phcting “lechniguee Guideline information abont the basi acting techniques 2018 Powered by "tating How?" Auther: Dimitra Syraeee Clear up. Understand. Learn. Use... Al the incomprehensible theory of the main aspects of acting techniques without spending 20 years of stressful experiences, ‘What do Stanislavsky, Michael Chekhov, Lee Strasberg, Actors Studio, Stella Adler, Meisner say? ‘What are their differences and which is their common basis? How do acting techniques influence one another? How did they all evolve over the years? How to clear up the chaos of all acting techniques? ‘What is the basic philosophy of each acting technique? What is their main focus? How will all this information help you clearly understand where to start from? How to study acting techniques with confidence, avoiding chaos and frustration? How to begin the research to combine those techniques that are suitable to you and create your own unique one? (1! How to prepare each role and be certain that your performance will be accurate and astonishing every day? How to be confident about your performance? Acting is a profession. It's up to professional confrontation, not up to luck! ‘What are your tools as an actor? Which ones suit you the most? | This eBook IS a Guideline! This is a pack of valuable information that clears up the cloudy landscape. This eBook reveals the path for proper study and simple understanding of the aspects you have to study as an actor. It has helped dozens of my students and colleagues fully clear up the chaos that prevails. You don't need and don't have years to spend on trying to understand the differences among acting techniques, to conceive their differences, to guess how to begin to unravel this endless chaotic tangle. This is a simple Acting Techniques Guideline to start immediately.| Why is it so hard to simplify Acting Techniques? In almost all acting schools, we learn many interesting things. We practice and try out different techniques. But when we leave, we are still unable to simply describe the System, the Method, Michael Chekhov, Adler, Meisner Technique, etc. We are also unable to decide which technique suits us. Most actors remain in this ignorance for the rest of their careers, discouraged and afraid of the endless and unrelated information. Most of them are not studying acting techniques in-depth. Many others just pick up a technique and name it their own, without comprehending it or without knowing why they have rejected the others. T made this eBook after some years of theatrical experience and theoretical study. All the information included is simple, basic and essential. We should all know about it. Then why do we miss this information? The synopsis of the main characteristics of acting techniques and the sequence, in which everything is recorded in this eBook, IS what acting education is missing. It's the luck of continuity that greatly confuses us. Who is who, who said what, what are their differences, what is the System, what is the Method, who came after the other, and many more unanswered questions. Nobody ‘answers briefly and accurately! | That's a glimpse of my precious Feedback @ ¥ This eBook changed my perspective about acting. There IS a beginning, middle and an end! Acting techniques are not just scattered concepts. ¥ Lam an actor with 10 years of working experience. When people or even students asked me to name the acting techniques' differences, I was avoiding the answer by saying that "You cannot analyze this in just a few sentences". I WAS SO WRONG! (OK: Learning acting techniques IS doable after all! Now, I understand how I can approach a role. Thonestly didn't believe that anyone could clarify so much information in just a few minutes. This eBook is a MUST guideline for every actor, teacher or artist! This is what I was looking for! I could not see the whole picture no matter what. Now, everything is clear to me. oeI certainly had the same Problems... I was a "terrified" actress for many years, as well ... Whenever I had to perform I was having nightmares (you know, those common ones: forgetting lines, losing your voice etc....) I was living with the terror that if my "inspiration" (2?) was out (2) I wouldn't know what tools to trot out to act!! I used incomplete exercises I had been taught and I never reached the maximum results they offer. I did not know their inventor, their general philosophy, their parent technique ... In addition, T had also a strong cliché belief about which technique is "suitable" for cinema and which for theater, which is "good" and which "outdated! T look back at these beliefs now and laugh, so as not to cry out!! It took me years to understand that NO technique has a label. All these beliefs about the best and suitable ones are unprofessional and disastrous, and have great negative effects. It's ONLY what works for YOU! Without clearly understanding the acting techniques, and without practicing them, you CANNOT choose the best combination. But how do we start? How do we clear up all this mess? The mess we all face and that fills us with fear, shame, stress and insecurity. “Unavoidable feelings if you want to involve in acting’. "You will always feel this way. Acting is a mystery ... Acting techniques are chaotic." “You have to study and practice, study and practice, study and practice and yet you will never be confident..." No thank you, not for me... It is only natural that I wouldn't accept this crappy theory! We are young, though mature professionals with respect on what we provide to our audience. If 1 was not to be absolutely certain about my acting tools I was never again willing to perform, although, acting is crucial lifeblood for me.This realization gave birth to the need to clear up this mess. I initially started studying all acting techniques by scratch. Although, I was now a successful young actress, I felt the need to start from the beginning. This is when I discovered that I was not alone having these thoughts... Inexperienced young actors, friends, my students, colleagues and others had the same fears and the same insecurities due to inability of composing the puzzle. This eBook is an outcome of all this research. A large part of my creativity has now been devoted to making all this knowledge explicit and accessible to as many people as possible. And it IS working © What is the "Common belief" that | hate... It is a common belief that one should read and study many years or even decades to fully understand acting techniques. And, even then, they will still have many uncertainties. They say you have to experience pain and hardness to be an actor and that you have to reach 20 years of experience to have the right to discuss acting techniques. They also say that the techniques are a mess and that years of practicing are needed to clear them up in one’s mind, Well, this is 2013 and I cannot accept that it is so difficult to learn a little bit of history and understand a few complex concepts. Many acting schools and many directors are playing with our intelligence by leaving the impression that they acquire knowledge that we WILL obtain IF we are lucky and wise and not sooner than two decades from now. Things ARE simple. They DO have continuity. The creators of acting techniques responded to questions and needs that are natural and that we also face as artists. The answers not only they exist, but they are valuable and essential for our profession. They are made to unlock the true and freer artistic self. This is priceless. The outcome is safety, freedom, happiness and smile in front of every difficulty, every challenge, every audition, every director, every role, every play. Just by knowing that everything is teachable, I hope that you already feel more confident and fearless. So let's start.The Basic Acting Techniques. CONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKY Al acting schools nowadays study and discuss, develop, use, modify, contradict and reject or extol and faithfully follow Stanislavsky's System. It possible to discuss about acting without somehow referring to Stanislavsky. In Stanislavsky's era, teaching drama in schools was limited to actors’ physical education (ballet, fencing) or in learning intonation and gestures. Directing and acting was based on posturing, bombast and melodrama. Theatrical scripts had often a sketch of the corresponding "correct" pose drawn on each page, a pose that the actor should mimic. Stanislavsky had the need to capture real life on stage, to create a system that would give the actor the same energy and the same inspiration needed every night, in every show, so as to perform again and again with the legitimate and idealized quality and with absolute plausibility Such a true representation of real life was impossible with the use of existing systems that prevailed in his time. His displeasure towards them and towards their results, forced him to start experimenting with exercises focusing on the inner of the actor, the actor's feelings and their personal experiences. His original studies of techniques led to the use of "Emotional Memory" that required actors to trigger the emotions of their characters internally. This technique was based on a French psychologist ‘Théodule Ribot’s concept of “Affective Memory". ‘As years went by, Stanislavsky realized that something was missing. He observed that actors’ mental preparations for their roles did not coincide with their physical performances on stage. They had spent most of their time reviewing their scripts and rehearsing their characters through internal and mental practices, but their performances were lacking physical and emotional believabilty.AA shift in his technique was needed for actors to produce more realistic emotions. This realization was also severely underscored when his talented student Michael Chekhov experimented with "Emotional Memory" and had a nervous breakdown. All the above led him to the next and final phase of his System, the "Method of Physical Actions”. According to the "Method of Physical Actions", each action of the actor on stage must be justified by a deeper target and has a psychological background. ‘So, what do we have: ‘Step One: The basis for any improvisation is the actor's life experiences. Before starting to rehearse or improvise an actor focuses, retrieves similar personal memories and examines the feelings that arise. The actor must also have a holistic picture of the situation and use the imagination to create a whole state of things around at the time. Why is that happening, what happened before, what happens next, who is the character (Write a Full Bio), which are the objects present in the room. ‘Step Two: After this psychological and sentimental analysis, the actor should finally find the corresponding posture - action that reflects the character's feeling. Which is the posture — action of someone crying, being very happy, being arrogant, anxious, etc.? ‘Thus, the actor has completed the steps of the process of bodily reactions. ‘A few months before his death he told his assistants that the path to glory can be found by working from the internal (the inside out) as well as the external (the outside in),MICHAEL CHEKHOV Michael Chekhov was Stanislavsky's most clever and brilliant student. It was he who helped more than anyone in the evolution of the Stanislavsky's System and was present in all experiments of the great master. The ideas that Michael Chekhov developed are classified by many as extremely brilliant and innovative, not only for his time, but even nowadays. ‘As a student of the great master, itis only natural that Chekhov would develop his technique in large part as a response to Stanislavsky's System. However, having a bad experience from the exercise of "Emotional Memory" and practicing for years with Stanislavsky’s techniques, he gradually moved away from them and developed his own one. Michael Chekhov believed that aside from the body the actor's greatest tools were his intuition, imagination and artistic visi He worked with Stanislavsky at The Moscow Art Theater, but he really took the work on imagination and psychology to another level, helping his students create truly inspired performances. He suggested to Stanislavsky to replace the "Emotional Memory" with imagination exercises, providing as an argument that the "Emotional Memory" restricts the actor to the limits of his personal life. According to Stanislavsky the actor should ask "How would I behave if I were the hero?" According to Michael Chekhov the actor should ask "How does the character behave itself in our imagination?" According to Chekhov actors are here to interpret and not to imitate life, to reveal its hidden meaning. Therefore, they should play with ease, bring beauty and shape to their creative expression and see the overall picture of projects, stage and theater. These skills will make them capable of carrying reality on stage and create an atmosphere that will enclose them and the viewers. Michael Chekhov is the first to analyze and invent exercises for the energy centers in the body of the actor. ‘An actor should learn how to radiate, how to express the character's energy center and how to create a global atmosphere. He is the creator of the famous exercise "Psychol exercises that constitute a rare mine for an artist. I Gesture” and many moreLEE STRASBERG Lee Strasberg had not yet decided that he wanted to deal with acting exclusively, until he saw the play of Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre that had traveled to tour in America, in 1923, ‘That night was 2 revelation for him that would shape the rest of his life. Two former actors of the Moscow Art Theatre stayed in America and opened the ‘American Laboratory Theatre, after the tour of the show. In 1925 Strasberg, joined in as a student and would prove to be more than any other student he who would cultivate the seed of Stanislavsky's System. During the next decades Strasberg's technique and work will travel around the world and the ing identifies with the name "Method", the name of Lee Strasberg's system, founder of the famous Actors Studio. modern film ‘As a theorist of art and a drama teacher has probably caused the greatest influence on American theater and cinema, Strasberg focused mainly on the first part of Stanislavsky's System. He used improvisation, a lot of relaxation and sense memory exercises and above all the "Emotional Memory" exercise. He even asked the actor to be completely released from the text, not to learn by heart. Strasberg wanted actors to improvise on “given circumstances" and to create their own exclusive dialogues so as to inspire their imagination and better derive their own personal memories from their own past life. Finally, he wanted the feelings that arose displayed on the play's character. After all this process, and as soon as the actors felt perfectly connected with their own experiences and Understood the role's feelings from within, they could eventually learn the text, with their own pure organic way. This was an attitude that since 1934, caused a lot of debate and disagreements within the Group Theater, but had a severe impact on the future of American acting.STELLA ADLER ‘When Stella Adler was entering a classroom, the actors of New York would all rise without second thought and applaud. They had a member of the intellectual aristocracy before them. Stella Adler, an astonishing woman, an actress and a teacher, is the only ‘American ever to have been instructed by Stanislavsky himself. ‘She visited Paris and studied daily beside him for many months. Upon her retum from the private lessons with Stanislavsky, took issue with Strasberg's use of “Substitution” - that is, the technique of drawing on personal experiences to produce a believable emotional result, and the use of "Emotional Memory". She informed Strasberg about the evolution of Stanislavsky’s System and about his new theory, the "Method of Physical Actions". She also noted that Stanislavsky himself had been distancing from the use of the "Emotional Memory”. Strasberg never accepted this "new" theory and continued his dogmatic devotion to the use of personal memories and experiences. Therefore, the gap between Stella Adler and Strasberg on the interpretation of Stanislavsky's techniques deepened. Adler advocated instead a practice of "Living in the Moment” using your partner and a belief in the "imagined circumstances", to create an emotional result. She believed that if an actor studied the text and stayed “present” in the imaginary conditions of the play, the emotions in the script would eventually surface organically ‘She deeply supported the full understanding of the ideas of the play and not the recalling of similar personal experiences of the actors. She wanted to work with the imagination and not the memory. "To think the death of your mother every time you want to cry on stage is madness", she said. Stella Adler believed that an actor's talent lies within his imagination, training of the mind, epic size. "You can't be boring," she told her students. "Life is boring. The weather is boring. Actors cannot be boring." 10She noted that actors must primarily work to renew the belief that a human being has power and beauty. Having theater as a basis, she described with caustic language and quarrelsome humor the indifference, the bad effect of getting used to life, everyday's actions and mediocrity, offering a valuable guide for each artist to Use to tackle his art, every human being their lives. uSANFORD MEISNER Sanford Meisner was the third and final member of the great triumvirate who pioneered Stanislavsky’s System in America. When Strasberg and two other directors founded the Group Theatre in 1931, Meisner was one of the twenty-eight actors chosen to form the company. Strasberg remained a huge influence on Meisner, acting as a tutor and mentor. When Stella Adler returned from Paris and her subsequent disagreement with Strasberg over the proper way to teach Stanislavsky’s System led to the Group's disintegration in 1940, Meisner went on to head the acting program at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse, where he would begin developing a teaching method of his own. The Meisner Technique, as it would come to be called, was of course influenced by Meisner’s work with the Group and his training with Strasberg - but it owed even more to the revelations Adler had brought back to America in 1934 concerning the use of the imagination. Like many other members of the Group, Meisner had grown frustrated with Strasberg's dogmatic insistence of the use of Emotional Memory. Meisner believed that "the fantasy of daydreaming” is much more powerful and reliable than the use of sense memory or emotional memories from our own past. Following Adler’s lead, Meisner shifted his focus to the use of the imagination and a belief in the circumstances of the play. Same as Adler, Meisner wanted his students to be “in the moment” onstage. Perhaps the crucial difference between the two techniques is that Adler put a great deal of emphasis on script work, while Meisner focused primarily on physical actions and improvisation - “an ounce of behavior is worth more than a pound of words,” as he once said. The primary goal of the Meisner Technique - in Meisner’s own famous words - is to get actors to “live truthfully under imaginary circumstances”. Rather than making a decision ahead of time about how to Play an action or emotion, Meisner emphasized a more organic process - the performance of a simple action, for instance, around which emotion and subtext would grow. In one of Meisner’s best-known exercises - known as “Repetition” - for instance, one actor makes a spontaneous comment based on his or her partner‘s improvised behavior. This comment is then repeated back and forth between the two actors until it changes on its own. The objective of this exercise was always to react truthfully and not simply to change for the sake of change. 2This principle of never doing or saying anything until something happens to make you do or say it is central to the Meisner Technique. The questions "what are you playing?" and "what are you doing?” are asked frequently, in order to remind actors to commit themselves to playing what Stanislavsky called a "task" or “objective,” rather than focusing on the words of a play's dialogue. ‘The Meisner technique was meant to train actors to reach a new level of truth. Meisner wanted to eliminate relying on one's emotions and mind and he wanted to enrich focusing on the instinct of acting, the action of the drama. BSo, this is Goodbye ... @ 1 hope you enjoyed and cleared up a lot of scattered and incomplete information. This is the goal of "Acting How?" team, so we will keep on working on that! Please send feedback if you feel so: dimitrasyrou@actinghow.com Your questions, comments, ideas are valuable to me! And instead of summing up, just a little Dimitra's goodbye... Do not let anyone say you cannot be an actor. If this is what you want you WILL GET IT! Everybody CAN do exactly what they want. This is a fact. Do not think otherwise. It is a waste of time. ‘You don't have to suffer to become an actor. This profession certainly requires inner research, self-awareness, sometimes tough and in-depth self analysis. But we can, and as professionals we must, involve in all these with the right tools, theories and knowledge. MYTH: "The art of acting belongs to the talented ones.” NO, there are NO talented ones! The art of expressing oneself through the body, voice, mind, feelings belongs to everybody. It's life itself. We all have the ability to express ourselves in a remarkably free way. Free expression is the source of health. It is the accurate tools and knowledge that lead to this source. All my best wishes to you to lead yourself to wherever you really love, where you can be free and bright! 2013 Powered by "Acting How?" Author: Dimitra Sqpou Copyright © Dimitra Syrou & ActingHow? “4