Adult Acting Class 10-16-99

This week we continued with the Bandler Model, and examined subjective experience in detail, reiterating our purpose: to discover how we do things well already, in repeatable, sensory specific terms.

And, in terms of creating characters, the reality of a character is greatly enhanced by giving the character subjective experience based on the given circumstances and the actor’s interpretation.  

This simply means that when the character is speaking, the actor provides the pictures, sounds and feelings that would occur to the character in the given circumstances.

This is what the actor plays around with when studying (and rehearsing) the role. *

 As a bonus -adding character “memories” in sensory specific terms works really well with memorizing lines, too. Yours and the other actors’. The associations happen automatically.

 In studying our own subjective experience, we examined “timelines” and how each individual organizes their past and future.

The metaphors “put the past behind you”, or “off in the distant past/future” became literal descriptions of strategies used by individuals in certain contexts.

Adjusting or altering your timeline tends to affect the way you feel. You can change your feelings about past memories or future possibilities by changing the way they’re represented in your head.

 This can all be applied to marking beats by first answering the questions you’ve designed, “what does my character want, etc.”, and making each change in thought (each beat)

a full, rich, sensory experience that translates as a “real” moment to the character, and consequently to the audience. What would they say to themselves, what pictures of how they wish it would be, what feelings and resulting body posture?

String those moments together (a natural occurrence), and you have a character with real depth.

*note the difference between study and rehearse.

An actor should not, IMHO, plan on studying at rehearsal unless it is a designated “study rehearsal”.

Study is homework, and you test-drive it at rehearsal.              …In a perfect world… many a rehearsal becomes a study rehearsal, and that’s fine, too- but in my mind, an actor should prepare to use rehearsal as their time to hold their homework up to the light and catch any holes that show through, which the director helps them to do.

Get your direction, study at home, rehearse at rehearsal.

Then you can be delightfully surprised at any “accidental learning” that occurs.

Next Week:
Applying all this to text.