For our group acting classes we will have 1 breakdown for everyone!
It will be mapped out with things we worked on, things to remember, and before/after videos!!
Everyone did SOOO awesome this week! We had so much fun!
This week in our group acting class we worked on:
Slating, read throughs, finding and marking beats, paraphrasing, adding dynamics, and filling the stage!
We did scenes from: Legally Blonde the musical, and Beauty and the Beast the musical!
Our scenes were: Comedic! Slating:
An important part of every audition is how you introduce yourself! This week we started by introducing ourselves to get the wiggles out, get used to talking in front of each other, and to get ready to be on camera or on stage! Slating is stating your name and the character you will be reading for. We will start all of our videos this way from here on out!
Read through:
The next thing we do, is read through the script to make sure we understand the general plot, that we understand and can pronounce all the words, and so that we know when our lines come and who they come after. We do this so that when we start adding different acting techniques, that we don't get held up by reading it cold the first time (or getting confused by the words and having to pause any technique we're trying to add).
Finding and marking beats:
From there we map out the monologue - speaking it out loud to find the beats (or pauses) that happen naturally. Sometimes they are marked with punctuation (a period, comma, or line break), and sometimes we add them ourselves without any previous direction. We use beats to emphasize certain parts of the scene - and we act in the pauses! We use each beat as an opportunity to move the scene forward with weight shifts, different movements or actions. Each beat = a pause, and a new action.
Paraphrasing:
Because scripts tend to sound like someone is reading a book out loud - we want to get as far away from that as possible, making it sound natural and like a character choice rather than just reciting words. The way we do this is by adding paraphrased lines into the script or replacing and adding words that feel more natural to the student/actor. We let them make the lines their own to take out all rigidness and uncomfortableness that comes from saying someone else's words.
Adding dynamics:
We then mapped out which words we wanted to be the high points, and which we wanted to be the low points - in both actions and volume. This gave each student further permission to make the scene BIG - and stage ready! By adding these dynamics it does 2 things: 1. Makes the lines even more natural for them to say by following natural speaking patters. and 2. Shows them that they can use the natural speaking patterns in an unnatural way by taking EVERY part of the line to a big place - and from there emphasizing the high points even more.
It makes it feel like they're not just shouting, being crazy, or feeling out of control - while allowing them to add big crazy things into their scene for effect.
Filling a stage!
Finally we worked on performing and making sure that the actions and voice inflections could be heard from the audience! We worked on making things bigger and better for a stage because we worked on lines from broadway musicals!
Everyone did SO awesome!! I can't wait for next week!!
Because we had to learn how to read a scene today we don't have a before video - we'll start with before videos next week!
Here are our videos from this week! (So sad that Walker had to leave before we filmed! We'll get you in these next week bud!)