Blog Presentations



Some of the pointers I took out of last weeks presentations on famous acting teachers will definitely benefit me in my own acting project. The scene I will be doing is from The Glass Menagerie. Jasmine and I will be performing the dance scene between Jim and Laura. This scene needs to show true emotions, and motions for it to be played off as real. Our goal is to reenact the scene in a realistic way.

 The presentations delivered by my peers were concise, and got straight to the facts on each person they were doing. These famous teachers had very similar ultimate goals, but took different approaches of getting there. Vsevoled Meyerhold hated everything that was predictable. She wanted her actors to be spontaneous and respond the way they would in real life. Sanford Meisner believed his actors should use true emotion. His famous saying of "acting should be truthful in imaginary circumstances." really stood out to me. This means that even though acting is not real you should react to the lines the same way you would react to them in real life. This is also how you leave your mark on the piece. Lee Strasberg said to use past real life events to show true emotion in a scene. This technique allowed actors to think back on past events where they may have felt sad or happy to play that emotion in that scene. Needless to say, the old styles of exaggerated acting in theater was no longer expectable to the top teachers. This change from the old style to new should show its credit to Constantin Stanislavski. He was the one that started  “Authentic emotion” to make modern acting feel real.

If you watch TV today, most of all programs you will find are done will real emotion. From sitcoms, reality TV, and movies most will be done in modern style acting. Some of these teachers trained todays top actors and actresses, so it isn't shocking that their techniques rubbed off on each pupil. From watching each actor on TV, I sometimes think on how I can incorporate that same engaging feel of TV actually being reality into my own work.

I really like Lee Strasberg using past emotion to fuel real acting. I can definitely think of a time in my life where I was being supportive of someone who needed it. I can try and relive this feeling while playing Jim in the dance scene. Jim wants to make Laura feel self worth, and he does this through his words and actions. It is extremely important to do a good job showing this, because some teachers like Uta Hagen have a 6th sense for when a actor is just "going through the motions and lines". Each of these famous teachers had set rules that defined their teaching methods. Most were just to solidify their believes on how to reach the ultimate goal of true emotion acting.  If Jasmine and I can do our best to follow the rules established by the best acting teachers ever, I believe we can do a great job on our project,











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