Respect for acting pdf

PDF Online. Lewis PDF Online. John PDF Online. Ghiglieri, Thomas M. Myers PDF Online. Free Download Pajama Time! Williams PDF Online. Butler PDF Online. Lenzen PDF Online. Lansdale PDF Online. Bigner, Clara J. Gerhardt PDF Online. Mueller PDF Online. Reynolds PDF Online. Hammer, Stephen J. You should have found and filed away many, many specific objects, one of which you will now connect and make synonymous with the event, the person, or the object of your stage life to trigger the response you need.

As for questioning the logic of the object you use from your own experience to take the place of the one you need on stage, let me give an example especially for the literalminded student, which, I assure you, is not intended to be facetious. Suppose you are working on Uncle Vanya, and you need a big emotional response for the moment when Uncle Vanya surprises Yelena in the arms of Astrov, a moment when rejection and a sense of loss storm in on him.

After all, all of our emotional reactions are based on a kind of pile up from our past. I must warn you, at this point, to avoid the examination of any past experience which you have never talked about or wanted to talk about. Here you will be on dangerous ground because you will not know what can happen to you, and without an understanding or a degree of objectivity to the experience it is useless to you artistically. There are teachers who actually force actors into dealing with something buried their response to the death of a parent, 50 the actor or the trauma of a bad accident.

What results is hysteria or worse, and is, in my opinion, anti-art. We are not pursuing psychotherapy. If you feel mentally sick or disturbed and in need of it, by all means go to a trained doctor or therapist, but not to an acting teacher. When I say that you must have distance from the experience you wish to use as an actor, I am not referring to time, but to understanding. In , I had an experience with the death of someone I loved deeply which I still cannot fully cope with or discuss, and therefore I cannot use as an actress.

Yet, I have also had an experience in the morning which I was able to digest and put to use by evening. Actions themselves, verbal and physical, can generate strong emotions and can sometimes be as stimulating to an emotional release as any remembered inner object. The simple act of banging my fist on the table can bring about a feeling of rage. A logical reason or motivation for doing so can load the action for me. Motivated pleading with someone for forgiveness, and sending a verbal or physical action of begging, stroking or clutching may produce a waterfall of tears.

The act of tickling someone gently can make me join in a fit of giggles. When you claim that an emotion or a recalled object is wearing out for you by repetition, that it has lost freshness, you are failing technically because of a number of possible reasons: emotional memory 51 1. You are stopping to demand that you feel, because you have not made your object synonymous with the one on stage. You are anticipating how or at what second the emotion should manifest itself.

You have dwelt on the emotion for its own sake, rather than for furthering your stage action. You are weighing the degree of intensity of previous use of the emotional experience. You are fearful that the emotion will elude you, etc. If we as actors have any occupational hazards, hypochondria is perhaps one of them. Most of us are interested in our sensations, and examine and discuss them and on occasion make more of them than may be normal for a nonactor. Some actors are so highly sensitized and suggestible that a mere conversation about a pain, a chill or an itch will convince them that they are similarly afflicted.

Those actors are the exceptions. Most of us have to learn a correct technique for producing sensations so that they will be readily available to us on stage.

Since the body has an innate sense of truth, we must learn some physiological facts to help us avoid the violation of the physical truth. Sometimes, by a mere incorrect bodily adjustment we can shatter our faith in a whole 52 sense memory 53 sequence of our stage existence. It always irritates me when a director or teacher or fellow actor commands me to relax, or concentrate, or use my imagination when my failure in these areas springs from a lack of understanding of the given task.

I will fight for concentration as my mind races to inconsequentials because no one has told me on what to concentrate, and my imagination fails me completely in the premise of sleeping or waking because no one has told me down what paths to send it. To do this, settle your body snugly into the bed, concentrating on only one area—the shoulders, or the hips, or the feet, for example.

Now, close your eyes and center them straight ahead under your eyelids which is the true sleep position not downward the way they usually are positioned when we first close our eyes.

Then direct your inner attention to an abstract object not connected with the given circumstances of the play— a leaf, a cloud, a wave. Now, direct your inner attention from the abstract object to something in the given circumstances—What time is it? Have I overslept? What must I 54 the actor do today?

Then open your eyes, sit up and pursue your objective. Your eyes will feel heavy, your body slowed down as if after a deep sleep, and by reflex your entire behavior will be influenced for the ensuing activities.

If you are supposed to yawn, you must learn that the physical reason for yawning is a need for oxygen in the brain. Most of you open your mouths wide and exhale, and then jump to another action because it felt so peculiar. Instead, you should inhale deeply as you push your jaw down and back until the mouth opens, and you continue to pull the air deeply into your lungs before forcing it up into your head as you exhale. You can create a yawn at will in this way so that your eyes may even water.

I used to think this occurred because I was trying to see better in the dark. Then I realized the converse was true: eye perception was deadened even more by this muscular expansion than by the darkness, but my sense of touch and sense of sound were heightened.

Concentration was focused on the feet, the fingers and the ears. Experiment with this and you will discover that through the one correct adjustment of the eyes you can actually believe that it is dark.

Your hands and feet will truly grope for a path through the furniture, and there will be no embarrassing indication of stumbling around. Or sometimes he waits and is amazed sense memory 55 when, by accident, something does happen.

If you are supposed to be hot, you must first ask yourself where on your body you are the hottest. Localize one area; for example, under the arms. Remember a sensation of stickiness, of perspiration trickling down, and then search for what you do to alleviate this sensation. Raise your arm slightly, see if you can pull your shirt or blouse sleeve away from the underarm to let in a little air.

In that moment of adjustment, or attempt to overcome the heat, you will have a sensation of heat. The rest of the body will feel hot, too. You are to be cold. Do not think cold all over. Localize one area you remember most vividly; for instance, a draft on the back of your neck.

Try to recall the sensation and then immediately hunch up your shoulders and stiffen your back a little, even make yourself shiver if you like, and you will have a sensation of cold.

We often shiver on purpose, not only involuntarily, because shivering increases the circulation. The body will respond to the point where you may end up hopping from foot to foot and rubbing your hands in an effort to get warm although it might actually be a very warm day. Fatigue is a condition called for in endless scenes. How often have you seen the entire action dissipated and out of focus because the actor was dragging about and generally trying to feel tired all over? There are so many varieties of fatigue.

Ask yourself why you are tired, and where. Suppose you have been typing for hours. There is fatigue and tension in your back, across your shoulder blades.

Now get up and stretch your back, put your head back and try to relax the shoulder muscles. You will feel exhausted. Or remember your fatigue on a hot day in August when you walked for hours in thin-soled shoes, and your feet were hot and sore and more tired than the rest of your body. Try to walk gently on your heels to alleviate the soreness and burning under the balls of your feet. Your whole 56 the actor body will follow suit and be accompanied by a strong sensation of tiredness.

I am emphasizing the adjustments to overcoming the sensations because I believe that the sensation occurs most fully at the moment when we are occupied with the attempt to overcome it, not when we wait for it while trying only to imagine and remember it. Nor do I mean that you should jump to an outer indication of the adjustment without faith in the cause, or that you should concern yourself with a desire to show that you have the sensation.

If on the street you see people without knowing the circumstances of their lives, it may look to you as though the person with a headache is tired, or that the person who has a headache is hot, or that someone with a backache is chilly. However, in a play your conditions are backed up by the playwright and other actors; your headache will be referred to, the heat will be shared by others, the nausea will make you ask for a doctor, etc.

The concern for showing the condition must lead to indication and falseness. If you require a cough, find the exact spot in your throat where you remember a tickle or scratch, and you must cough to relieve it. If you want a head cold, a stopped-up nose, localize the sense of swelling in the uvula the soft lobe hanging down at the back of your soft palate and try to swallow as you contract the uvula. Sud- sense memory 57 denly, your nose will feel stuffy, and if you blow it you might even produce mucus.

For nausea, pinpoint the queasiness of the stomach, inflate your cheeks slightly, wait for saliva to gather. For headaches, recall a specific one in a specific spot. For example, directly over the right eye. What kind? What can you do to ease it? Slightly push into it? Rise above it? Pull back out of it? These are tiny adjustments, but after stimulating the imagination to the remembered feeling, they will bring it into the present for you.

For a burn, recall the thin, tight feel of the skin on your fingertip, and how it aches. Perhaps it is because in this state, with its endless variations from slightly tipsy, to staggering, to thick speech, we have the hardest time remembering.

To find it specifically entails the same steps you have used in the search for other physical sensations. First, localize the most suggestible area of your body, give in to it, and then attempt to overcome it. In my case, it is wobbly knees, a loose, weakened condition which I attempt to correct by straightening and strengthening the knees.

The other sensations of dizziness, lack of eye-and-manual focus seem to follow. My tongue seems fat and swollen so that I have a wild need to overarticulate. When I am tipsy it usually manifests itself in a psychological need to talk too much, and an assumption that everyone is interested in anything I have to say. This technique—recalling a localized sensation and finding a physical adjustment to alleviate it—is applicable to any condition you may be called upon to play. The accumulation of a lifetime of sensations should be sufficient with our newly acquired technique to serve us for any condition or combination of conditions demanded by the playwright.

If I were dying! If I were in labor! I trust that you now have sufficient examples to help you find your way for any sensory problem which might arise for you. Let me warn you of some common errors and misunderstandings in the use of sense memory. The sensations of heat, cold, headache, drunkenness, nausea, and illness, etc. The discovery of the sensations and how they influence you is there to condition your actions truthfully in the scene, and with sensory accuracy and faith, but it is not the final aim just to be cold or have that headache on stage.

Furthermore, you are dictating the sensations—they are not dictating you. You will have the sensations to further the actions but not so that they will take over and put you out of control.

In line with this, let me state that if a dangerous or unpleasant sensory condition exists for you in your real life, at the same time that your character should have it on stage, avoid it at all costs. If you are really nauseated at the time of having to be nauseated in your stage life, simply avoid the condition or the curtain may have to be rung down.

If you really have a headache over your right eye, work for a headache at the back of your head, otherwise the real headache may take over and put you out of control, unable to fulfill your stage life. In summation, let me state the opinion that a correctly functioning actor should, ideally, be the healthiest, least neurotic creature on earth, since he is putting his emotional and sensory life to use by expressing it for an artistic purpose. If he is employed in the theater, he has an opportunity of making use of his anxieties, hostilities, pent up tenderness through an artistic expression.

I think that perhaps the people who call us neurotic or vain or exhibitionistic are unaware how many talented actors are that way only because they are without work opportunities, and therefore release their need for expression in alcohol or unreasonable behavior—or perhaps these people are jealous that when we do function we can do what they only dream of doing.

The daily hue and cry about an inability of human beings to communicate with each other means that not only do we not reach out to touch, but that we do not contact each other visually or auditorially.

Our perceptions are dulled. Full human contact employs all the senses, the more intense they are, the more highly they are developed, the more available is the potential of the actor—his talent. As I have said before, this area of high sensitivity is where true talent lies, and what we make of this sensitivity determines whether or not we can call ourselves artists. A great danger is to take the five senses for granted. Most people do. Once you become aware that the sources which move in on you when you truly touch, taste, smell, 60 the five senses 61 see and hear are endless, you must also realize that selfinvolvement deadens the senses, and vanity slaughters them until you end up playing alone—and meaninglessly.

There is an amusing story about John Barrymore and the time he was acting with his brother Lionel, whom he adored. Whenever Lionel came near him on stage, John was filled with loathing. I am not recommending this going to an outer reality for help when other substitutions fail, but am simply making an example of the power of smell as a stimulant.

A particular odor of leather can send me to a shop on a quaint street in the Tyrol, and I feel the same excitement and romance as when I was there. Think how the scent of cologne or soap can affect you if it comes at you from someone you love. Think how that same scent will affect you by association as it wafts toward you from a casual passerby; how the smell and sound of sizzling bacon can produce a feeling of well-being. An unpleasant smell can be just as suggestive psychologically.

Liquor should suffice as an example. If your taste buds were alert when you took a slug of bourbon or brandy you will recall what happened to your mouth and throat and stomach. If so, you will be able to endow that slug of colored water on stage with the same properties. If I have to peel and chop an onion on stage, I will probably use an apple or a potato since the real onion might 62 the actor take over and put me out of control.

Suppose I have to bite into the onion or suck on a lemon. I want a powerful sense of taste so that when I substitute another object for them on stage I will have similar sensations and adjustments.

Explore the endless variations of a simple handshake: if you really make contact, if it is something other than a mechanical, social expression, whether you shake hands with a friend or an enemy, or if it is an introduction to an attractive member of the opposite sex. Alert yourself to the texture of the skin when you make contact with it, the warmth or coolness of the hand, the dryness or dampness, the hardness or softness of the skin, the pressure or the lack of it in the grip.

Start to become more aware of texture, not only of the flesh but of cloth, wood, silver, glass—anything you contact physically, pleasant or otherwise, during the course of your day.

Few people are lucky enough to have all five senses developed with equal intensity, but the actor must hope and pray and work for maximum visual and auditory receiving. The visual contact we make with another human being or with something in nature can act on us like a stroke of lightning if we really open ourselves up to it. If you really see a delicate white birch or a giant redwood tree you might weep.

If you really look at a wave breaking on the shore with the sunlight shining through its crest and its foam, or a black cloud overtaking a little puffy white one, your heart may begin to pound. It is the east, and Juliet is the sun! To really receive the nuance of verbal action and tone of voice rather than merely factually clicking it off with our auditory sense makes the difference between a fine actor and a hack.

Many of you make some common technical errors in looking and listening. Words are sent actively with content. You must listen for the intent of the words in order to receive them, giving the words meaning not only from their intention, but from your own point of view and expectation. If I propound a long theory on acting and I am lucky, you will really hear about three-quarters of it.

You will be weighing what you hear against what you already know or think you know, and your attention will often pursue your own paths, formulating the ideas in your own way.

So, on stage, if you particularize the content and intent of what is being sent, and hear that under the given circumstances, listening should no longer be a problem for you. Our eyes, as well as our ears, evaluate and interpret. We interpret content and intention from an expression or movement which the action has given to the words. The same words sent with a grin and a pat on the back might send me into 64 the actor gales of laughter, depending on who has done what to me.

Looking, as well as listening, hinges on needs. Seeing is also balanced against expectations, immediate needs, and your past knowledge of the object. What we see in them at these moments conditions how we continue our tale. In between these moments of eye contact, we contact the inner objects we are dealing with, and our outer, secondary focus is on something inconsequential in the place.

Listening and looking are certainly not mechanical processes, but are linked to the center of our psychological and physical being. Simulated looking and listening must produce bad acting.

Because of the enormous importance of the five senses, there should be continuous work on heightening and sharpening them. Anything dormant which you might awaken through daily concentrated attention to your senses will add to your growth as an actor. Unclutter yourselves. Open yourselves up to your fullest capacity—to give meaning to what you receive when you see, when you hear, when you taste, when you smell, when you touch. The audience bursts into laughter.

Such disasters have happened to us all. If you attempt to verbalize all of the things you thought about in the seconds that it took from the flick of the switch to the laughter of the audience, it would probably take you half an hour.

Thought moves with such lightning rapidity that any attempt to slow it down is inaccurate, and so must bring about false behavior on stage. I have often seen an actor sitting on stage, strangely knotted with tension, making faces—furrowing his brow, then smiling, then making a pensive expression.

Real thinking precedes, is accompanied by, and follows action. Real thinking is active. I sit down, not in order to think, but to rest.

I rise to get a glass of water, and walk to my desk to pick up a letter. While I sit, rise or walk, I am thinking. If I put on my coat before going to market, I am not thinking only of my coat unless it is giving me a problem. My thoughts spring from the contact with these inner objects things or people not present in the room only as images in the mind , and bring about an inner action.

Inwardly contacting the grocery list may produce thought about a can of imported French beans and the shelf on which it rests at the supermarket. The beans may lead me to consider how often they are sold out and a possible argument with the manager of the store, or weighing the idea of going to a more expensive store where these beans are more readily available.

Contacting the laundryman can produce a remembered event about my last argument with him over the strength of the bleach, and consideration of how I will deal with him today. The friend who is coming to dinner may produce speculation about the new playwright he is bringing with him this evening. In other words, by contacting these inner objects—not present in the room—my thoughts flow forward quickly. Meanwhile the physical task of putting on my coat is completed, having been inadvertently influenced by my thoughts.

I may have yanked at a button when my inner attention went to the laundryman. He is taking himself out of the action— we actors are involved in it. To act is to do, not to think. Thoughts and objects which intrude on the concentration on your stage life, those which make for unwanted distractions, most often come from the havoc of your daily private life.

A desire for success can move in on you. An agent? Someone you love? A critic? A rival? All such destructive distractions should be dumped at the stage door before you enter your dressing room. It must be clear to you now that if any inner object in the play is not real to you, it will have no consequence in producing genuine thought.

It will be a dead-end object. Obviously, the thinking process which accompanies the immediate give-and-take with another character on stage, or the thoughts connected to direct action of the play, are easily triggered by the partner, the event itself, and by your sensory awareness.

The thoughts are anchored to the events and to the other characters. Not only must these people and events and the things which tangibly surround you be clothed in reality for you by particularization and substitution, but everything that has happened, what you expect to happen, and what is happening connected with the surrounding circumstances as well. The larger your selection of inner objects within these areas, the more food you will have for forward-moving thought and action. You cannot dictate the order of your thoughts or attempt to pigeonhole them in compartments.

You were occupied and involved with another character in the play, and unaware of your body in any sense except that you believed you were there. Then you rose and stood for a while as the conversation continued. Suddenly, the very act of standing became awkward. You became aware of your hands as unnecessary appendages. Your legs and feet tensed up, you lost a sense of character and place, and you became an exposed actor on stage, not a human being in a room.

Then, you protected yourself, attempting to regain composure by assuming a stance—a stage pose. This protective pose was probably borrowed from your earliest and most inept stage experience. If the rise from the sofa had been connected with the need of the given circumstances let us say that you rise to get a drink for your friend, to make him feel more at home and welcome, and that on your way to the bar a piece of astounding news has arrested you in a standing position while your attention is riveted to the subject, and that only when the attention waned did you continue to the bar , the standing would be an involving and simple task releasing the body from the sense of being hung up.

Each movement of true wandering has destination, is focused on a relevant object that we deal with in order to further the character and the story. Suppose that you are alone at home and waiting for a telephone call or a visit from a friend bringing news of a job. You may reject the idea and take it out on the phone by giving it a little push. You cross to the liquor cabinet and actually pick up a glass which you then quickly replace because you have your character has a drinking problem.

The expected friend is always criticizing your untidiness so you cross to the armchair to rub a grease spot on the upholstery. You cross to a wall mirror and check your hairdo. In life, your wanderings may seem to lead you to irrelevant objects. On stage, where every second counts, the objects should be selected and dealt with to reveal something new about the character or the circumstances, or both.

The seemingly illogical objects you have contacted in a strange order must be substantiated by the logic of the play. You are helped in physical reality by the very clothes you choose to wear.

Your psychological state of being, your sense of self, as well as the physical manifestation of it, is strongly influenced by what you wear, even in a simple walk down the street to the corner drugstore to buy a tube of toothpaste.

You must make your clothing particular in likes, dislikes, appearance—and with sensory awareness. First assume you are dressed in tight blue jeans, a long Sloppy Joe sweater, and worn sneakers.

Now, assume the same destination and identical circumstances of weather, time of day, preceding and upcoming events, only you are wearing a new, classic suit, elegant shoes, fancy kid gloves, and a bright silk scarf around your neck. Then try changing only one thing in the latter example—you think your slightly soiled slip is showing.

See how these elements change your entire psychological state of being, and consequently the physical manifestations of a simple walk down the street. Clothing so influences my character, is so crucial to me, that I would find it as impossible to come to a rehearsal for Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire dressed in slacks and sneakers as it would be for me to work on Saint Joan in a frilly chiffon dress and high-heeled shoes. I could barely get the words out of my mouth sitting around a rehearsal table at a reading.

And so is the animation of the words of the character. They are the messenger of my wishes. The action of the words, how I will send them, for what purpose and to whom, under what circumstances, hinges solely on what I want or need at the moment.

This is what must make the words inevitable for my character. The errors can arise even before rehearsals have begun.

The misinformed, diligent actor, if he has time, will sometimes memorize the words and mechanize the inflections before he comes to the first reading of the play. This can be fatal to his final performance. He can no more change it than he could change arbitrary and unjustified stage blocking which had been arrived at and set for quick convenience. We must learn what our character wants, from whom and under what circumstances, if we are to be propelled into genuine verbal action.

Her principal asset in this treatment is hertruly significant imagination. But within it, Miss Hagen tells the young actor about as much ascan be conveyed in print of his craft. Anyone with just a casual interest in thetheater should also enjoy its behind-the-scenes flavor. Add to cart.

The Actor. Emotional Memory. Sense Memory. The Five Senses. The legendary acting coach shares his inspirational philosophy and effective techniques--including case studies, exercises, and professional insights--designed to help actors connect personally with a script, develop a character from the inside out, overcome fear and inhibitions, hone technical skills, and more. A vital companion for actors in rehearsal - a thesaurus of action-words to revitalise performance, with a foreword by Terry Johnson.

Finding the right action is an essential part of the process of preparation for the actor. The method of 'actioning' is widely used in rehearsal rooms, but has never before been set.

This simple and essential book about the craft of acting describes a technique developed and refined by the authors, all of them young actors, in their work with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet, actor W. Macy, and director Gregory Mosher. A Practical Handbook for the Actor is written for any actor who has ever experienced the frustrations of acting classes that lacked clarity and objectivity, and that failed to provide a dependable set of tools.

An actor's job, the.