http://www.bardblog.com/vivacious-verse/ Quips, Quibbles, Queries, and Quarks from a Quirky Bardolator Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:02:30 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://www.bardblog.com/vivacious-verse/comment-page-1/#comment-820 JM Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:04:19 +0000 http://www.bardblog.com/?p=376#comment-820 Learn how to handle the words and "The Words Will Act You". A concept I learned at Riverside. It's been one of my maxims in acting, teaching, and directing, ever since. My daughter, much against the wise advice of her dad, pursued and now has a degree in Theatre Performance. Her laments to me during the process of getting that degree were many times exemplary of what it is to "know more than your teacher". Their focus was not at all on the words, but on spending more time focusing on "subtext". (Very SUB indeed) Her professors often wondered why she seemed "ahead of things" in the process of rehearsal as they saw it. Simply, because of her attention to the words at the outset, she was ready to start "acting" them long before the rest. And that knowledge carried over into performance. When she entered, whether it was Wilde or Shakespeare or something more modern, the TEMPO of the whole piece picked up noticeably--and so did the attention of the audience. This is not the "Grand Secret" unfortunately preserved as such by the stubborn and willful, who still focus on the "popular notion" of what acting might be all about, and wonder why those British actors seem to "have the knack". Learn how to handle the words and “The Words Will Act You”. A concept I learned at Riverside. It’s been one of my maxims in acting, teaching, and directing, ever since. My daughter, much against the wise advice of her dad, pursued and now has a degree in Theatre Performance. Her laments to me during the process of getting that degree were many times exemplary of what it is to “know more than your teacher”. Their focus was not at all on the words, but on spending more time focusing on “subtext”. (Very SUB indeed) Her professors often wondered why she seemed “ahead of things” in the process of rehearsal as they saw it. Simply, because of her attention to the words at the outset, she was ready to start “acting” them long before the rest. And that knowledge carried over into performance. When she entered, whether it was Wilde or Shakespeare or something more modern, the TEMPO of the whole piece picked up noticeably–and so did the attention of the audience. This is not the “Grand Secret” unfortunately preserved as such by the stubborn and willful, who still focus on the “popular notion” of what acting might be all about, and wonder why those British actors seem to “have the knack”.

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