TIP Notes: Chapter 1, p. 11-25

Truthful acting is when you are fully in character

Stanislavski: “the actor must not only experience the role inwardly, he must embody that inner experience physically. Outer experience relies very strongly on inner experience”
“Every one of our movements onstage, every word must be the result of a truthful imagination.”

Imagination is immersing yourself in the moment with the given circumstances; active imagination requires the use of the five basic senses
Exercise 1: By imagining yourself in different locations, you can get across a lot even when just standing still

The magic if serves as the question that stirs your imagination

Objective = the character’s goal in the given circumstances; action is how they try to fulfill their objective

Exercise 2: To develop your character naturally, allow your imagination to run freely (without getting off topic); go into detail to discover the truth of the character
This will further develop your ability to imagine

Free body: you need to be fully relaxed and unoccupied with your own self before you can step into a character and give a truthful performance

Three kinds of communication:
1. Movement
2. Voice
3. Rays (a kind of psychic link between people)

Exercise 5: You work most efficiently as a group when you are open and committed to what you are doing, and fully trust your partners

Group Project 1 Reflection (“Frenemies Close, Friends Closest”)

I was honestly somewhat nervous going into our final performance of this project. Due to a lack of a fully detailed script, every performance that we have done of this scene has been slightly different. In particular, as I noted in the end of my last blog, it took me a while to decide which of my initially ad-libbed lines I wanted to stick with, and the wording was never exactly the same. Also, as the paper-ripping incident yesterday showed, you can never really be sure that everything will go exactly as you envisioned, and while some times this can result in something positive, it can also be for the worse. I like to have everything under control, to set everything up to be the absolute best it can be, but I obviously can’t direct my peers in the middle of a scene, and I have to accept that they know their characters far better than I do. Thus, each practice run has had good and bad moments that I had to keep in mind going into this final performance, which I wanted to be as close to perfect as possible.

Fortunately, by the time I was the only one left on stage, all of those fears had been alleviated. There were no major mistakes or tangents, only a few brief moments of awkwardness on my end, and I could see the improvements my peers had made, especially in projecting their voices while staying true to the emotions of the scene. We were all confident enough to edit and upload the clip immediately, even though we still had time at that point to do a second run through if we wanted. If I had total control, there are one or two things that I would have gone back and changed, but when I step back and look at the finished project, those little details become relatively unimportant.

I have a strong sense that by doing more collaborative works such as this, I will loose that fear of not being in control of what we’re working on. If I worry less about “doing well” on the projects  and focus more on having fun, not only will it be less stressful, but all of us will be more free to get into character and express ourselves through our acting. I hope that Helen and Youngchen had similarly positive feelings about this experience, and that we will continue to improve our collaborative skills in the future.