We worked on:
1. Making acting choices with our beats
2. Pace of a scene
3. Movement and body shifts in a multiple person scene
4. Reactive acting:Staying in character/ adding to a scene between your lines
5. Using your character to help create and solidify other characters in the scene
Making acting choices with our beats:
Today we started our class with each person finding and marking their own beats (or pauses in the scene). After marking the natural pauses - I had them mark a few extra pauses that they wanted to use as acting choices. They could put them anywhere - but once they put them in, they had to use them. We are getting better and better at finding those natural pauses! Adding this extra step today helped them begin to form characters on their own!
Pace of a scene:
When doing a theatrical scene (for a play or musical), you need to always go slower than you think you should to be able to act out every necessary beat to move the scene and character forward. If you rush through parts of the scene, you are robbing your character of comedic and dramatic timing, and possibly robbing other characters of appropriate reaction time. The pace of the scene is very important.
Our rules for the stage, whether it be for singing or acting, are:
1. They need to be able to see you (big deliberate actions)
2. They need to be able to hear you (louder words, projecting to the audience)
3. They need to be able to understand you (pace of the scene, introductions, or pronunciation of words)
The pace helps the audience understand what's going on. If you go slower, they know to pay closer attention to the words and actions. If you go faster (on purpose or for effect), it tells the audience that this is a more frantic scene/time and to look for chaos on the stage somewhere, or to pay attention to how everyone is reacting to the fast paced scene. An example would be if a husband in a scene came in and started talking really fast about his wife having a baby or going into labor - if he was taking it slow, it would say things about his character or the scene that were very specific; if he were to push the scene and speak and move rapidly, it would tell the audience that this is an exciting/chaotic part of the play and to pay attention. At the same time, the audience could tell a lot about the other characters in the scene by how they react to each pace.
Movement and body shifts in a multiple person scene:
When acting out a scene with several people in it, body shifts are important to indicate different things.
1. That you are speaking to different people
2. A character mood change
3. An overall scene mood change
4. Contrasting thoughts or views
If you were happy with one character and upset with the other - a body change/shift would help you indicate that you felt differently about each one. You wouldn't keep your body the same to praise and scold - you would show the contrast with shifting your body weight from one side to the other, or changing your actions completely.
We worked on these body shifts today with a father who was proud of one daughter and annoyed of the other (Frex in WICKED with Nessarose and Elphaba). When addressing Nessarose, he was proud, and aimed his actions upward - when addressing Elphaba, he was less attentive, seemed distracted or angry - aiming his actions downward in disgust.
Another body shift is when talking about something the character is proud of vs. something they are ashamed of.
When talking about something they are proud of - we had all our movements aim upwards to help emphasize the accomplishment (governor of munchkinland, announcing essays, administrator addressing students about her school or program).
When talking about something a character is ashamed of or being sarcastic about - we had all our movements aim forward or downward to show defensiveness or shame (depending on the direction - forward = defensive, down=shame)
Reactive acting: Staying in character/ adding to a scene between your lines:
This week we did a scene that involved everyone. We did this to not only practice acting with several people, but to teach my students how to keep acting through a scene even when they had very few lines, their lines didn't come up for a while, or they were finished delivering their lines. We worked on reactive acting - what to do and how to move your character forward with reactions to other characters rather than scripted lines.
When other people are speaking - it's important to stay engaged in a scene. The way you react in character helps build not only your character - but those you are reacting to. If you react to someone with disgust, it either says something about you or about them - that they are disgusting, or that you are judgmental. These reactions are important for every character.
If you break character in a scene, it distracts the audience from what is happening in the rest of the scene - as you draw the eye away from what is moving the play/musical forward.
Using your character to help create and solidify other characters in the scene: