Exercise
Playing the Arc with Two Different Approaches
In Appendix C you will find sample scenes for practice. Either work with
that scene or use the grid provided to work with another scene, and follow these
instructions for exploring the same scene with two different approaches.
Approach #1: Select a character to portray and approach the scene by
identifying Beat Subtext Statements, beat changes, and then Emotion
Tactics. Identify the arc of the scene and intentionally place stronger,
more intense tactics near the arc to increase conflict and raise urgency.
Read the scene out loud, to yourself, or with a partner, applying these
choices. Can you identify the character’s need, objective, and victory
for the scene?
Approach #2: Now use a different approach to scene work. Select
the other character to portray, or choose a new scene, and this time
identify your character’s need, objective, and victory statement. Then
read the scene out loud to yourself, or with a partner, applying truth
and belief in this need and desired outcome. Are you able to gradually
recognize beat shifts, subtext, and Emotion Tactics? Can you identify
the arc of the scene and where the strongest Emotion Tactics could
be best used?
With both approaches to scene work, do you also notice Emotional Colors
emerging the more you listen, react, and commit to your character’s needs? If so,
record these discoveries in the last column marked Emotional Colors.
Try This:
Once your score sheet is complete for the scene, move beyond
merely reading the scene out loud. Get up and explore how the
Emotion Tactics and Subtext Statements affect your behavior. Use this
acknowledgement as your way of staging or blocking a scene. Hand
copies of your beat sheet to two other people, or side coaches. Each
side coach will focus on one actor in the scene and call out the actor’s
score sheet choices while the actors are playing the scene. This works
as an immediate reminder for the actor to embody the score. Too often
actors will make intellectual choices on paper but not fully apply them
in the scene. Or actors will feel the need to block a scene before acting
it out, but the imposed blocking does not make sense to the character’s
motivations and behavior. By using emotions and Subtext Statements as
clues for behavior and movement, the staging will emerge organically. A
side coach reminds you of your score while acting, so you can feel how
they work in the moment. Side coaches should keep calling out Emotion
Tactics and Subtext Statements in a beat until they are convinced the
actor is actually applying the choices. (Read more about Side Coaching
at the end of the Manifestation Chapter.)
Applying an Emotion Approach
If you would like to use an Emotion Approach as the MVP for your acting,
follow these steps:
1. Read and investigate the entire script for clues to your character’s
personality, feelings, and behaviors.
2. Determine your character’s three emotional layers: (1) primary,
(2) social mask, and (3) shadow self. Practice embodying these layers,
to build a physical characterization.
3. Break your scenes into beats, and after determining your character’s
perspective on each beat, as well as the arc of the scene, assign
Emotion Tactics and Subtext Statements.
4. Go over all the checklists for establishing beats, Emotion Tactics, and
Subtext Statements to check your final work.
5. Rehearse your scenes applying Emotion Tactics and Subtext Statements,
and acknowledge moments of emotional reactions, Emotional Colors, or
the Button, as well. (see Actions Chapter for information on the Button)
6. Invite a Side Coach to watch and remind you of your Emotion Tactics
and Subtext Statements (see Manifestation Chapter for more
information on side coaching)
7. Once the scene is memorized and rehearsed several times with the
Emotion approach, check to see that aspects of Thought and Action
have also clearly manifested in your performance. If not, apply exercises
and techniques from those chapters to help bring these elements into
your acting work.
Summary of Emotions
Can you now see how important it is to recognize that your body is an
emotionally expressive canvas, containing layers that build from yourself, your
character, the text, and the given circumstances around you in the performance?
Can you also recognize how Emotion Tactics, Emotional Colors, and Subtext
Statements assist you in consciously navigating and building the dramatic action
of a play? Learning emotional awareness methods will help you deliver greater
nuance to your acting, create clearer beat shifts, provide conscious control, and
develop a clearer understanding of your own personal expression.
This chapter introduces the basic tools of scoring and preparing for
rehearsals with an emotional approach. Later exercises will provide you with
more tools for embodying these choices and help you align both the actor and
the character together in one, cohesively expressive instrument. By studying and
refining this skill of emotional expression, you can make this approach look like
your own personal instinct or talent. Stanislavski says that in the end, at the final
culmination of the actor’s work, “artistic emotion is weighed not in pounds but in
ounces.”23 Applying emotions to your acting does not necessarily mean you are
an actor expressing your craft “full of sound and fury” but that you have reached
a mature and refined understanding of how to express the many intricate levels
of your character’s feelings, reactions, and actions.
23. Ibid, 181.
In summary, Emotions in the TEAM are the character’s, and many times
the actor’s, feelings that arise from reacting to internal thoughts, external given
circumstances, and the character’s conscious application of emotional states and behaviors.
This includes reflections of character perspective and personality, reactions to Subtext
Statements, Emotional Colors, and Emotion Tactics.
Further Study
Building A Character, by Constantine Stanislavski
Creating a Role, by Constantine Stanislavski
Sanford Meisner on Acting, by Sanford Meisner & Dennis Longwell
The Alba of Emotions, by Dr. Susana Bloch