Questions from Chapter 6:
1. "There was no pole, no line, no fish hook. But in the way he held his hand and lifted his arm, you could see the pole, the line hanging in the water, the twitch of the line as the fish took hold of the hook. It was genius." Describe a moment as an actor when you didn't work with your property to make it as real as possible. What would you change in order to create an engaging relationship with that prop?
2. "It's only when we don't understand the circumstances that we have to 'act,' that we have to fake it. And believe me, the audience knows that instinctively." Describe a moment onstage when you didn't understand the circumstances. What would you do differently?
3. "In creating the physical reality, you will have created the mood." Give an example of how a specific environment dictated what you did as an actor.
I hate to keep talkIng about the same play but number three grabbed me. In night of the living dead, I tried to make the window a friggin star. I acted very fearful of it. It was the thing that reminded the survivors of their harsh reality. I built a fearful relationship with it and created a mask of paranoia for my character to where. It helped build tension for the audience and made my death more significant.
ReplyDeleteI was constantly re-boarding windows, checking strength, using facials, pushing back zombies, and I never turned my back to it. I felt it helped add tension. When I reviewed the footage I realized I needed to make my actions larger in some instances. I didn't always create an atmosphere, but just business for my character. I need to improve upon that.
DeleteI agree because with such a poor script, I am still respectful toward the writer of the play, it was great that you had interacted with the window, making it something you feared. By having your character reacting to this scenario, it was easier for the actors to really play off of you. But in some cases, it's hard to build a mood for an audience if the actors are all on a different page. Some actors might not be enhancing their characters feelings so it shows the strong characters from the weaker characters. In this play, it seemed like a lot of the smaller written characters were able to outshine some of the bigger ones. I'm not saying the other actors were not good, I am saying that some of the actors were able to really connect with what was going on.
Delete2) I can remember a scene back when I did Beauty and the Beast where I didn't really understand the circumstances. It was when Belle walks up to the Beast's private or rather forbidden room. I had to walk up some stairs onto a little platform that represented the hallway. As I walked up, I should have been imagining the different types of sculptures, the dust on the railing, and the rotting wood of the frames on the paintings. However as I walked down this hallway, I didn't imagine a once beautiful castle. Instead all I saw was some stairs and a big black platform. Because I didn't imagine my environment, I was unsure of how to reacte. I am sure my performance was transparent because of that. In the future, I want to be sure that I can picture my surrounding and that I also understand the time period better. When I did the performance, I was acting like a middle schooler from the twenty first century. If I learn to understand the time period, I will know how to speak, hold myself, and interact with others as well as the environment.
ReplyDeleteTime period is definitely important, and it's really good that this is recognized. I mean, things change vastly over a short amount of time. Understanding the environment of the time is important in portraying an accurate character. You brought up a very good point.
DeleteGreat, great points. Well put. I agree during Beauty and the Beast, the decor didn't even occur to me. Sure, it was plenty suitable since we're only doing an amateur youth production and we're not professionals, but looking back you're right - I did almost nothing to create the environment in my own mind. I completely see and agree with how if you, and I, had been able to see ourselves in that environment and really live there (by that I mean feel natural there, like we were people from that time) that everything would've been much more truthful.
DeleteIn "Noises Off" part of the beauty and character of the play as a whole was the chaos. That chaos dictated how, as characters, we moved and spoke to one another. Our job, in this setting, was to convey that chaos to the audience, as if they were experiencing it themselves. As chaotic as everything was on stage, I think that backstage was just as much, if not more chaotic. This element alone added to our, or at least my, frenzy onstage and I feel like that was helpful in a way, as crazy as everything was.
ReplyDeleteThis is for question 3...by the way.
DeleteThe set itself was extremely chaotic, especially when you turned it around. There were wood beams everywhere, and it did have a tendency to move on its own. The fact that I myself wasn't completely sturdy on the set, for me, added to the chaotic effect. I think this is because every time I ran up and down the stairs I thought I was going to trip, my heel would fall through a crack, or I would stumble on the extremely high stair.
DeleteThat's a really good example. The chaotic air to every single moment of the play really brought a recognizable sort of order to the actions of everyone in the cast. The way the show ran with this mood made it all the more hilarious and it was understood by the cast and the audience. There were so many layers of comical mishaps contrasting with the way a show is "expected" to run.
Delete2) There are more than one moment that I have not understood what the circumstances were. I have that problem when it comes auditions. I can't really be the character in the audition and I think it would help a lot. But that was just a statement, self-thought. A play where I was not really giving it my all, was Into the Woods. The nerves got the best of me. There were times where I knew I had it, where I was confident, but all my confidence went out the door when a tech issue happened on my tower part. It really knocked me out of character because in my head I was like "Oh man!". I was scared because of the people in the audience but if I could go back, I would rather embrace the audience, rather than hiding from them. In the future, I plan to relax and just see the world as if I were seeing it from the characters eyes.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you. I get so scared during auditions and stuff, that I don't really try nearly as hard as I should. In Into the Woods, I definitely think I could have been more in character, and made my character funnier and more interesting. I think the best characters that I've ever played, actually, were in Broadway Night's Cell Block Tango and in my Advanced Auditions this year. I worked so hard on them, and I think I did the best I've ever done in those.
DeleteWhen there are issues with the set or props, there is always that moment of, "what do I do!" However, I think that when we understand the cirmunstances we are able to recover much faster. Creating an environment in our imagination will prevent us from freaking out when something goes wrong onstage. We don't rely on the material parts of the performance, so the audience might not ever know anything went wrong.
DeleteKiley- Having to 'act' sucks. Having to ACT rocks. Totally a difference there. :p Anyway, I feel bad that that happened to you. Tech issues along with other problems backstage can easily just throw your character out of whack, this happens to me as well.
DeleteI think when you audition for a role, that that is the hardest part of the whole show. Because at that point, you're cold reading, not fully comprehending the context of what's being said. It's especially bad when you have no familiarity with the play/musical whatsoever. You know the general circumstances, but nothing to make a really good character.
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ReplyDeleteI don't know if this is exactly what it means, but I think I royally failed at portraying the giant's steps and words in Into the Woods. I was never on time, and I was always forgetting to sway when she 'talked.' I think it was because I was so overwhelmed with everything. I was trying to portray my distaste for my dumb and blind daughters, and I was trying to portray my fear of the giant, and I was trying to portray my dislike of the rest of the characters, and I just kept forgetting to react to the giant as much as I should have. If I could redo it, I would definitely just practice more and make sure I was on-time with my movements and such.
I was gearing the question more towards properties: an object on stage an actor has. For example your umbrella was a property of yours. This answer is okay though since this chapter is talking about the environment.
ReplyDelete3. First, I'd like to give a shoutout to my noobish-ness and lack of experience in actual school productions, hence my awkward examples for these blog posts. WOO. Anyway.
ReplyDeleteWhen I worked with Stephanie Aspiotis on Carol Burnett's "Wallflower" skit, we had to decide, together, where we really were, what was surrounding us and why our character's were there. We were both lingering in the back of a small gala-esque room at a hotel that was hosting a singles dance party of some sort. We tried to be completely original in creating the atmosphere and avoided asking other's who had worked on the scene in the past. We were sitting by empty chairs off to the side of the already weird/awkward dance floor, and we created psuedo-personalities for our characters with false confidence under the stress of this really really really weird dance.
Remember that your environment has to be specific. Maybe the colors for the dance were teal and purple and you were wearing a peach dress that clashed. Maybe there were balloons as decorations nearby and the static made your hair stick up which was another thing to worry about. Was the carpet new or was it curling up at the edges so you played with it with your shoe. Did you spill red punch on your dress? Where you feeling so awkward you spent a good deal of time drinking the punch at the punch table and now not only or you dance partner less but bloated and feeling even more uncomfortable now than you did before. That is the amount of imagination that needs to get put into your environment.
DeleteIn "Into the Woods" kiley was in the tower and she and kristina had just finished a song. So keeping in mind that I was saying my lines while that side of the stage was basically frozen was kinda important. I was ment to sing about her, in that direction, but I was not to expect any response.
ReplyDeleteWhat question are you answering? Expand on your thoughts - A minimum of four sentences create a paragraph.
Delete1. In Into the Woods, there were a few scenes where I was holding a chicken. It wasn't until I read this section that I really realized "oh my god, I didn't treat it like a chicken, I treated it like a prop." Now, going back, if I had the opportunity to change it I think I would really treat it like a living being. Kind of like how you have to react to what your fellow actors on stage do, I would have to try and hold on to this chicken and keep it calm and not let it run away because even though it's not real, the chicken's like my fellow actors in that it has motives and desires - one of which probably being to get away from me.
ReplyDelete3. In "To Kill a Mockingbird" I remember the environment like it was yesterday. It was in the blackbox, the front row being a hand-reach away. In this scenario, I was on trial. I was sitting in the chair, with the Judge, Atticus trying to defend me, and then prosecution. The environment was cold, and tense. Because of this, it forced me to be scared. I wasn't just scared as the character, I was scared of the performance. As a freshman, I was in a show with a lot of seniors, and this was their last show in high school. Think about that, I didn't want to screw that up. So that meshed with Tom Robinson's charaacter and scenario, I as an actor made sure to act scared for my life, instead of being scared of screwing up a line. Especially since the audience is so close, they'd be able to read it off my face. So, there's that. Environment is definitely important.
ReplyDeleteWe've had a lot of really nice sets presented to us over the years, courtesy of our fantastic tech crew. But, I think that the otherworldly feeling the audience gets from a really good set, the feeling that you're staring through a window into an entirely different time or place, that feeling is completely negated by the actors not using it properly. I really had to work on this when we did "The Hobbit," because the majority of the play was set in hostile environments. Even Bilbo's house was a cramped little hobbit home in which copious amounts of angry, hairy dwarves were fighting over food. If that isn't hostile, I don't know what is. Anyway, it was a great situation to practice business and really connecting to the environment because most of the characters on stage, save Bilbo, Thorin, and Gandalf, had very few lines. So, I had to use my imagination to generate the stimulus of the forests and dungeons and react to them, because eventually, just reacting to the dialogue of the main characters is not interesting for the audience. Furthermore, simply reacting to the conversations doesn't solidify the sights and sounds of the environment for the audience, which really begins to break the illusion for the everyone, including the other actors.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Keenan. I've been to plays, where I see the set, and I'm like, "Wow, it's like I'm looking into a window of a whole different world" and then the actors come on stage and ruin it for me. And his comment about reacting to the main dialogue run true, I think, too. I think it runs with the idea that you hear when you're learning about business. The audience gets bored, so they look at the other characters, and if they aren't in the zone, and they aren't their character, then the entire allusion is ruined.
DeleteI agree with both of you. One of the first things I learned when I started to get into drama was how to create business. I learned that just standing there wasn't what I was supposed to do, so I would react to everything everyone said. I would gasp at the right moments or roll my eyes. And you can only mouth "watermelon" in fake converstaion for so long. But when I got older I realized reacting to every little thing isn't very natural. No one watches someone like a hawk and makes wild faces at them. If you're in the background you shouldn't just focus on the main characters, but also the set and your environment. Even if you have imagine it like Keenan did in The Hobbit. It's much more engaging for the audience then forced facial expressions.
Delete3). In Beauty and the Beast, there's a point where my character, Maurice, got tossed into the dungeon. Dungeons, from my experience, are usually dark, cold, and dank. So while I was in the dungeon, I huddled up to keep warm. And when Belle found me in the dungeon and was trying to rescue me, I grabbed ahold of the cell bars to keep myself upright, as by that point Maurice is starting to get sick.
ReplyDeleteI feel like this is an excellent example of why imagination is so incredibly important to actors, and why Stella Adler stresses the importance of its development in our minds. She mentions at the beginning of the book to never draw images from film or pictures, because while you say "in my experience," we know that you probably haven't spent much time in any actual dungeons. You only know what you've seen in films and pictures, or what you've been able to imagine. The reason imagination is a better thing to focus on as opposed to the vividness of a movie dungeon or the stunning reality of a real prison/dungeon is the sense of personality it gets from you as a person. The dungeon is yours. You know it intuitively because it came from you, and that's what makes it so much more realistic and, ultimately, more terrifying.
Delete2. This past year in class, you gave Savannah and I a scene from a play about an old vindictive mother who wanted to keep her daughters all to herself so she could use them as maids, more or less. I was given the part of the vindictive old mother. Anyway, going into the scene, we were both pretty blind about the actual circumstances around the scene. In the climax, my daughter tortures me and basically leaves me to die. If I had known the play even better before performing the scene, I would have made the mother even more vindictive, even more nasty and evil to her daughter. Likewise, even more antagonized after her daughter left her.
ReplyDeleteYeah, when performing a part, its usually best to get the full context of your character. If you have no idea how a character usually acts, you're not going to be able to portray them correctly. And thats really gonna confuse people who are familiar with the character. Of course, I guess one could always chalk that sort of thing up to adaptational differences, but still, it's usually a good idea to actually know the character you're portraying.
Delete3) In Legally Blonde, I spent most of the second act in a courtroom. I’ve never been in a courtroom in real life before, so I had to imagine what I thought it would be like. I had to act very professional, like I knew exactly what I was doing. My character wanted to be in that courtroom and impress her boss. The courtroom’s set up depicted that I was on the defense side. I couldn’t wander around stage because then I wouldn’t be on my client’s side. I had to stay where I was and be totally engulfed in the case. The judge was in the center which gave me a definite focal point. I also couldn’t act out of line or tug on my shirt because I didn’t want to distract the defendant or look bored or fidgety. I also kept my jacket on because I imagined that a courtroom would be kind of cold. Being aware of my surroundings helped me react to things that the audience couldn’t see, and it helped me stay in character.
ReplyDeleteThose are some good examples of imagining your surroundings. When I first think I of being in a court room, I also recognize that I should stay on the side with my defendant and that I shouldn’t tug on my clothes. I liked that you said you kept your jacket on because it would probably be cold. I definitely didn’t think of that immediately. A lot of the time the audience doesn’t even know how much detail we put in to creating a scene, but the details are what make the scene. Plus as its already been said, creating your environment can help stay in character especially when there isn’t a set to help.
Delete1.In Othello, Desdemona's handkerchief is a key prop. She loves it dearly and is something she would never lose, which is why when she does it's a big deal. When I held the handkerchief I tried to do it in a way that showed how delicate and dainty Desdemona was. I think this was the wrong approach. I think I should have held the handkerchief close to my chest, almost hugging it, before I presented it. For example, Desdemona dabs Othello's forehead with the handkerchief. Going back I would have taken a brief second to admire it or do something that showed my love and admiration towards the handkerchief before dabbing his forehead. I think this would have given the handkerchief more meaning to the audience because they would have seen the connection Desdemona had with it.
ReplyDelete