Stanislavsky said we shouldn't slavishly follow his system, but should create our own.
Boleslavsky, a student of Stanislavsky, brought his teacher's ideas to America.
Ivana Chubbuck claims that if you go to her school, and/or follow her advice, you will be a winning or successful actor. On the other hand, Boleslavsky claims in his book, Acting; The First Six Lessons, "Art cannot be taught. To posses an art means to possess talent' and he adds "Talent can be developed, but cannot be created" Chubbuck insists one must always do or not do this or that. In other words, she makes hard and fast rules N actora must follow to "win" whereas BOESLAVKY writes:"The only real rules in art are the rules that we discover for ourselves."
I believe Chubbuck occasionally gives the acting student good advice , and she is certainly well informed from her years of experience looking at films, TV serials, and stage plays. In my last post I implied that, by and large, film and video were less concerned with art than live theatre. Perhaps I was overlooking the value of the media which Boleslavsky reminds us can be viewed and re-viewed, and leave lasting records of great performances by actors like Lawrence Olivier, Irene Worth, James Dean, Barbara Stanwyck, Meryl Streep, Humphrey Bogart, etc. Other arts, architecture, sculpture, painting, writing, by there nature, have means to preserve the great works, but the performing arts, music, dance, theatre, had left no permanent traces before Edison and others created recordings and movies. We haveno idea what the performances of music and acting, and dance of 5th century BC Athens. When the "talkies" came along, we now have the means of making records of actor's and director's art. And some of these movies are most certainly works of art.The literary creatons of the great playwrights from Euripides and Sophocles to O'Neill and Albee have a permanence that performing artists lacked before recent times.
Acting for movies and television is very different than acting before a live audience. Scenes are broken up and are rarely filmed in the order they will finally appear. Even short scenes are frequently interrupted. I have had bit parts in a few films. I was a Boston cop in a film called Mission Hill. My very small role was to visit the next of kin of a young man who was killed during a high speed car chase. After bringing the bad news to his mother and sister, my partner and I were filmed leaving a Boston tripple-decker and driving off in the police car. In that scene I had no lines to speak, but we had to repeat the scene five times. Several times I drove the car around the block to return where the director and cine-photographer were, and each tme was told to do it again. No other directions. I had no idea what I was doing wrong. The fifth time there was cheering when we returned to the scene, and for some reason it was "a wrap." What was different in the final attempt was the changing light as the sun was setting. The blinking left signal light gave the effect the director wanted in the dimming light. Was this acting? Would I have done it better had I more acting lessons? Other experiences in film were similar. I died in an HBO film about the Coconut Grove nightclub fire. In a film about the woman's Suffrage movement called Under This Sky,I was a Kansas farmer one snowy day in Rhode Island. In the fire I died several times, and I listened to Irene Worth's short talk about why women ought to have the vote from early morning to late afternoon. Had I read Chubbuck and taken her advice before filming Under This Sky, I would have tried to make Ms Worth "want to like me" so that I would be asked to play a larger part in subsequent scenes. As it was, I did get to have lunch with her. Lunch is a major part of the movie making tradition. Bit playrs are not paid very much. T he guy in the "Kansas" scene got 6 times as much as I because he had a mule to tend. In the final edited movie, that scene would have lasted less than 5 minutes.
Another difference between movies and live theatre is in the writing. Plays are copyrighted. You cannot produce a play that is still under copyright without permission and agreeing to pay the royalty for the use of its "intellectual property." Screenplays are not regarded as art and art and not usually copyrighted. You can download screenplays of even recent movies. Some screenplays are written by committees, and unless you are Robert Reford or a Paul Neumanm yu have to follow a precise formula. Your screenplay has to have tree acts, be typewritten (or at least use Courier fonts so that they look like they were typewritten) and the pages have to be fastened together with those old fashioned brass clips inserted into three hole punched pages. The scripts have to be 120 pages long, as they estimate that one page of a script equals one minute of film, and movies are supposed to last two hours, unless they are comedies,which can be one and a half hours long. Screenplays are often reworked from day to day and not followed word for word as the movies evolve in the editing rooms.
Even so, some great scripts ave been written, not all of them abiding to the usual formula. The film script for Casablanca was written one day at a time while the movie was been filmed. Actors had no idea what their lines would be until they showed up for the filming. But then, not every screenwriter had Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart to write lines for! You can download the Casablanca script of free on line. Where else can you get a great work of art for nothing?
Friday, January 22, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Power of the Actor, CHapters 1 - 3
I have to say that I have begun to appreciate the required text, The Power of the Actor, by Ivana Chubbuck, who I had mistaken for being a man in an earlier blog. Evidently she has had an influence on many successful actors who have taken her classes or have turned to her for help in winning a role in a movie or sit-com.
Few of her examples refer to the stage. Perhaps it is because a movie or an episode in a sit-com once done is done. She gives an example of a young actress who made her one episode role into a character that demanded to be continued in further episodes, by making her bit part seductive and hot, and sex sells. Subsequent scripts were written to make room for her reappearances. In a play, if the young woman playing Desdemona decided on her own to make Hamlet want her, so he would not tell her "to get thee to a nunnery," chances are subsequent performances would not have her character a winner of her SCENE OBJECTIVE to seduce Hamlet and avoid suicide.
On the other hand, actors can have a considerable influence on the final script while rehearsing for the premier performances of plays. The playwright is most fortunate to work with a company of actors from one play to the next. Shakespeare had this advantage with the Globe players. His Falstaff character once created by the collaboration of the playwright and his actor, demanded to be featured in further plays by the Bard. Ms Chubbuck does occasionally cite examples from plays, like The Glass Menangeie, but for the most part she is Hollywood based, which makes her claims to help actors to"win" more understandable, as film and television unlike theatre, are primarily, commercial enterprises and secondarily intended to be works of art.
Chubbuck's chapter on Scene Objectives is quite good, for the most part, even though her examples of objectives are too often "to get another to like me" or "to get another to want to make love to me," and the like. And she tends to make universal claims that always apply. For example, on page 35 she says in determining your OBJECTIVES, "Always Make Selfish Choices" and continues: "To help another selflessly can make you feel good, but it doesn't have heat to it because there's nothing personally at risk for you." While this may be true at times, to claim that one should "Always" be selfish is certainly questionable.
Her chapter on OBSTACLES is very good, and loaded with examples of what she calls the three kinds of obstacles: physical, mental and emotional. Again, she occasionally goes overboard with her superlatives, like when she claims the more obstacles the better. I recently saw the film, Pursuit of Happyness, where the character played by Will Smith had so many obstacles to overcome to achieve his goal of getting a high paying job so he can establish a good, stress free, home for his son that is is extremely stressful to watch. And then when he gets this desired position, it is as a Wall Street stockbroker, which is perhaps one of the most frantic and stressful jobs imaginable. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Few of her examples refer to the stage. Perhaps it is because a movie or an episode in a sit-com once done is done. She gives an example of a young actress who made her one episode role into a character that demanded to be continued in further episodes, by making her bit part seductive and hot, and sex sells. Subsequent scripts were written to make room for her reappearances. In a play, if the young woman playing Desdemona decided on her own to make Hamlet want her, so he would not tell her "to get thee to a nunnery," chances are subsequent performances would not have her character a winner of her SCENE OBJECTIVE to seduce Hamlet and avoid suicide.
On the other hand, actors can have a considerable influence on the final script while rehearsing for the premier performances of plays. The playwright is most fortunate to work with a company of actors from one play to the next. Shakespeare had this advantage with the Globe players. His Falstaff character once created by the collaboration of the playwright and his actor, demanded to be featured in further plays by the Bard. Ms Chubbuck does occasionally cite examples from plays, like The Glass Menangeie, but for the most part she is Hollywood based, which makes her claims to help actors to"win" more understandable, as film and television unlike theatre, are primarily, commercial enterprises and secondarily intended to be works of art.
Chubbuck's chapter on Scene Objectives is quite good, for the most part, even though her examples of objectives are too often "to get another to like me" or "to get another to want to make love to me," and the like. And she tends to make universal claims that always apply. For example, on page 35 she says in determining your OBJECTIVES, "Always Make Selfish Choices" and continues: "To help another selflessly can make you feel good, but it doesn't have heat to it because there's nothing personally at risk for you." While this may be true at times, to claim that one should "Always" be selfish is certainly questionable.
Her chapter on OBSTACLES is very good, and loaded with examples of what she calls the three kinds of obstacles: physical, mental and emotional. Again, she occasionally goes overboard with her superlatives, like when she claims the more obstacles the better. I recently saw the film, Pursuit of Happyness, where the character played by Will Smith had so many obstacles to overcome to achieve his goal of getting a high paying job so he can establish a good, stress free, home for his son that is is extremely stressful to watch. And then when he gets this desired position, it is as a Wall Street stockbroker, which is perhaps one of the most frantic and stressful jobs imaginable. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Three Plays in Six Weeks
Sometimes I can't write a thing. I'm like an artist with a blank canvas and no scene, model or still life to inspire me. But I have been on a tare of late, and finished three plays in six weeks. Granted, two of the plays are only ten minutes or so long.
The first play was the one I mentioned in an earlier blog about John Milton in prison writing Paradise Lost. I titled it Satan and Me. My working title was Reason to Rebel, the name of my grandson's band, out in San Diego, which seemed to fit my play as Milton's justiication for the trial and overthrow of the king of England is mirrored in his apparent justification of Lucifer's attempt to overthrow God in his epic poem, but I knew I would not continue with the plagiarism of my grandson's title in the final naming of my play on words. I called it Satan and Me because my hunch is Milton identified with his angelic, albeit fallen, character.
The second play I titled Anything A Man Can do... a phrase which would be immediately followed in some people's minds with the phrase "a woman can do better." Edna St. Vincent Millay is often referred to as the "New Woman" because of her rebellion against all the restrictions placed upon 19th and early 20th century women. The Suffragettes won the vote for women; VIncent, as Millay preferred to be called, won the right to act like men, including smoking and drinking and having affairs. Many of her early poems resonated with other women's feelings of rebellion. Millay, of course, also wrote great poetry, and did better than many men in doing so.
The third play was in response to an invitation to participate in a sort of competition. A friend of mine, Bob Richardson, whose musical, Lighthouse, I co-authored, emailed me an Opportunity for Playwrights flier. Thomas Moser, whose chairs have become world famous, is also a patron of the arts. He has an art gallery at his headquarters it seems, and he annually sponsors a competition in which people are asked to submit 10 minute plays which will be performed in the Spring in Kennebunk. The catch is the plays have to have as one of the principle characters a Thomas Moser chair! Well at first I just laughed and was about to toss the flier, when I had an idea, and I wrote my ten minute play in little more than ten minutes. I paid homage to the author of Waiting For Godot and titled the play Waiting For the Chairman.
The first play was the one I mentioned in an earlier blog about John Milton in prison writing Paradise Lost. I titled it Satan and Me. My working title was Reason to Rebel, the name of my grandson's band, out in San Diego, which seemed to fit my play as Milton's justiication for the trial and overthrow of the king of England is mirrored in his apparent justification of Lucifer's attempt to overthrow God in his epic poem, but I knew I would not continue with the plagiarism of my grandson's title in the final naming of my play on words. I called it Satan and Me because my hunch is Milton identified with his angelic, albeit fallen, character.
The second play I titled Anything A Man Can do... a phrase which would be immediately followed in some people's minds with the phrase "a woman can do better." Edna St. Vincent Millay is often referred to as the "New Woman" because of her rebellion against all the restrictions placed upon 19th and early 20th century women. The Suffragettes won the vote for women; VIncent, as Millay preferred to be called, won the right to act like men, including smoking and drinking and having affairs. Many of her early poems resonated with other women's feelings of rebellion. Millay, of course, also wrote great poetry, and did better than many men in doing so.
The third play was in response to an invitation to participate in a sort of competition. A friend of mine, Bob Richardson, whose musical, Lighthouse, I co-authored, emailed me an Opportunity for Playwrights flier. Thomas Moser, whose chairs have become world famous, is also a patron of the arts. He has an art gallery at his headquarters it seems, and he annually sponsors a competition in which people are asked to submit 10 minute plays which will be performed in the Spring in Kennebunk. The catch is the plays have to have as one of the principle characters a Thomas Moser chair! Well at first I just laughed and was about to toss the flier, when I had an idea, and I wrote my ten minute play in little more than ten minutes. I paid homage to the author of Waiting For Godot and titled the play Waiting For the Chairman.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
play production class
I signed up or another class at U Rock, the local branch of the University of Maine Augusta here in Rockland. I have had several years of graduate study at the University of Chicago and elsewhere, but I still like to take a class now and then for what i can learn and for the fun of it. I take them for credits I don't need. Robert Frost once said writing poetry without rhyme is like playing tennis with the net down. Although I sometimes write blank verse, I believe that taking classes without credit is like having obstacles removed.
The course I am taking is titled PlAY PRODUCTION, and I thought it would be about the elements of producing plays, like directing, casting, blocking, and back stage things like sets, lighting, sound, etc. To my surprise it is an acting class. Although I have some experience as an actor, I have never taken an acting class, so I decided to stay at least for a few classes because I had googled the instructor, Jonathan Potter, and on the basis of his extensive resume, felt I could learn a lot from him, and in the process possibly find some actors who might help me cast two or three plays I hope to produce this year.
The first class was great fun, We started by introducing ourseleves to each of the other students, followed by some breathing and stretching etc,. Some of these games required me to drop to the floor and get up again. I HAVE GREAT TROUBLE WITH THIS. I can get to the floor in stages but cannot sit on my but there or lie on my back, and can get up if there is a chair or something to hold onto. I am only 77, but feel older when I have to get up from the floor. After a break, we did role plays. I WAS VERY MUCH IMPRESSED BY THE TALENTS OF MY CLASSMATES. They quickly assumed roles in conflict situations, and sometimes were humorous and sometimes poignant, In each of the assigned roles, we were asked to not give in but to stick to our predetermined goals. As a one time mediator, and an often successful catalyst for resolving conflicts, I was not entirely comfortable playing a role where I had to not find a way to resolve the conflicts we found ourselves in. As a playwright, I would have to create characters who had goals that were achievable only if the character is able to overcome obstacles and discover ways to resolve such conflicts. However, as short dramatic events, they were very successful, and each pair of role players was cheered on by the rest of the class, which was refreshingly free of high ego driven competition.
We were assigned a text, Power of the Actor, and told that some of the grade weight would be based on the text, There will be two performances, the first a monolog ( possible auditioning material?) and the second a short play or scene, presented to an audience.
I ordered the text from Amazon.com, and while waiting for its arrival began to read Potter's copy of Joe Navarro's What Every BODY Is Saying. It is an eye opening book, I had always been aware of body language, but never thought to read peoples feet. It is a fast read, and ought to be a great help to actors and directors who can be bilingual, or bi-corpual as it were, and speak not only the lines tripingly off the tongue but also reinforce the lines with learned body language.
Yesterday the required text arrived, and i read the introduction. Ie reminded me of the TV salesman selling NOT FOR SALE IN STORES items. 'BUT WAIT!' THERE;S MORE!, read this today and we will DOUBLE the offer." The author was not only full of himself but overflowing with his incredible death defying accomplishments, and his claims tha he would teach actors to WIN. Win what? Academy awards? Might be a good read for actors who want to make martial arts movies or car chase flicks. Turned me off. HOWEVER, I will plow through it before the end of the semester like a 'good' student.
Looking forward to the next class.
The course I am taking is titled PlAY PRODUCTION, and I thought it would be about the elements of producing plays, like directing, casting, blocking, and back stage things like sets, lighting, sound, etc. To my surprise it is an acting class. Although I have some experience as an actor, I have never taken an acting class, so I decided to stay at least for a few classes because I had googled the instructor, Jonathan Potter, and on the basis of his extensive resume, felt I could learn a lot from him, and in the process possibly find some actors who might help me cast two or three plays I hope to produce this year.
The first class was great fun, We started by introducing ourseleves to each of the other students, followed by some breathing and stretching etc,. Some of these games required me to drop to the floor and get up again. I HAVE GREAT TROUBLE WITH THIS. I can get to the floor in stages but cannot sit on my but there or lie on my back, and can get up if there is a chair or something to hold onto. I am only 77, but feel older when I have to get up from the floor. After a break, we did role plays. I WAS VERY MUCH IMPRESSED BY THE TALENTS OF MY CLASSMATES. They quickly assumed roles in conflict situations, and sometimes were humorous and sometimes poignant, In each of the assigned roles, we were asked to not give in but to stick to our predetermined goals. As a one time mediator, and an often successful catalyst for resolving conflicts, I was not entirely comfortable playing a role where I had to not find a way to resolve the conflicts we found ourselves in. As a playwright, I would have to create characters who had goals that were achievable only if the character is able to overcome obstacles and discover ways to resolve such conflicts. However, as short dramatic events, they were very successful, and each pair of role players was cheered on by the rest of the class, which was refreshingly free of high ego driven competition.
We were assigned a text, Power of the Actor, and told that some of the grade weight would be based on the text, There will be two performances, the first a monolog ( possible auditioning material?) and the second a short play or scene, presented to an audience.
I ordered the text from Amazon.com, and while waiting for its arrival began to read Potter's copy of Joe Navarro's What Every BODY Is Saying. It is an eye opening book, I had always been aware of body language, but never thought to read peoples feet. It is a fast read, and ought to be a great help to actors and directors who can be bilingual, or bi-corpual as it were, and speak not only the lines tripingly off the tongue but also reinforce the lines with learned body language.
Yesterday the required text arrived, and i read the introduction. Ie reminded me of the TV salesman selling NOT FOR SALE IN STORES items. 'BUT WAIT!' THERE;S MORE!, read this today and we will DOUBLE the offer." The author was not only full of himself but overflowing with his incredible death defying accomplishments, and his claims tha he would teach actors to WIN. Win what? Academy awards? Might be a good read for actors who want to make martial arts movies or car chase flicks. Turned me off. HOWEVER, I will plow through it before the end of the semester like a 'good' student.
Looking forward to the next class.
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