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Saturday, October 06, 2012

ON COMEDY RELIEF: The Requirenment of Seriousness

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The actor's primary obligation as the character in the scene is NOT to be funny, but to be very, very serious; to thereby provide the te...
8 comments:
Friday, September 28, 2012

ON ACTING: COMEDY

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I am doing all comedy scenes this month in class. Hence: Comedy is different from drama--and yet they are the same. They are the same in t...
3 comments:
Saturday, September 22, 2012

ON ACTING: A reply to J

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REPLY TO A LETTER FROM J. (age 13) SEEKING ADVICE "J: "I am here in LA and you are in Pittsburg. I have great respect fo...

ON ACTING: I Return Less Certain

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I have just finally finished a memoir about the summer of 1957 when I hitchhiked around the country by thumb (causing my absence from this c...
Monday, July 16, 2012

ON ACTING: The Shared Experience

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At the core of acting are a series of transferred feelings: the actor's and the audience's. The actor transfers his/her feelings out...
Thursday, July 12, 2012

ON ACTING: General Thoughts

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There are three major performance chores for any exciting actor: to create a performance that is (1) emotional honest (the actor truly live...
1 comment:
Tuesday, July 10, 2012

ON ACTING: A life, onstage or off, without an obective, is a boring life.

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WHERE DID THE MONTH GO? I HOPE I HAD A HAPPY BRAIN VACATION!!! I DID. I HOPE YOU MISSED ME. Why is an objective (goal, intention, arc, aim...
Monday, June 11, 2012

ON ACTING: The Potential for Emotional Vulnerability

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Before a performance, the actor must create their potential for emotional vulnerability. That is, they must stimulate in their rehearsal the...
Saturday, June 09, 2012

ON ACTING: The Child Within You

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Children are a bundle of emotions, initially much freer with their feelings than their emotional adult counterparts. But, in order to pre...

ON ACTING: The Formula of Human Actions...and Good Acting

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The sequence of human actions (in reverse): Actions are fourth. Feelings are third. Sensory experience is second. Goals are primary: all lif...
Saturday, May 26, 2012

ON ACTING: Seeking Performance Complexity

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[The following is quoted from my book, "Acting is Living,"] Many years ago I had the good fortune to direct the brilliant actor ...
Thursday, May 17, 2012

ON ACTING: The Art of the Unknown

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I sometimes ask young actors how much they know of themselves; how much they understand how they will emotionally respond under the deepest ...
Tuesday, May 08, 2012

ON ACTING: a la Michael Jordan

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From a philosophy attributed to Michael Jordan, probably the greatest basketball player of all time, I pass on an operating modality to acto...
1 comment:
Saturday, May 05, 2012

ON ACTING: "Free Falling"

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I had been encouraging a new student actor to give up once performance begins conscious control of his rehearsed performance, and instead to...
Tuesday, May 01, 2012

ON ACTING: The First Time

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An actor's analysis of a scene, as well as any subsequent rehearsal and/or performance, must always be seen by the actor as only a worki...
Saturday, April 28, 2012

ON ACTING: The Preparation Technique of "Prior History"

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To encourage and facilitate more emotional openness and complexity in an actor-as-character, actors sometimes are asked in their rehearsal t...
Friday, April 27, 2012

ON ACTING: "Edginess"

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The actor had given a performance in class the night before, and he felt he had not tapped into the full richness of his own ability. It lac...
Wednesday, April 25, 2012

ON ACTING: The Subjective Experience of Character Analysis

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Actors often say, when analyzing any scene or script: “Well…my character is ‘blah, blah, blah….” I generally quickly interrupt them: “What ...
2 comments:
Thursday, April 19, 2012

On a Personal Note: Warming a Teacher's and Writer's Heart

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I want to share with the reader a lovely letter I received this week from a student. It warmed my heart. It reminded me of the core joy in t...
Monday, April 16, 2012

ON ACTING: Properly Increasing Energy in a Scene

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The student saw a tape of his performance and said of his efforts: "I was flat; I need more energy." So he proceeded to increase h...
3 comments: