This week's group acting class was so great!!! Before the class, our prep work was to watch this video:
And to read through our script and familiarize ourselves with the main plot points and the different characters (enough to choose one at the beginning of our class).
We worked on:
1. Group Work!
2. Beats
3. Character Development
Group Work!
This week we introduced the process of marking up a scene - or "doing our homework". We started our class today by choosing a character and getting into groups with the other people playing the same character. In these groups we started to do all the homework our scene required. Our job in our first group was to mark our beats, circle our emphasized words, and fill in our character development worksheet.
Our character development worksheet looked like this:
Beats
The first thing we learned how to do was separate our monologue or scene into "beats". A beat is pause - (natural pauses and/or pauses to add emphasis, comedic timing, or added for some sort of effect). We started mapping out our scene by looking first for the natural pauses marked with punctuation (a period, comma, dash, semicolon, colon, or a line break). We marked each natural beat with 2 lines like this: //. We mark all of our beats so that while we read and act a scene out, we remember to pause and slow down. Then, we read through our scene, emphasizing the pauses - making them clear and distinct so that our brain registered each beat. From there, we talked about extra beats we wanted to add to our scene that would help our character development in some way! These beats are not previously indicated by punctuation but count as a character choice. We use these beats to emphasize different parts of our scene - and we move and act in the pauses - taking our scene from something that sounds and looks like we're reading off of a piece of paper, to an acted monologue or dialogue between 2 or more people - complete with character choices and action. 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.
Character Development: More interesting character
For our character development today - we introduced our first and second "character development worksheets". These worksheets help us breakdown our character in very specific ways - making our character more 3 dimensional and interesting. Having these things mapped out so clearly helps us simplify the process in our brains when trying to go from 0 (cold script, trying to start creating a character) to stage ready (motivations and emotions mapped out, physical actions mapped out, and relationships between characters mapped out).
In our first group, we had to map out 3 things that made our character more interesting - and then elaborate, writing down the things we were going to do to SHOW these character developments.
For example: If our character development choice (more interesting character #1) was that our character loved being in charge, have all the attention on them, and was used to getting their way - we would write that down as our choice. Then, we would show this choice EMOTIONALLY by talking down to other characters, using a condescending tone, or projecting our voice to be louder and bigger than other characters in the scene. PHYSICALLY we might show this by puffing out our chest, using big arm movements aiming them upwards to show a cocky attitude, adding hair flips for girls and a confident walk.
Mapping these things out help us map a scene so much more clearly and help us more effectively tell a story and bring a character to life.
Character Development: Relationships between characters
We also briefly touched on something we'll get more into next week - mapping out the relationships between characters as extensively as we mapped out our character choices.
