Monday, January 28, 2013
Acting Workshop
I found today to be an interesting workshop. One of the most important things I learned is the difference between lines, as-if's and how you imagine a scene to be in your head or what you think the scene is suppose to look like. I found watching the transitions between Kadambari and Sabrina with the differences between their as-if's and trying to apply them to the lines, but when already having that picture of what its suppose to look like becoming generic. I also felt the book is a good thing to have read to go along with the workshop because if you read it, it has most of these techniques in it.
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" how you imagine a scene to be in your head or what you think the scene is suppose to look like"
ReplyDeleteTHis is very important. First of all, what it is suppose to look like is much more the realm of the director than the actor, and having permeable membranes between these two things can cause a lot of problems. However, that you are seeing things in the way you are seeing them seems to me to indicate that you have more of a "director's mind" than an "actor's mind." I organically have a director's mind, but I've learned the actor's mind bit, but it hasn't been easy.
As far as "but when already having that picture of what its suppose to look like becoming generic" THis is very true, and it is true in all arts.
Truth be told, if left to just our imagination, we rut out and move towards the cliche. Imagination tends to lack detail, and that lack of detail and specifics is what leads to the sort of generalizing that one sees in bad acting, immature art, bad poetry, etc. It is very important to understand this. Your imagination isn't all powerful unless it is linked to observation, memory, experience. Your imagination is only as good as your library of stealable ideas, and then the application of those ideas, - the transforming of them into something alive and meaningful and rich - seems to me to require an artist to function very much in the moment, in the now, and to treat art making (acting, composing, painting, writing, what will you) not as a transcription of what is in the artist's head but a conversation between the artist and the work. Does that make sense?
I want you to engage in this written discussion with me, so be sure to answer this reply in a subsequent blog post.
Luke