by Alex Kuznetsov
(research reminders, authenticity enrichers,
reality gatherers)
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Acting as a
profession includes playwright, psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, psychologist,
artist, musician, dancer, mime, magician, director, photographer, healer etc.
1.
Actor/Hollywood type.
What type in Hollywood do I fit? ? Social type, psychological, physical, etc. -
rebellion lead, romantic lead, gangster, simpleton, villain, professor,
policeman, student, lawyer, truck driver, etc. From now on you have to learn to
understand your place in the whole picture. Who you are, what is your purpose
and what you are expected to bring to the whole picture?
2. Awareness
of Type casting. What are
your strong and weak sides, advantages and disadvantages
3. Awareness
of your strong and weak sides as a performer/actor. Work on accents, voices, and plastic
movements. Where you feel better in comedy, drama?
4. Observations
and imitation. Freedom
comes from knowing who you are, what you do and how you do it. Observe yourself
and the world around you every second of your life. Find analogue of every
character you are preparing in real life. Work on developing the best qualities
of a type that fit you the best: (emotional, social, psychological, presence,
physical, voice, manners, clothing, hair etc.) How to incorporate all your
observations into creating a powerful colorful character. Who is your favorite
actor? What do you love about him? What do you think and feel you can learn
from him? Observe the characters around you. They are everywhere –people,
animals, subjects, insects, buildings, etc. Be specific as much as you can.
There is no general policeman or waiter in general. More details the better.
5.
Be yourself no matter what they say. Get very personal in everything you do.
Everyday do your personal inventory. Understand what is happening in your body,
mind, and emotional life. Know yourself from A to Z, feel what you feel and
face it with open mind, then merge your full self into the character. Remember
every second of your life is unique, so honor yourself and your talent. Learn
not to be ashamed of what you are, but use everything you have to your
advantage. Audience want to explore YOUR personality through character and the
author’s words. All the material is written out of basic needs. Needs are
simple and universal. People are not. Characters are complex but you always
find their components. If you stay motivated from your need, you will
experience emotional spontaneity, live in the moment, and embrace your
originality, all within the dynamic of the scene. In all of our choices as
actors, what we’re searching fro and working towards is freedom. Not just
freedom of action, but freedom of thought, emotion, imagination, desire and
passion.
6. Voice,
physical body, imagination, creativity, musicality, sense of rhythm, sense of
harmony, sense of the whole
The goal of the
class is to concentrate students’ attention on finding their very own way of
expressing themselves: creating characters, conflicts, emotions, atmospheres,
images, metaphors etc. BEING EXTREMELY SELECTIVE. ("The talent is in the
choices." Robert De Niro).
Metaphorically speaking actors instead of developing their own methods
of expressing their ideas and feelings (due to the lack of time and process of
learning and education) are trying to put on somebody else’s hats and coats and
use them as their own without any adaptation.
Class is for
risk, expanding, exploring, learning…and then solidifying all the tools and
experiences together. Creating a personal laboratory.
Most of our
lives we are scared to allow ourselves to stop and experience the moment. We
are afraid to be late, to get a bad grade, because everybody else is ahead of
us, we are afraid to disappoint our professors, parents, girlfriend or
boyfriend, etc.
This class is to
be a place to be truly yourself and experience things the way you want.
It does not mean that the major focus of this class is the PROCESS. Process is very important. But lets concentrate on the result of being in the process and freeing ourselves from somebody else’s needs and expectations and focus on ours. In this class we don’t want to please nobody anymore, no parents, no teachers, no policeman, no government, NOBODY but YOURSELF. It’s working on developing the artist in you and being happy to create and be yourself. If you are not accepted in the market for a year or two, it won’t discourage you, because you have your necessary feedback from yourself.
There is only one
person in the world who knows how talented you are. It is YOU. Only you know
your criteria of art, performance, emotional life, commitment and involvement
in creating something totally new and marked with your individuality. Think of
WHAT NEW AND UNKNOWN YOU CAN BRING TO THE WORLD? WHAT'S YOUR PERSONAL
CONTRIBUTION TO THE HUMANITY?
Moment to moment, be in the space, change of attitude to space and people, energy, centers, psychological gestures.
TURN OFF INTELLECTUAL
THINKING (ALL THE THEORIES AND SYSTEMS) AND USE EMOTIONAL/IMAGINARY THINKING.
The energy we are
releasing to other is creativity, encouragement, and trust.
Trust is the most
important because the main focus of the class is to reveal ourselves, to open
up, to take all the calluses off and become emotionally and spiritually naked.
We don’t afraid to be funny, childish, silly, inappropriate, embarrassing,
criticized, failure, ridiculous, or helpless. We are exploring ourselves for
the sake of unveiling enormous energy and memory and there is no shame to
explore. In order to learn who, what, how and why you are, the way you are.
(Michael Douglas, actor’s studio). We are here to think positive and create
only positive energy and ideas.
-We learn by
failing. Failure is nothing more than the teacher who gives us the chance to
learn from our own experiences.
-We ourselves are
creations. We, in turn, are meant to continue Creativity by being Creative
ourselves.
-When we open
ourselves to creativity, we open ourselves to Life’s creativity within us and
our Lives.
This class is a
special place of safety, a place of growth.
Warming up.
1.
Physical body (Every exercise with body
starts with your imagination. It is very important not just move in certain way
but create in your mind atmosphere and circumstances that will force your to
move this very way. Audience senses your atmosphere and thus accepts your move
as a proper one.
a. Dance with all body, hands, legs, head etc.
Expressing yourself and the song. Dance with happy, angry, sad, challenging,
etc. Fantasy is the most important.
b. Balloon with entire body
c. Floating
d. Moving to certain point in most unusual way
e. Animals, walking on the moon, hurricane, frozen, ice, robot,
conveyor, fill the room with your presence, with your body, shrink to the mouse
f.
Working with
the subject (hat, scarf, fan, chair, hair, etc)
2.
Voice, Sound
a. Different
registers, breathing (Strelnikova)
Talking to each
other using a sentence (tongue twisters) using list of actions. Love,
questions, hate, inviting to date, to have sex, let’s have a drink, get out of
here, frustration
b. Create the list
of characters: people, animals, man-made-objects and play with their imaginary
voices. Try to find a specific voice, articulation, rhythm, and intonations of
all of them. Play imitating commercial announcer, sport reporter, bum,
politician, parent, homeless, etc.
c. Read the books
with a lot of dialogues out loud with all your voices
3.
Imitating
Just put the camera in your imagination in front of yourself
and capture your own life on film. Whatever you do, talk, listen, eat, think,
every second of your life. And after that try to understand where your emotions
and reaction, thoughts and attitudes are similar to the character and where
they are different. AND OF CAUSE WATCH OTHER PEOPLE WITH THE SAME CAMERA.
COLLECT THE IMAGES, EMOTIONS, AND REACTIONS. Create your own library.
a. Animals – (fish, fly, dogs, cats, pigs,
mouse) – characters of people (Pig in the City). Michael Chekhov approach.
b. People (learn a monologue and try to read it
in many different way as people you know (friends, relatives, film stars,
people in class, paintings).
c. Sound them, drum them, gesture them.
d. Subjects. Imitate sounds of the world around
you
e.
Imagination.
Practice thinking with your IMAGINATION, not only with your INTELLECT !!!!!!
Improvisations in any possible way.
f.
Fearless as a
lion, scared as a mouse, having a light movement of a spider, nervous as a cat,
lumbering as a bear, majestic as an ostrich, moving with the insinuating
composure of a tiger, light as a gazelle, sly as a fox, lazy as a whale,
possessed with the energetic playfulness of a dolphin or as fleeting as a
hummingbird or fly.
Actor’s job
is to reanimate the author’s writing. In order to do it, actor should dig in
the writing and find out all the information the writer was trying to put in
this scene. Actor should be able to uncover every bit using all tools he/she
has and understand the meaning and directions the writer is leading. All these
analysis are to help you navigate your performance. To get the job one needs
not only give a good performance but give remarkable performance and to stand
out from the crowd and being able to take the directions from director. For
example, when director/casting director ask you to speed it up, you should know
how to do it.
1. Analytical,
Logical. The right
course of creativeness operates from the text to the mind (those first readings
of the role and the absorbing of what the author presents); from the mind to the
proposed circumstances (the gleaning of the facts and what they imply to us
about the character); and from the proposed circumstances to the subtext, from
the subtext to feeling (emotions), from emotions to the objective/desire/will
and then to action. Simultaneously your mind and spirit produce all sorts of
images – physical, emotional, musical, speech, movements, etc.
2. Emotional. Everything we do is connected with our
emotional life. Acting is about being emotionally naked, open to life, event,
and people. Words/ Sounds may be reflected in the mirror of our emotional life.
Sometimes they are reflected in direct/straight way, some times – indirectly.
That is where SUBTEXT plays very important part.
3. Imagery, image analysis (These analysis gives the
artist/actor most fully completed and whole oriented image to copy) That’s why
if you have fully developed image of the character logic of the character and
the scene will come by itself. Michael Chekhov approach.
4. Montage, structure, form or composition. After reading the scene
(play, script) is very important to see the whole picture and get a sense of
composition or montage, how author creates and develops the story. The very
true actor’s target and point of focus is audience’s perception, its
intellectual and emotional/sensible spheres. Everything is connected and
everything is relative and consists of hieroglyphs. It means there is no
absolute thing. Everything is considered only in the composition with others. Beats
and blocking. It is very
important to remember that ACTING IS ACTUALLY REACTING to different stimuli and
when and how actor react to them. Listening and sensing are very important
skills.
5. What do you want to communicate to the
audience? And what would
it make an Oscar performance? Spice your performance to make it outstanding.
6. Style, genre, author.
7. Theater is a
very raw form of art. Every character of the play must be either visible,
audible or tactile.
1. Event. Life is a chain of events. In real life everything is connected to each other.
That is why it is very important to bring pre-event to the scene. Events (list
of events-before, now, after). Events. What happened before (back life or
prior-event),
happens now in the scene and what are consequences (how it effects everybody).
Every biography or news on TV, newspapers, phone conversations are about the
events. List two questions or first statements: who and what is happening. Acting
is about recreating the life of the human being in relative environment. So
first major goal of an actor is to recreate the event, then who is involved and
how.
2. Character. Who (the character) does What (the
overall scripted event), When (in what period of history, at what time
of year, month, day and hour), Where (in what country, state or
province, region, town, location), Why (the apparent reasons for doing
what is done) and How (the manner of doing).
3. While watching other actors or directors one
should pay attention on how he/she creates the image, character, emotion,
atmosphere in a very specific way.
4. Relationship. Every story is about some change, it
contains some dynamics in it. What is a relationship in the scene and how it
changes? Describe it. Is it mother and son, lovers, husband and wife,
businessmen, etc.
5. Control. Who is in control of this part of the scene
and where it changes?
6.
Beats. The things that happen to the character, and the actions
he/she takes in response. Also the thoughts and feelings, which dominate and cause
those actions, change from moment to moment. They help to focus the actor’s and
the character’s attention and feelings on the most important and most
productive concerns in all individual beats.
Scene analysis
1. Life
Objectives, Super Objective. Find Character’s life
objectives and super objective. What’s character’s ultimate goal in this scene
and his entire life.
2. Conflict.
THE CORE OF ANY FORM OF ART IS A CONFLICT. What
is the conflict, between what and whom, and how it is reflected in characters’
behavior, mez-en-scene, rhythm, etc.
3. Sing it and gesture it. To help to
understand the scene emotionally sing the scene with sounds, no words. Give an emotional
sound of character’s state in the beginning of the scene, during event, and
after the event.
4. Emotional graphic. It is very useful to use
the event in the scene. Describe in your words what is happening in the scene.
Start with the opposite to event.
5. After creating emotional graph find the
actions that reflect best these emotions. (Having a drink, cracking the
knuckles, cigarette, enfold the head, bite the nails, eating etc)
6. What kinds of your very own emotions are
produced by this scene (characters or events, atmosphere)? Be as specific and
as deep as possible. Bring to the stage as much as you can.
7. Find the words, phrase, sound, gesture or
something you love and enjoy very much and taste it, develop it and play with
it.
8. Feeling of the whole
1. What images are produced while reading the
scene – people, animals, objects, form, etc. Music of the scene, rhythm, color
of the scene
2. Feeling of the scene, atmosphere, style,
genre, etc.
3. Give to your speech a psychological gesture
and action. Work with your lines to produce the action verb, images, feelings,
and emotions.
Approaches
Internal and
external. Find yourself in the character and the character in yourself.
1. Way of thinking.
Logic, Subtext, background, upbringing, social
class, education etc.
Character Creating.
Details.
Remember every
character in the world history is alive inside you, in your conscience or
subconscience. You just need to open the curtain and develop them at your need.
Where am I alike the character and where am I different?
It is absolutely
necessary to use one own body, emotions, reaction, will, etc to create a
character. Don’t pain the character outside of yourself, pain it inside.
So it is always
safe to start with Stanislavski’s magic IF, “What would I do and how I would
behave if I was in this situation?”
Second step is
Vakhtangov formula: “What would make me feel and behave as the character does?”
Vakhtangov advanced
Stanislavski system by introducing style, form, expressiveness (individual
point of view).
Characterization
is both a process and a product.
It is a process in the sense that developing a character begins long before the
actor sets foot on the stage and continues through the final curtain and even
when audience goes home and digest and talk about the show. A character in a
play, like each of us, is constantly growing and changing in response to
his/her experiences-the people, places, things, and situations with which
he/she comes in contact.
Characterization is
a product in the sense that the character is essentially complete and fully
formed by the time the audience first sees the character. What remains to be
seen is the moment-to-moment development of the character in relation to the
development of the play.
Never play a
result only.
1.
Specific
personality traits which makes us individuals. They stem from the background of
our lives: social class, education, spirituality, family and personal
relationships. These influences uniquely determine how we see, hear, and
respond to life.
2. What is the character’s purpose for story
development.
3. What is the super objective or global
attitude/thought/feeling of the character that spice the rest of the actions
and objectives?
4. Center of the character, his dominant. What is the event and what is happening to
the characters during a scene?
5. Building the conflict through mez-en-scene.
6. Where character is “positive driven” and
where is “negative”
7. What is the neurosis-provoking moment (open
or hidden)
8. Inner and outer obstacles.
9. Behavior patterns
10. Survival skills and techniques
11. Conditioned response, emotional or psychological
reflexes. Character reflexology.
12. Separate inner life and outer life. If you
don’t have any words does not mean that you don’t do or feel anything. Inner
life can be very intense. Inner torments of overwhelming struggle. Where
unhappiness turns into pain, doubts or confusion into self-torture or
self-loathing, happiness into anguished ecstasy, shame into suicidal
self-abasement, anger into murderous hate and resentment into the rumbling of
an earthquake.
13. Props that can help you to open and display
the character or create the 3D image
14. Kinds of activities, props, schedules,
commonly used terms, practical wardrobe, preoccupations, daily “automatic role
behavior” items, inner language and thoughts
15. What’s the fixation of the character.
16. What is your NPM. (Neurosis-Provoking
Moment). Where is your irritability (раздражительные зоны), erogenous
17. Define the emotional, imagery goal you want
to reach in the certain parts of the scene.
18. Your attitude toward the world, another
character, props etc.
19. Your social,
emotional characteristics (masks, behavior, patterns etc) of the character.
Your personal investment.
20. Opposites.
21. Character Sounds, interjections (eh-he-he,
oh-ho-ho), coughing, laughing, etc.)
22. Gestures (calm hair, rubbing nose etc)
23.
Motivations.
Objectives. What motivates
human beings are their dreams. Dreams of love, dreams of fulfillment, dreams of
success, dreams of beauty and power. It’s what we wish would happen that makes
us do everything we do.
24.
Commercial
choices. Love, sex and humor. To make character commercial is to make him/her
recognizable. To make it commercial is to make it as much personal as
possible. Sense of ease, coolness.
Character
analysis
Guideposts
(not in the order of importance because it is individual)
1. Rate
2. Inflection
3. Pitch
4. Dynamics
5. Intonation
1. Relaxation
2. Concentration
3. Imagination
4. Improvisation
Viewpoints, perceptual landscape of the audience, and
the inner fields of focus of the performer.
1. Time
2. Space
3. Shape
4. Movement
5. Story
6. Emotion
7. Rhythm
8. Color
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
White: Purity,
unity, high spiritual devotion, ecstasy
Purple: Power,
greatness, honor, respect
Violet: Holiness,
humility, reverence, sublimity, beauty, high spirituality, healing, art,
mysticism
Blue: Truth, peace,
faith, religious worship, meditation, loyalty
Indigo:
Intelligence, integrity, mystery, deep concentration, self-understanding
Yellow:
Intellectual search, self discipline, desire for knowledge, laughter,
optimistic
Gold: High
spiritual calmness
Pink: Sympathy,
compassion, love, gentleness, sincerity, kindness, refinement
Orange:
Intelligence, learning, assurance, self-confidence, balance
Red: Strength,
respect, power, vitality, love, health
Green: Energy,
hope, balance, youth, health, success, pride
Lavender: High
spirituality
===
Brown: Avarice
Black: Depraved
Dark Green: Jealousy
Olive: Deceit
Dark Yellow:
Suspicion
Cloudy Red: Greed
Scarlet: Anger
Crimson:
Magenta
Umber
Silver
1. Relaxation. I am breathing. Feel every part of my body
and my body is not an obstacle to my mind, in harmony with my mind,
imagination. My voice is relaxed, deep and has full range. (Breathing, mouth,
tongue and physical exercises).
1. Awareness
and observation. I see people
and talk to people and I hear them. Communicating. If I am not able to
communicate to people in my character before the audition forget your character
and loose it completely. Then do the audition “I” in given circumstances.
2. Spontaneity. I employ and incorporate everything in the
room, what happened to me yesterday, today, at the moment of the audition as
the things that help me not blocking me. The more life and emotional, social,
everyday life baggage I bring to the audition the better.
3. Concentration. I remember what I am doing here, I
remember my goals, objectives, conflicts, lines, characterization etc
4. Humor
and Mischief. Keep sense of
humor no matter what. Mischief is very important.
5. Process,
growth and development.
Enjoy every moment of it and have fun because it is a process, not result, and
every time I go out there I have my chance, my audience, my chance to practice
and test what I planned, want and worked on
6. Child. Forget everything and just go for
experience you enjoy.
1. Your personality.
What the auditors do need from a reading is a full experience of who you
are and what you can do. Plus an opening night performance.
2. Connection. Actor’s job is to show how much you are
connected to the character’s feelings and thoughts. Character is just a
different combination of your own feelings and thoughts.
3. Love. Don’t feel anxious and don’t take auditors
as your enemies. Love whatever you doing. Enjoy it. Love for whom you doing it.
Share your love, knowledge, imagination, talent, creativity and joy with them.
4. Awareness
and observation. I know
everything I need to know to do my best performance I can at that particular
moment. I incorporate everything around me in time and space to give best
colorful performance. I look and see I listen and hear. I establish very
personal contact with the auditors and very personal impression on them.
5. Self-confidence. If you got the audition it means they like
you already. They trust you as you look at the picture. They are willing to
cooperate with you. They willing to stop this tiresome process of seeing
hundreds of people and hire YOU. I am looking good and I feel good. And this is
going to be very good performance. I am right for the part- I feel it, I know
how to play it.
6. First
impression. Know that fist impression
is the strongest. After long tiresome day auditors are exhausted to see the
boring and untalented people. Think of cliché that might be dominating in the
readings and create very different. Create very personal entrance, very
personal story relating to the character and the story in the script.
7. Be
yourself. Use the character
to open you, not to close you and hide you.
8. Pace. Whatever you do, drama or comedy PACE is very important. Especially
for TV. So all your stakes and choices should be to make your reading fast and
bouncy.
9.
Choices. Keep in mind that casting director is
seeing hundreds of people and is tired. Make your performance from your very
entrance remarkable and memorable. Bring in all your energy and talent with
your first step. If the scene does not give too much to play with spark your
imagination/personality/observations. You need to find something that inspire
you and mirror your talent. Incorporate everything you can to make your
performance memorable even things that are not in the scene. Make your stakes
high. (Does not mean yelling and screaming.) Make is as personal as you can.
Put your own emotions and attitude for the character you are playing. What you
would like this character to be, but based on your own observations and
experiences. Don’t ask them what they want – Show
them what you’ve got (as many versions as you can). If they know what they want
they will direct you. (Most of the time CDs don’t know what and who
they are looking for, that’s why they are having auditions. So bring your
talent and creativity). Play “negative driven” or weak, fragile character
instead of “positive” one.
10. Spontaneity and improvisation.
11.
Develop your own acting approach to a role. Like every artist solve a problem in
his/her own way.
1. Acting is a process. Don’t play results,
play the process of getting from one point to another.
2. Every character is a problem personality
character. What’s his/her problem? What are his/her insecurities, self doubts,
fears, guilts … Flounder in the muck of their problems. Again and again acting
is a process. If you playing lead-hero, it is about process of being hero,
dealing with the problem inside and outside, overcoming all the above, coping
with the darkest side of life. What are the driving forces to become the
positive character, hero, or anything else? Create the distance and graph from
one point to another.
3. Take your stakes as high as you can. It does
not mean yelling all the time. It means create certain circumstances that will
force your personality (character) to be extremely active, emotional, creative,
etc.
4. Be as specific as possible in everything you
do. There is policeman in general, no thief in general. Know everything about
what, how.