B45 EXAM EARLY

B43-1   Sec. 20

In explaining the following statements, use examples of acting you have seen in U.T., W.T. or the commercial theatre.  Be explicit in your analysis of this acting.

1.  “Acting is re-acting.”

2.  “an actor acts with all that he is as a person.”

3.  “Acting is presenting character through behavior patterns which illuminate the character in given situations.”

With regard to an attempt to use sense memory in an acting assignment, a student says:  “I could recall the hurt and disappointment I suffered.  However, I could not recall the incident.”  What would be your advice to this actor?

B43 EXAM: END OF FIRST QUARTER

EXAMINATION   B43 -1

I.  Next quarter we study the creative aspect of acting.  Discuss our work this quarter as preparation for the creative process.

II.  Discuss this quarter’s work as preparation for character study.

III.  Criticize constructively, in terms of stimulus-response the work of one person in U.T. (University Theatre) or W.T. (Workshop Theatre) productions.

NEXT QUARTER:

In preparation for the “vicarious” assignment, select a novel (or biography) which is of high order in portrayal and development of character.

EXAMPLES:  Doctor Zhivago, Madame Bovary, Grapes of Wrath, Brothers Karamozov, Anna Karenina, Of Human Bondage.

If possible, get it approved before the holidays and start reading it.

A B43-3 EXAM JUNE, 1960

I. Explain, discuss, illustrate this basic principle:

You must imagine some basis for the words given as a justification for saying them.  You must moreover make for yourself a clear picture of what your imagination suggests. . . You hae to invent a whole film of inner pictures, a running subtext consisting of settings and circumstances against which the words given you can be played out.   This is not done for the sake of realism per se, but because it is necessary for our own creative natures.  For them we must have truth, if only the truth of the imagination, in which they can believe.”  (Be sure you have dealt with every emphasized idea.)

II.  Explain and give a specific remedy for:

1.  Acting an emotion.

2.  Playing an attitude

III.  Explain and illustrate these principles.

1.  See to it that the object of your attention (the person addressed) not only hears and understands the meaning of your words, but that he also sees what you see in his mind’s eye while you are speaking to him. . . action -- real productive action -- is the result.

2.  The lines of a part soon wear out from repetition.  But the visual images on the contrary become stronger and more extensive the oftener they are repeated.  Imagination (creative, not dreaming) does not rest; it forever adds new touches to fill out and enliven this inner moving picture film.

3.  The establishment of this habit requires long and systematic work.

TRANSFERENCE OF EMOTION/THOUGHT

Drama IS transfer.  One character plays upon another, his emotion transfers to another, changes another.  A factor of environment plays upon a person or upon a people -- they change:  they are exhilarated, depressed, made belligerent, passive, etc.  Human forces play upon each other -- natural forces play upon human equalling drama.  Minds play upon each other: irritate, inspire, defeat, control.  Joan wins the support of the Squire, the Dauphine -- how?  Transfers.  Iago destroys Othello -- how: planting of ideas, transfers.

ASSIGNMENTS:

2 people: A and B.

Create situations in which A is angry, jealous, depressed, afraid, happy, indignant.  B is uninvolved or is rational, or passive, logical.  One plays upon the other until A’s emotion has transferred to B or B’s balance has prevailed over A’s passion.  A must have cause for the emotion: the motivation that drives him to express it must be strong, the situation must be real, set up the physical elements of the situation, use the properties required.  Remember that emotion is total response of the physical organism.  Emotion is physical, it is communicated through physical activity or lack of activity.  And there is no communication, no transfer completed until eyes have met.

For instance:  A, an actor, is jealous of the success of another actor, C.  He wants to infect B with the same jealousy -- the scene is the dressing room after a rehearsal.  B is seated, looking the mirror, ready to take off make-up.  He studies his eyebrow line, wonders if he should narrow it tomorrow night.  A comes in slowly, too slowly, walks to his chair, stands there looking at B as though thinking, “How can you be so calm?”  B sees him in the mirror, grins, says “good show” while he squints at his eyebrow.  A drops into his chair, just sits, dully says,  “What do you mean, good show?”  Etc.  Play it to the climax when B has to say “you’re crazy” and walk out, or he too wants to destroy C.

or

A is indignant with a commonly expressed idea that all theatre students are neurotics.  B hasn’t even thought of such an idea -- doesn’t know it exists.  They are having coffee in The Grill.  A obviously changes his position at the table, turning his back on a group he has been facing.  B -- sugaring his coffee, says, “Light bother you?” -- etc.

OBJECTIVES:

Learn what transfers are.

How they happen.

Play moment by moment.

Play to each other in response to each other.

Reconize climaxes -- the exact moment of transfer, of change.

When are words inevitable.

When are they unnecessary.

Most transfers occur during arrests (SLAP), they follow a success of realizations: idea, go home, are accepted, rejected, discarded, laughed at -- they hurt, please, etc.

ACTOR'S RECALL

I suggested as a basis for characterization that Marvin draw on a personal experience.  I failed -- Marvin tried to act a memory.  You cannot act a memory.  You can only create a result with mind and emotion if you receive that experience.  

How do you start that re-living only by creating through recall every significant stimuli in that given situation.  I want to relive an experience which made me taste a defeat that made me need desperately to get drunk enough to stop suffering.  (My method of escape from suffering is not drink, but that does not matter -- the need for escape is the same.)  I recall: I sat down on a rough textured Victorian divan -- in the corner of the divan -- my fingers touched the rough texture of the seat as my left hand dropped at my side -- my bare right arm felt that rough texture as my arm fell on the arm of the settee.  I rubbed this texture not because I liked it but because the unpleasant friction made me feel -- in my fingers -- a sense of life, of living as against a chill within me, a silence within me that was a kind of death -- except for those fingers rubbing, I felt frozen.  I sat without moving, almost without breathing.  My eyes were wide-open, looking at a face opposite me -- the smiling, flabby face of a big man sitting at a big dark bare desk. His pudgy fingers were rubbing the bare wood.  I saw his greying, wavy hair.  I even thought “handsome head of hair.”  In response I saw small smiling jelly-like eyes looking straight into my staring ones.  I heard a smooth velvet low voice with cultivated modulations saying, almost caressing,  “But it is not our function to be psychiatrists,”  I felt strangled, I could not breathe, I felt that rough texture as I dug my fingers into the arm, I had to look away -- to escape with eyes at least out the window.  I saw feathery foliage on a tree -- I concentrated with all my will on foliage so that I would not scream.  I listened deliberately to sounds -- a girl’s laugh like Betty Cosman’s, clear and bright, and sudden footsteps outside -- a typewriter I made myself aware of and then I heard my own voice, level and even and quiet and toneless:  “But he tried to kill himself last night.”  I skip next to the moment I felt a doorknob in my hand, a safety lock I had to pull, the weight of the door.  I felt my feet walking.

I write this only to show you how an experience is relived only by recreating every stimulus -- as I look back now at the preceding page, I see a change in my writing.  Merely to remember that you were sad, happy, hurt, gay -- such memory is no use to the actor.  If that is the extent of your recall, it may be one more reason to question whether you are an actor -- an actor has the capacity to re-live, re-experience, re-spond to the stimuli that memory evolves.  If I can relive the experience I have told,  I will not only know what Jamie experiences, I will experience it.  I will have to escape in drink what he has to escape.  

If you have had nothing similar in your experience -- is not that another admission that you are dead and thus not capable of being an actor?  Because an actor sees more sharply, hears more clearly, touches, smells, kinesthetically responds.  His memories are more vivid, more living, more quickly and fully touched off when needed.  Are you alive?  Is so, why couldn’t you in “Henry IV” create a country torn by civil war?  Why in workshop must your director do all the creative work of thinking and feeling and imagining and responding?  Why can’t you create realities?  Why don’t your Saint Joan’s feel the mould of France as they walk, why don’t they see the sky over France, why don’t they see the soldiers of France sleeping, gambling, deserting?  Why?  Why?  Have James and Edwin heard, seen the sea?  Have they seen, heard their father?  Have they actually watched their mother’s hands, seen her eyes?  Has Kowalski seen the dives of N.Orleans?  Has he eaten steak half-raw?  What is reality?  How does the actor creatie it?

NATIONALITY

Ibsen’s themes are universal, his people are Norwegians: through them we see the universal, we make the application.  So with Chekhov: his people are Russian, we see their counterparts, their unproductivity in our South, in our selves.  The actors must create Norwegians, Russians, etc.  To turn them into contemporary Americans violates the structure of the play, its cadences, its rhythms, its organic whole and therefore study national traits and their origins in the land itself.  The Scotsman is economical in speech, in movement, in emotion, in business because he learned to be so from conflict with a soil, not too productive -- a matter of self-preservation.  The Norwegians comes of Viking stock -- Each land produced its own mythology -- leprechauns, trolls, women-in-green, Valkyries, etc.  Predominant religions developed.

Occupational trends, art trends vary -- why are the emotional French devotees of the classic form? -- and the English produced Shakespeare.  What vocal, physical patterns develop from this natural environment?  What thought and emotional patterns?  to the French cooking is an art and so one gies a meal full attention, one savours food, recognizes seasoning -- one does not discuss business over food nor make love etc.  Mking love has its place, sex is part of life, given its proper place, etc.  Study traits, attitudes, of other countries.

THE AGE IN WHICH ONE LIVES AS A DETERMINING FACTOR IN CHARACTERIZATION

Man thinks, invents, loves, suffers, prays, admires with his brain and with his whole organism  Every love, hate, fear, when it becomes habitual is capable of starting organic changes, even diseases.  Man is indelibly marked by prolonged and intense mental effort.  These statements apply to poeple in all ages.  It is the behavior of Edwardian men, modern men: how do they differ and why -- Ask questions such as the following.  All will not necessrily apply to the character you are studyng.  Having answered the question, ask how thought, emotions and physical characteristics are determined and expressed.

The spirit of the period: was it optimistic?  Adventurous?  Defeated?  Realistic?  Innocent?  Sophisticated?  Same?  Lusty?  Puritanical? Etc. Etc.

The occupations of the time -- the sports and amusements -- illuninating scrolls?  Puppet shows?  Card games?  Hunting?

The dress of the period and accessories -- effect on movement -- jewels?  Headdresses?  Fans?  Swords?  Handkerchiefs?

Music and dance of the period -- Romeo and Juliet should dance the Pavanne -- the freedom and grace of the movement are an accompaniement to the thoughts, to the words.  The people of Chekhov must be able to waltz and to talk easily, “naturally”, as they dance.

Political views of the period: Revolutionary?  Liberal?  Conservative?  Intrigues?  How did they affect lives?  Behavior.

Art, Literature:  Important?  Subsidiary?  Conservative?  Avante garde?

Religion: a dominant influence?

In brief, what are the dominant influences of the er.  Did your character go with the current?  Adjust?  Fight?  Lead?  Follow?  Accept?  Reject?  To what extent?

What were the resulting attitudes toward self?  Society?  -- we become what we do.  If a social mask is worn long enough it hardens into a permanent cast of reality.  Our character consists of the way we act and react when with other people.  Discover how the times in which people lived determiined the masks they assumed, or did not assume.

Improv until the element of the worl in which these peple lived becomes real enough to evoke responses.

An Elizabethan bear-baiting.

A Victorian ball or tea, or counting house.

A house party of any era.

What subtexts evolved?  What hehavior patterns expressed them?