Acting 101
Feb. 17th, 2009 11:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feliciakwSince ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
whitemartyr is considering taking an acting class, I thought I'd share this little story with you all. It might help explain why I am so enthusiastic when I become enamored of various actors.
This is an account from one of my acting classes when I was a sophomore in college, back in the day. It was such a rush, let me tell ya.
First of all, I suppose maybe I should explain The Method, yes? (If you're familiar, please skip to the end.) The Method is a system of character development created and defined by Constantin Stanislavski. As I understand it from my instruction and experience, it is an actor's finding common ground in himself with the character he will play. For example, if a character is to be hopelessly in love, then the actor draws upon an experience that evokes a similar emotion. Obviously not all actors will have first hand experience with the experiences of the characters they play. But they find something that they have experienced that resulted in the same or similar emotions and use that to play the character. Make sense?
There are two ways to develop a character: from the inside out (as described above), and from the outside in. The latter is when an actor gets more into the character the more trappings he has--costume, props, make-up, etc. I'm a little bit of both.
So, on to my story. I remember the first time I ever did gestalt work (that's what my teacher called it) in acting class. We were practicing how to audition, and for this project we were required to perform a Shakespearean monologue. I performed a piece from The Merchant of Venice. (Portia: "You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, such as I am . . . "). To help me focus, my teacher, Renée Vincent, asked if I'd ever been in love. When I said, "No," she asked me questions about my "ideal" man--what color eyes, what color hair, thick, wavy hair or slicked back hair, tall/short. She made me focus so hard that I started to feel like my vision was going black around the edges and my stomach started knotting up. I asked to sit down. She said no, that I was doing fine. I told her no, I really needed to sit down. I didn't tell her I felt like I was going to pass out, but I think she saw it. She had someone get me a chair, and I performed the monologue sitting down. After I finished, everyone said that you could have cut the emotion in the room with a knife. One girl cried. Renée said I had tapped into something deep inside. Afterward, I was very excited about the experience and wanted to talk about and analyze it enthusiastically, but Renée wouldn't let me. I think she wanted me to hold on to what I had just done for as long as I could. I wish I could give that kind of performance more often and more consistently.
I used to have that session on video tape somewhere (we taped ourselves so we could see what we were doing
right and what we needed to work on). I haven't watched it in years. But this is what I try to do, how I try to work, when I have the opportunity to really delve into a character.
whitemartyr is considering taking an acting class, I thought I'd share this little story with you all. It might help explain why I am so enthusiastic when I become enamored of various actors.This is an account from one of my acting classes when I was a sophomore in college, back in the day. It was such a rush, let me tell ya.
First of all, I suppose maybe I should explain The Method, yes? (If you're familiar, please skip to the end.) The Method is a system of character development created and defined by Constantin Stanislavski. As I understand it from my instruction and experience, it is an actor's finding common ground in himself with the character he will play. For example, if a character is to be hopelessly in love, then the actor draws upon an experience that evokes a similar emotion. Obviously not all actors will have first hand experience with the experiences of the characters they play. But they find something that they have experienced that resulted in the same or similar emotions and use that to play the character. Make sense?
There are two ways to develop a character: from the inside out (as described above), and from the outside in. The latter is when an actor gets more into the character the more trappings he has--costume, props, make-up, etc. I'm a little bit of both.
So, on to my story. I remember the first time I ever did gestalt work (that's what my teacher called it) in acting class. We were practicing how to audition, and for this project we were required to perform a Shakespearean monologue. I performed a piece from The Merchant of Venice. (Portia: "You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, such as I am . . . "). To help me focus, my teacher, Renée Vincent, asked if I'd ever been in love. When I said, "No," she asked me questions about my "ideal" man--what color eyes, what color hair, thick, wavy hair or slicked back hair, tall/short. She made me focus so hard that I started to feel like my vision was going black around the edges and my stomach started knotting up. I asked to sit down. She said no, that I was doing fine. I told her no, I really needed to sit down. I didn't tell her I felt like I was going to pass out, but I think she saw it. She had someone get me a chair, and I performed the monologue sitting down. After I finished, everyone said that you could have cut the emotion in the room with a knife. One girl cried. Renée said I had tapped into something deep inside. Afterward, I was very excited about the experience and wanted to talk about and analyze it enthusiastically, but Renée wouldn't let me. I think she wanted me to hold on to what I had just done for as long as I could. I wish I could give that kind of performance more often and more consistently.
I used to have that session on video tape somewhere (we taped ourselves so we could see what we were doing
right and what we needed to work on). I haven't watched it in years. But this is what I try to do, how I try to work, when I have the opportunity to really delve into a character.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-18 05:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-18 11:17 am (UTC)If you listen to Jensen and Jared answer questions about "How did you perform the monologue at Sam's deathbed?" or "How did you do the scene when Dean is dying?" and they say, "Well, I have a brother . . . " or "We're so close now, I imagine . . . " That's Method. Whether they've studied it or not, whether they call it that or not, that's what an acting student comes to learn as The Method.
:-)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-18 08:54 am (UTC)Really great example of method, thanx.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-18 11:23 am (UTC):-D I can't imagine why.
Method is scary and exhilarating and as soon as I heard Jensen and Jared talk about how they perform emotional scenes (both before they got to know each other and now that they're best buddies), I knew they were Method actors, whether they call it that or not.
Now, there are Method actors who take things too far. Because after all, it is acting. Those stories are kind of entertaining, too
(Edited because it's too early to try to figure out punctuation.)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-18 02:44 pm (UTC)Spill. I'll get the popcorn.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-18 07:09 pm (UTC)As the story goes, Katherine Hepburn (I think) was working on a movie with . . . various versions tell it as Nick Nolte, or Dustin Hoffman. And the young actor, who was very into the Method and was playing a drunk or homeless character, would come to set having not bathed for days and very disheveled and just generally unpleasant to be around. When asked by Ms. Hepburn what he thought he was doing, the young actor explained that he was getting into character or getting in touch with the character or whatever. Ms. Hepburn then bluntly pointed out that it's called acting for a reason.
The point of the story being that there's "becoming" the character, and there's becoming the character. The former is a good thing; the latter, not so much. :-)
On a not-so-humorous note, I sometimes wonder if that was part of what necessitated Heath Ledger's need for prescription drugs--that he would get so into character that maybe things got a little too intense for the actor. But that's just my uninformed speculation on the subject, so do take that with a shaker of salt.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-18 07:22 pm (UTC)I think Joachin Phoenix is another one that gets too deep into character. I absolutely loved him in Walk the Line, but I hear it took a lot out of him, as his previous roles have also done, and I understand why he quit the biz. Did you see him on Letterman? He's flipped a switch somewhere, 'cos he's Bizarro Phoenix right now.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 01:22 pm (UTC)Yep and sometimes it's just hard to 'turn the character off' that's why i'm glad Jensen knows how to do it (or he didn't make it through 3.5 years of constant angst the level of SN).
no subject
Date: 2009-02-18 10:45 am (UTC)Oh, I totally want to take a class... but when/how/where? Hmm. There's what looks like a great course in Van over the summer but it's lots of $$. :(
no subject
Date: 2009-02-18 03:53 pm (UTC)For my brother, for example, that outlet is math. He used to talk about being able to get lost in a calculus problem for hours. He even took a math course in college that studied not how calculus works, but why it works.
If writing is your primary means of outlet, and acting can help you with that, or inform your writing, or whatever, I'd say go for it.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-18 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-18 06:02 pm (UTC)