Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Acting Theories and Theorists

          For acting and performance, I used to know a little bit about the acting technique.  I knew that theater acting and movie acting requires the different technique.  For theater, people have to raise their voice and exaggerate their action and emotion.  The reason behind is that the people who perform on the stage should transport the message or information of the play to the audience who are far away from the stage.  I believe Shakespeare's era was the origin of the theater technique.  However, I do not extremely love this technique because I used to think the performance is too fake.  Therefore, I love movie acting technique better.  The movie acting asks actors and actress to act like they are not acting.  They are creating the characters that not only appear on the screen but also the living people who really exist in this world.  The famous book that related to this naturalism, An Actor Prepares, could be described as a Holy Bible for the actors and actresses in the modern world.  I heard about the book, but I did not know who wrote, and what specifics that the book mentioned.  I rarely know the acting technique until these acting theories and theorists presentations.
          We picked some theorists, did research on them and their theories, and then we presented the research result to the class.  We learned a lot of theorists and theories, such as Konstantin Stanislavski, Lee Strasberg, Viola Spolin and Peter Brook.  I would love to introduce Konstantin Stanislavski because he played an important role in the acting history.  He was a pioneer developing the acting theory of naturalism.  An Actor Prepares was written by him.  His idea was that the great actors and actress do not imitate figures but become the figures. Lee Strasberg also emphasized that realistic was the main acting method for actors and actresses.  He specifically recommended actors to recall the similar memory that they can show the emotion that is similar to the emotion that the play has.  Besides, Lee Strasberg also underlined the importance of method acting.  He advocated that actors should build a close relationship with directors so that they could have more communications and make the play better from the script, staging to acting.
          Lee Strasberg was more declined to let the director take the main charge.  However, Peter Brook's directing style is really dependent on the actors themselves.   Therefore, Pete hated the acting school.  He thought the school framed students' creativity and specialty; the school gave students a function or rules to follow so that they lost their deep thinking of acting.  In a conclusion, he wanted to liberate the actors from methods and formats, which went against Lee Strasberg's idea.  In addition, I love the idea of Peter Brook's four ways of splitting the word "theater".  He split the theater into "deadly", "rough", "holy", and "immediate".  Particularly, when I saw the definition of "deadly", a type of commercial drama, motivated only by money, the popcorn movie came out of my head.  Marvel, for example, is one of the commercial drama, and it successfully earns countless fans and a lot of money but their plots are quite simple and predictable.   
          I searched Viola Spolin.  She made a big effort at the improvisational theater.  Consider the practical skill of improvising theater, she wrote a book which contained two hundred and twenty games.  The games are for students to develop their creativity on different perspectives, such as sensory, the stage space feeling, the storytelling, and the relationship between the actors and the characters.
          After learning different acting technique and having many activities, I think I would like to have the naturalism as my main acting standard.  I would like to recall the similar memory and emotion when I speak some specific lines, and I would like to practice the pace of speaking before the final recording.  I would love to follow those great acting theories, and I am also excited to the combine the ideas with my own thoughts. 

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

VIOLA SPOLIN

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZKdf8T3w5plf-fACoAF8zOnujhq-C_d3_OJM7-OTiGk/edit#slide=id.p

Sunday, January 14, 2018

Play Proposal

          Jacob and I are going to play the series of the scenes to show the relationship between Amanda and Tom.  In the scenes, I will play Amanda, and Jacob will play Tom.  By reading The Glass Menagerie, we can see that Tom always gets into arguments with his mother, Amanda.  Tom does not want to live in the small town, and he also can not stand his mother's nagging.  However, Amanda wants Tom to stay at home and support the family.  In the end of the play, the arguments directly lead to the tragedy.  Tom and Amanda cannot fix their relationship because they Tom left home and it is not possible to have any conversation.  Therefore, we want to show the process that how their relationship goes wrong.  Jacob and I believe that even if Tom is not happy with Amanda, he still loves his family at some point.  We will act out two scenes at least.  One is the scene that Tom told Amanda that he found a gentleman caller for Laura in the fire escape, and the other is the last argument between them in the last scene.
          I play Amanda who is a kind, talkative but annoying woman.  I feel like she is a typical woman who is from 19-20 centuries.  She is a low educated housewife, nagging murmuring all the time.  She is not mentally independent, so she gives her all love, hope, and a feeling of security to her family, to her two children.  Therefore, it makes me feel like Amanda's identity relies on her kids.  It is so common for parents to ask their children to follow their unfinished goals and force them to make up their regret.  Parents themselves regard this thought as love, and they think they are right.  Therefore, as Amanda, I think I am not annoying, even though I am annoying.  I would like to play Amanda as a straightforward person, who cannot hold their emotion so that she cannot stop talking.  I would also like to play Amanda as a little kid, who just pays attention to her own ideas.  She can feel that her kids do not like her, but she cannot tell why.  Therefore, she is a little bit frustrated and sad, but she will never disappointed to them, and she decide to keep on worrying and loving them by nagging.
          For literary analysis, I would like to focus on exploring Character's personality and staging skill.  I would like to analyze how Amanda's reaction and emotion will be when she hears some specific sentences or words.  In addition, I would also want to focus on speaking.  For example, what face Amanda will make when she says some words, what the words she will emphasize, and what different intonation she will have when she repeats same lines.  
  

Monday, January 8, 2018

Written Coursework Playlist

Overview:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD0xS5v4mfA

1.  Jim's playfulness with a huge self-esteem --> Jim and Laura's scene

2.  Laura's expectation and frustration --> Jim and Laura's scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKI49JfNPNc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtlGxSaUPwU

3.  Tom's restraint and breaking through -->  the first argument with his mom in the play + The scene that Tom is drunk talking with Laura + the last argument with his mom in the play.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvmEILdCAdU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIwqMMmyd-o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5e6Qlf-ehs

4.  Tom's worries and embarrassment for his sister --> conversation with Jim