Acting technique, line readings, stage business and personal experiences of the actors themselves. I, myself, as an actor, have often found that the rehearsal period is almost the most interesting part of acting, the most creative part. It is there that you use your instruments, both external and internal. The external instruments, of course, are your voice with which you speak the words, and your body, your appearance with which you enter, sit down, get up, walk to the window, turn around and exit. Thats all an actor has, just his voice and his body. But inside, of course, he has his own temperament, his own character, his own likes and dislikes, his own prejudices, his background, his education, the lessons hes learned from other actors and from directors and the experiences of his life, which he can draw on in parallel situations in the play. Now, you will see in these rehearsal scenes coming up, a number of very interesting things. Mr. Patrick stewart is first seen in character, in
The preproduction work includes discussion of motivation, acting technique, line readings, stage business and personal experiences of the actors themselves. I, myself, as an actor, have often found that the rehearsal period is almost the most interesting part of acting, the most creative part. It is there that you use your instruments, both external and internal. The external instruments, of course, are your voice with which you speak the words, and your body, your appearance with which you enter, sit down, get up, walk to the window, turn around and exit. Thats all an actor has, just his voice and his body. But inside, of course, he has his own temperament, his own character, his own likes and dislikes, his own prejudices, his background, his education, the lessons hes learned from other actors and from directors and the experiences of his life, which he can draw on in parallel situations in the play. Now, you will see in these rehearsal scenes coming up, a number of very interesting
Macbeth is the shortest of shakespeares dramas and has this swiftest tempo. Everything in this play happens very fast. Once the plays movement begins, and it does at once, it never slackens. Each event, each episode of the plot falls on the heels of its predecessor. There are no pauses, such, for example, as the gravedigger scene in hamlet. No comic relief, with the possible exception of the drunken porter in that almost unbearably tense scene of the knocking at the gate. Shakespeare is all business here, a fact that is further intensified in our shortened television version. In great part, this accelerated tempo is the result of shakespeares use of what we call dramatic foreshortening, that is, his device of telescoping, crowding together into a short space of time events that have actually taken place over a considerable period of time. One point where the device seems to give trouble to viewers is in the swiftness with which macbeth acts on the witches prophecy. They see him encount
A name doesnt convey ones personal history, real and imagined, ones dreams, nightmares, personal quirks, the demons that haunt, but also reveal. It was strindbergs interest in the psychological and in the strange new method of expressing it dramatically that gives him a special place in theater history and has made his influence felt by every major playwright of the 20th century. In the late 19th century, concern for psychological truth in the arts paralleled freuds investigation of the subconscious. Painters were finding ways to express strong emotions in pictures, which bore little resemblance to surface truth. Composers were experimenting with strange new sounds. And some playwrights were creating scenes that revealed the subtle depths and ambiguities of the mind. Were you invited for this evening . The ability to depict surface truth in the sense that a photograph looks real, had only recently come into the theatre which for most of its history had not had and did not seek the tech
This ability to observe in an impartial way is characteristic of an important russian playwright of the 19th century, anton chehkov, a physician who wrote short stories and plays, which depicted people as neither heroic nor foolish. Indeed, chehkovs plays seemed plotless to viewers expecting a conventional, single action. Instead, emphasis is on people and atmosphere in many small stories. In his plays as in real life, theres not necessarily one outstanding moment of supreme significance, nothing compared, for instance, to the moment when the traditional hero learns some overwhelming truth about the universe. Some of chehkovs people achieve understanding, others remain trapped in self delusion. There are important events, but they take place offstage. There are extramarital affairs, a fatal duel, a devastating fire. The sensational is avoided in favor of personal reflection. People rarely confront each other or respond directly. In chehkov, the people and their individual reactions to