong emotions that require little to no words to express. I'm not sure if Stella Adler would agree, but sometimes acting requires no words, in my opinion (which probably doesn't matter compared to her's, actually). There are somethings that you can only express as body language. Like the old proverb! "Actions speak louder than words". Also 99% sure this is why Ms.Adler wants us to develop muscle memory for any action we need on stage.
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