Usefulness of Advice to the Players by Robert Lewis
Robert Lewis' Advice to the Players is a fairly helpful book for those looking for a future on the stage. Lewis wrote the book as though he is teaching a class at that moment. In fact, I have a pretty good feeling that was actually what he did. He probably went home after every one of his classes and wrote down what happened that day. He has many an exercise for each lesson, which he talks about after he explains the exercise. Even though, while I was reading the book, I found myself doing some of the exercises, I also found myself drifting off to somewhere else in my life. Advice to the Players didn't exactly hold my attention very well. It kind of read through my mind in the voice of the teacher from The Wonder Years.
He starts his book off with a chapter about relaxation. Lewis goes through all of the muscles one by one that should be tightened and relaxed. I feel that this is a very necessary exercise in that it allows the actors to not only relax, but to also pinpoint where they personally hold their tension. When a person carries that tension around with them without relaxing it, it's usually very noticeable. If your character on stage hasn't a care in the world, they aren't very likely to be holding tension in their shoulders.
In another chapter, Lewis tells of the importance of improvisation. It can be used for a number of reasons. Improvisation can be used to create a better understanding of the playwright's words. When you put the playwright's words into your own you can often times get a better sense of what it is you are saying and the whole meaning behind it. "It's quite possible that in the improvisation you get a little moment…that enriches the inner life of the dialogue and that you might never have discovered without improvisation".
Lewis' chapter on sensory perception is in my opinion his best one. He says that sensory perception, or recall, is quite important in having an audience believe that what is happening is real. He also cautions that it can be overdone and take away from the play or the characters themselves. He notes that with the proper use of sensory perception the audience will not even notice, but if it is not there at all they will notice.
With such an abundance of parts to be learned and understood performers had to develop a system to remember everything. There is no exact detailed system to how performers did this than just completely taking time to focus on the part. Hogan provides an example from Michael Kelly‘s Reminiscences that is perfect in showing the focus and discipline performers had to have. “Previous to the opening of the newly constructed Drury lane in the spring of 1794 its acting manager. John Philip Kemble, must clearly have had his mind occupied with countless details: the superintendence of a large crew of house servants and workmen, of finances, of advertising, of preparing a spectacular revival of Macbeth.
Wilder uses devices such as the lack of props and connecting us to the cast to enable us to better relate to the play, thus showing us that these lessons are true in our own lives. He then uses strong shifts in perspective on events in our lives to drive home what is truly important in life. Wilder shows us that while time passes, our lives stay relatively the same. Wilder uses these
The essay investigates how a director should communicate and work with actors during rehearsal and on set to produce engaging performances. The essay investigates different acting styles, the rehearsal process, directing on set and communication between actors and director. The essay assumes the actor has formal training and basic experience. The essay then proves effective communication achievable through the “actor’s vocabulary” is key not to over-direct and building trust with the actor.
Woolway, Joanne. Drama for Students. Eds. David Galens and Lynn M. Spampinato. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 292-94. Print.
The playwright provides many aspects to create a play and to make it interesting. The actions and dialogue the characters make must be fluid and have a purpose. The playwright entices the audience with the different aspects to captivate their attention and keep it throughout the play. In The Illusion, Tony Kushner provides vivid details of the characters’ actions through dialogue. The actions characters perform absorbs the audience’s attention and leaves them wanting to see more of what will happen next to the characters. Although all aspects provided by the playwright are essential, action is the most riveting.
“Good stories often introduce the marvelous or supernatural and nothing about Story has been so often misunderstood as this.”
These plays are presented as slightly distorted mirrors of reality, so by having audiences invest themselves so deeply in the understanding of the literature, they are likely to gain a greater understanding of themselves and the worlds they live in. By pushing the imaginative burden onto the audience, Shakespeare is able to make commentary on human nature and human history without being held responsible for its implications. Because the audience is encouraged to fully embrace their role in the production, any commentary and critique is aimed towards themselves and their inability to effectively understand, resulting in an increased appreciation for Shakespeare himself, and the complexity of literature as an art
Still running today, the Neighborhood Playhouse is a conservatory for actors to improve their talent, and is the home of the Meisner technique. When Meisner moved on to the Neighborhood Playhouse, he dedicated his time on teaching his own acting methods to students and would do so for the next forty-eight years. Even though Meisner’s acting was originally influenced through the Stanislavski method, he decided that he did not agree with the idea of emotional recall because he believed it took an actor’s mind out of their scene. Instead, Meisner believed that it was more beneficial to “Learn to live in the moment as an actor, and let go of any idea of result. Learn what it means to really “do” and to respond truthfully to a given moment based
Do people always know what to say next? To use actions never thought of ahead of time? To carry on a conversation when the person talking to you throws out a question way off base, and yourself, the person receiving the question, doesn’t know what to say? Welcome to the world of Improvisation. We all know how these questions make us feel, using improvisation is just the fancy term used. A theatrical skill used in comedies, dramas, and mostly in small time theatre groups (The Groundlings). Improvisation, the ability to compose, to make, recite, invent, or arrange offhand. Some points of view in a theatre perspective are a look ahead on train of thought, actions with movement, and where exactly is this going, (the ultimate meaning).
WORKS CITED Meyer, Michael, ed., pp. 113 Thinking and Writing About Literature. Second Edition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin, John J., 2001. o Joan Murray, "Play-By-Play".
One lesson that has stayed with me into adulthood is how to take direction. The high school theater teacher was Joel B. Short. To me, his name has always invoked a perfect image of the man. He was squat, round, and usually jolly. When he laughed his face was reminiscent of an elated chipmunk with acorns stuffed into its cheeks. His Hawaiian shirts were as loud and bad as the high school band in the orchestra pit. Mr. Short would provide blocking, offer constructive criticism, and demand attentiveness from the cast during rehearsals. If any of his directions were ignored, missed because of inattentiveness, or misunderstood due to distraction his typical lighthearted demeanor would turn into
Guthrie (1995), a renowned personality in the field of theater arts in Europe, wrote in an article that, whatever the author writes as a script, should be enacted by the actor and by that the context of the piece made by the writer will be passed through the audience. Therefore, it is the audience’s responsibility to absorb the message aimed to propagate by the play; and it is seen through their reactions—may be a sentiment of satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
In the sensory memory is the information that is given to a person by their senses, i.e. what a person feels, hears, tastes, smells or sees is stored within this memory. Any information stored within this memory on...
and every detail in the room or the surroundings. I can pin point the exact time and what a person was doing. It tends to play back as if it was a movie to be recalled.
Unlike the general cognitive theory that can be “too mechanistic” in their analysis, Courtney’s ( 1990) dramatic cognitive science analyzes semiotics to examine players’ or actors’ cognition. For him, “dramatic action is the signifier and the dramatic thought ( of the players) as the signified”. Correspondingly, Bidwell ( 1990) claimed that dramatization is one of the most efficient ways to get students internalized with the new words, setting, character, and context of the story they read. He argued that repetitions and the activity of acting those vocabularies help students immerse in meaning. In the context of drama, cognition, and language learning, Mages ( 2006) was confident that dramatization would provide a tangible context for decontextualized language in which students can use their bodies and voices to dramatize the characters’ actions. This activity may later lead to developed imagination and comprehension of the words or language they