THEATRE I & II
Chapter 4 – Acting
The Stage and the School
ABOUT THIS POWERPOINT
The following information matches with your
Chapter 4 study guide.
 While reviewing Chapter 4, answer the following:

Page 156, Summary & Key Ideas #1-9
 Page 156, Discussing Ideas, # 1-3
 Due at end of class
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For Homework:

Commit to memory “Theatre Etiquette” on pages 158160; there will be a quiz next class on the etiquette
roles of the actor and production crew
ACTING IS A PART OF THE
THEATRICAL ILLUSION OF REALITY
Acting should never be so real that it loses the
Theatrical Illusion of Reality
 Theatre is not life, and acting is not life
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Theatrical illusion of reality is the balance
Both are illusion that are larger than life
If both are too real, the illusion is destroyed and
replace by what is normal
 Onstage, normal is boring
 Too real = Overacting, Bad acting, etc.

TWO MAJOR APPROACHES TO ACTING
Emotional/Subjective Acting
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Actors play their parts to where
they actually weep, suffer, or
struggle emotionally in front of
the audience.
Technical/Objective Acting

They become the part they play
and experience all that their
characters experience
Personal inner reactions form the
actors’ emotional response
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Performance based on acting
technique; analyze the plays’
structure and the personalities of
the characters; Uses the learned
skills of acting movement, speech,
and interpretation to create the
role
Emotional response is not
allowed; Actor does not actually
live the part but acts it so well
that the illusion of living the part
is created
The process of study, analysis,
and creative imagining forms the
assumed personality
KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKI
•
•
•
Russian
The most renowned
acting teacher and
director; was an actor as
well
Created “The Method” –
most influential acting
theory
•
•
Focus is on emotional
identification
“The Magic If”
•
Ask yourself what would you
do if the events in the play
were actually happening to
you and you were intimately
involved in them.
Online Acting Exercise
TYPES OF ROLES IN A PLAY

Leading roles = The main
characters in a play

2.

Protagonist – main
character, must solves the
problem that arise sin the
play or be defeated in the
conflict
Antagonist – opposes the
goals of the protagonist
Other types of leading roles:
1.
Juvenile – term for a young
male lead; 16-30
2.
Ingénue – a young female
lead
Leading roles can also be
referred to as the principals
Supporting Roles
More challenging and
demanding, although not
the main roles
 Serve as a foil to the main
characters:
 Foil = A character with
whom another character is
compared (usually the
protagonist
Both leading & supporting roles
can be one of 2 types of parts:

2 Main Types:
1.



1.
Straight parts = actors
resemble in appear and
personality the characters the
playwright had in mind
2.
Character parts = include
some distinguishing trait,
idiosyncrasy or personal type;
rarely resemble actors
portraying them
CHARACTERIZATION OCCURS IN 2
STAGES
First, you attempt to grasp the fundamental
personality of a part
 Then, you project that personality to the
audience in such a way that your character
become a living, convincing human being
 Characterization is the substance of acting!

CHARACTERISTICS OF ACTING

Pause:


A lull, or stop in dialogue or action in order to sustain
emotion while the body is still ; also called a beat
Versatility:

The ability to change style or character with ease
IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND AND
INTERPRET A ROLE FAITHFULLY, YOU
MUST STUDY THE PLAY CLOSELY
Know what kind of person you are in the play
and why you behave as you do.
 Understand what your character what your
character wants and stands in the way of getting
it
 Understand the setting of the play by studying
the place and the historical period.


You also will need to
interpretation of that period
know
the
director’s
CREATING A CHARACTER SKETCH
o
1.
2.
3.
4.
When studying your
character ask the
following questions –
at minimum:
What does the author say
about your character in
the stage directions?
What do your characters’
lines reveal?
What do other characters
say about your character?
How do other characters
respond to your character?


In this class, we use
renowned actress Uta
Hagan’s “Who Am I?”
from her book Respect
for Acting to create the
biography or sketch of
the your character
Another approach to
character analysis is
called Role Scoring

This process consists of
answering a series of
questions, similar to the
“Who Am I?”
SCORING A SCRIPT

Scoring a script is another useful tool in Character
Analysis. The term comes from a musical score
which has similar markings to indicate inflections.

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Things marked include:
Tempo
Rhythm
Pauses
Style
Interpretation
Pronunciation
Emphasized words and phrases
Movement
Stage business
There are no strict rules for script scoring….it’s just
important that you do it, and you understand it!
THERE ARE TWO STAGES TO BUILDING
UP YOUR PART:
1.
2.

When the director
gives the cast his or
her own view of the
play, its characters
and their
relationships, its them,
and its style
You study the play and
the characters,
developing your own
concept of the part
2.

1.
2.
To help you to understand your
part better you can use types of
sources:
Primary Sources:

Studying a person’s
posture, movements, habits
and voice inflections that is
the same or similar to the
character you are playing.
Secondary Sources:

Reading books and
researching a character
outside of actually knowing
the character or a similar
person to the character.
THERE ARE 16 KEYS TO CHARACTERIZATION
1.
Internalizing

2.
Externalizing

3.
8.
The recalling of specific emotions that YOU have experienced or observed
Projecting

7.
Watching others to pick up their characterizations
Emotional Memory

6.
Ability to direct all your thoughts, energies, and skills into what you are doing
at any single moment
Observing

5.
Process by which the true personality of a character is made visible to an
audience through careful interpretation, nonverbal expression, voice quality,
pitch, rate, and physical action
Concentrating

4.
Knowing how the character thinks and feels
Projecting inner feelings to the audience; “reaching out” to the last
person in the last row of a distant balcony
Motivating
 The why of characterization and the what your character
wants to do
Stretching a Character

The process of making a role unique, individual, and interesting—
taking the character beyond the norm
KEYS TO CHARACTERIZATION (CONT.)
9.
The Consistent Inconsistency

10.
Playing the Conditions

11.
The fuel that drives acting
Focus

16.
How an actor uses objects onstage to project character – using the literal props
Energy

15.
Facing the crisis or obstacle that stand in the way of an objective as the character would
face it.
Playing the Object

14.
All the ways and mean that a character use to reach a goal
Playing the Obstacles

13.
Playing the condition o of the elements of time, place, weather, objects, and the state of
the individual—affect eh manner in which characters meet their objectives and deal with
obstacles
Playing the Objectives

12.
Emphasizing a characters personality trait that makes him or her different from others
Directs the actor’s attention, action, emotion or line delivery to a definitive target
Uniqueness

The difference that sets an actor apart from anyone else on stage or anyone else’s
interpretation of his or her character; shaping a personality that is special unto itself
PHYSICAL ACTING
According to the experts, the majority of our daily
communication occurs through physical action.
Another term for this is body language.
UNDERSTANDING BODY LANGUAGE FOR THE
STAGE, TYPES AND USES:

As you work on your physical acting, you will want to develop a Master
Gesture -- A distinctive action that serves as a clue to a character’s personality
 2 Examples:
1.
2.


Peculiar walk or laugh
Position of your feet while you are standing, walking or sitting
When moving on stage, actors should “lead” with a part of the body that is
appropriate for the character’s personality.
 A Leading Center can be either slight or exaggerated, depending on the
character and the style of the play.
Common Onstage Movements:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Entering
Exiting
Crossing
Sitting
Standing
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Onstage movements send Messages to the audience.

Moving from one stage position to another is called a Cross
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For each move onstage, there is usually movement in the opposite direction by
another character called the Counter-Cross
STAGE POSITIONS AND GROUPING

The positions and grouping actors onstage are very important because they
convey the sprite of a situation without any lines being spoken.
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There are 4 basic stage techniques:
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Sharing a Scene:
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Giving the Scene:
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Actors who are not key character shifting the angle of their bodies upstage and look
directly at the scene's key character, focusing the attention of the audience on the
center of the action
Taking Yourself out of a Scene
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An actor crosses downstage and then turns slightly upstage toward the other actor,
shifting the audiences’ attention to the upstage actor
Turning the Scene In:

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In order for two actors to SHARE A SCENE, meaning they are equal with another
actor when sitting or standing parallel to each other, they must CHEAT OUT, by
pivoting his/her torso and turns their face towards the audience.
A shared scene should be played three-quarter front or in profile. Profile scenes are
weak, and do not allow the audience to see you.
Truing away from the audience into a three-quarter back or full back position drawing
attention away from oneself
Additionally, Stage Business is an essential part of acting and involves the
use of hand props, costume props, stage props, other actors, and even parts of
the set.
VOCAL ACTING
PITCH AND INFLECTION:
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Most characters can be classified as
either “pitch up, "which are confident
characters, or “pitch down,” which are
self-conscious characters.
Related to the rising and falling pitch
are patters are the four Inflections:
Rising Inflection– indicates
questioning, surprise or shock
Falling Inflections– signals the end of
statement
Sustained inflection– staying on the
same note; suggestions calmness,
decisiveness, or steadiness of purpose
Circumflex inflections-intonation of 2 or more vowel sounds
for what ordinarily is a single vowel
sound.
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Vocal Response:
The vocalized way you as an
actor resend to your acting
partner in any given scene
You must match or counter
the actions given to you on
stage
May not match up to what
you have rehearse d on your
own.
GETTING ONSTAGE

Your chief responsibility as an actor is to
memorize your lines!
 There are 2 approaches to memorization:
1.
Whole-part memorization

Part-whole memorization
2.

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Learning the play as a whole; focus on individual
lines after meaning of the play or scene is
understood
Learning the play line-by-line; focus is on the
cues
Subtext is “meaning between the lines”
ACTING TECHNIQUES
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No actor could have experience every emotion
demanded by roles he or she assumes. Therefore,
once must use various other acting techniques to
portray such emotions. These include:
Substitution
 Recalling a similar life experience in order to
understand the current on-stage character’s
experience
Improvisation
 Impromptu portrayal of a character without
preparation or rehearsal
 Sometimes scripts often include incomplete lines or
one-side telephone conversations. The actor must
imagine the rest of the line. These are called cutoff lines and fade-off lines