Day 22...

Day 22: I am thankful that performing is my passion. It's a funny thing to be thankful for I know, but I just feel lucky that what I love to has the power to bring happiness to so many others. 

Day 21...

Day 21: I am thankful that I have witnessed a true act of kindness today. Merry Christmas.

Day 20...

Day 20: I am thankful to be spending Christmas Eve with my mom.

Day 19...

Day 19: I am thankful I live so close to such an amazing city.

Day 18...

Day 18: I am thankful for movies that make me cry.

Day 17...

Day 17: I am thankful that I have been given the opportunity to work on such an amazing part!

Day 16...

Day 16: I am thankful that the longest audition of my life is over! It's important to remember that all things come to an end, good and bad.

Day 15...

Day 15: I am thankful I made art today. It sounds silly I know but you really have no idea how it can improve your mood; it can even make your whole day! Everyone should make art. Could you imagine what this world would be like if people created as much as they destroyed?

Day 14...

Day 14: I am thankful I have so many things to look forward to. Christmas, Winter Break, the Musical, being able to see my family- it's going to be a good couple of weeks.

Day 13...

Day 13: I am thankful that I am healthy.

Day 12...

Day 12: I am thankful that even my worst days, aren't that bad. After all, they only last 24 hours. 

Day 11...

Day 11: I am thankful that I can dance today.

Day 10...

Day 10: I am thankful that I am alive. Every moment we have. Every breath we breathe. Every second spent with those we love. It's a blessing. 

Today innocent little kids lost their lives, and I have no words. My prayers go out to the victims and their families.

Day 9...

Day 9: I am thankful that I have a mom and a sister with whom I share the same passion. 

Day 8...

Day 8: I am thankful I can come home after a long day and have a nice hot meal waiting for me.

Day 7...

Day 7: I am thankful that Tuesday's are generally relaxing days. It's nice to have a day for myself.

Day 6...

Day 6: I am thankful that we have so many great people in the theatre department. Everyone's so nice and talented. It's humbling.

Day 5...

Day 5: I am thankful that a single moment can change my whole day.

Day 4...

Day 4: I'm thankful that I have people in my life who can make me laugh until it hurts. After all, laughter is the best medicine.

Day 3...

Day 3: I'm thankful to not only have had such an amazing teacher, but to have been able to meet such an extraordinary person.

Day 2...

Day 2: I'm thankful for songs that make you cry.

Day 1..

I never blog, and I don't even know why, because I really do like to write. Maybe it's that I just like writing fiction, or maybe I'm lazy. Or maybe I just don't think what I have to say really interests anyone. I think it's a combination of all three.  But I have found a solution. I guess you could say it's a daily practice. I've been inspired by the holiday season, and have decided I need to remind myself of how great my life is, and how lucky I am. So, as my daily practice I am going to post one thing everyday for a whole year, that I am thankful for. The rules aren't strict. If I miss a day, I'll just make it up the next. I can write one word or 3 paragraphs. It doesn't matter. What's important is that at the end of the year, I will have 365 reasons to be thankful, and I think that's pretty cool.

Day 1: I am thankful that I have the kind of friends that I can film a movie with for 5 hours after school. And a quite amazing movie if I do say so myself.

I am a Dancer...

What if there came a day when I could no longer dance? As I sit here watching my ballet class the question entered my mind. Of course to say that this day has come would be slightly mellow dramatic, but it's a question worthy of consideration never the less. I've always thought of myself as someone who wasn't  necessarily married to their art. Of course I love it but there are things I love more, like my family for instance. I guess you could say I consider myself one of the healthy ones... But as I sit here, unable to dance, something doesn't feel right. It's uncomfortable. It's unsettling. I don't like it. And I can't seem to get that question out of my head, so I figure, I should answer it (why not? It'll be something to keep me busy while I sit through a 2 hour ballet class). So, what what would happen if I could no longer dance? But, there is something wrong with the question itself. Its a contradiction. If I could no longer dance, than I wouldn't be "I" at all. Sabrina wouldn't exist. Well not the Sabrina I know. Sabrina is a dancer. It's who I am. It's what makes me different from all the other millions of blue eyed blonde haired smiley girls on this planet. As corny as this sounds, it's what makes me special. It's true though. To be honest, I'm not so sure if I would like myself all that much if I wasn't a dancer. It's the best part about me. It doesn't just make me who I am but it makes me better than that.
 Like I said before, I am not necessarily married to my art so if it was ever taken away from me, I'm sure I could go on. I'd have other things to enjoy, like singing or acting for example. But, it would be like a person receiving their nutrients from an IV. It would sustain them. They could live a good life. Even a great life. They could be happy, but they would never truly be satisfied. There would always be a hunger inside them that they couldn't quit shake.
I'm sitting here, trying to picture what I would look like if I wasn't a dancer. Besides being slightly out of shape there is something very wrong with my appearance. I'm not smiling. I know...a little mellow dramatic.  But, my smile is something that has become just as much as an identifier for me as my name. Again, it's what makes me, me. As Chandler from Friends would say "it's my essence."
So I guess I've answered the question, but I haven't really come up with a solution. There probably isn't one anyway. So I guess every day, will just be another day I get to dance, and hopefully that will be enough

Well this sucks...

I'm surprised I am posting this on my blog, for all to see, instead of just e-mailing it privatley. I guess self critisism, or judgement, or destruction, or whatever you want to call this is easy for me... I'm not sure if that's good or a bad.

Shot 1
Voice:
      -too quiet
      -too fast
      -No anonciation 
      -unatural quivering (forced emotion)
Face:
      -Dead eyes
      -No clear focus
      -tense

Shot 2
Voice: 
      -valley girlish
      -inappropiate for the character
      -anonciation and speed!
Face:
     -head shaking/fidgety
     -spastic eyebrows
     -too much blinking

Shot 3
Voice:
      -Awkward breathing
      -Breathy words
Face:
      -too much blinking
      -ingenuine smile
      -sense of lacking confidence= wrong for the character

Shot 4
Voice:
      -too rythmic and melodic
      -rushed
      -slurred
Face:
      -swaying
      -dead eyes
      -too much or too little smiling

Shot 5
Voice:
      -Annonciation
      -lacking emotion/variation
Face:
      -No eye contact
      -blinking
      -lack of connection

Shot 6
Voice:
      -to much for film acting
      -doesnt flow well with the other scenes
Face:
      -TOO MUCH BLINKING
      -awkwardly tense neck

Shot 7
Voice:
      -Dragging
      -Uncommitted emotion wise
Face:
      -No eye contact
      -Shaking head
      -twitching eyebrow

Shot 8
Voice:
      -SO quiet
      -no variation
      -robotic
      -repetative
Face:
      -Dead eyes
      -Unclear
      -eye contact
      -bored/tired

Shot 9:
Voice:
      -Pauses/hesitations
      -Unconvincing
Face:
      -Blinking
      -Blikning
      -BLINKING

Shot 10:
Voice:
      -Unnatural
      -Effected
Face: 
      -BLINKING!!!!!!!
      -No expression in eyes

Shot 11:
Voice:
      -Monotone
      -hard to understand
      -Lost
Face:
      -Dull
      -No eye contact
      -Relaxed completley

Inspiration...

Yes, you could definitely say I'm inspired. 

I started of the week reading a play, reading monologues, blah, blah, blah. It was boring. No, worse then that it was tedious. So I asked myself, if I'm forced to do boring and tedious work from periods 1 through 6, why on earth would I choose to do it here? So, as I often do (remember I am indecisive), I changed my mind. I decided to revisit a project I had started at the end of last year. It was a risk, but I made a choice. I would just like to point out that I am not only making decisions now but also conquering my fears (only one blog post later and I'm already working towards solving my problem). 

Not to get off topic but I would just like to say that I don't think the key is to solve my problem (I actually think that may be impossible) but to simply learn how to live with it. Kind of like an incurable disease. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger right? 

Back on the topic of inspiration, I'm pretty sure I am experiencing the best kind of inspiration there is. I am inspired by the project, nothing more, and nothing less. The simple act of doing my work is inspiring. It's a cool feeling. To catch you up, my new project is performing a scene with 6 different characters, all portrayed by me. The character's and dialogue are all from movies, all I did was arrange it in some sort of a coherent pattern. Even just writing about it gets me excited. I want to film. All I want to do is film. 

Goodbye, I'm going to go film.

Problems...

Once again, it's September. Promise, expectations, and pollen are in the air, and at the moment I'm not quit sure which of the three are the cause for my stuffy nose and headache. 

I don't think enough time has passed for things to be going well or going badly, so I guess it's indifferent? Which of course is impossible because nothing about art is indifferent, especially acting. So here I am once again, unable to make up my own mind for fear that my choice will be the wrong one. Indecisive and scared; it's a hell of a combination. Feels a little like deja vu doesn't it? I'm sitting in the same chair, making the same excuses as I have been for the past two years. Although I think I have one advantage now that I did not have before, I now the solution. Acceptance. Now, I'm not sure what good it's going to do me knowing this if I can't put my words into action (if a 1,000 words are worth a picture, then 100,000,000 words are worth an action). Well, if nothing more it's a good place to start. It's basically just applying a principle we learned in acting class. Whatever you are feeling, allow yourself to feel it. Don't fight it, accept it. If I'm feeling scared then fine, I'll be scared. I'll let it fill me up until every fiber of my being is filled with fear. 

For a brief less vague update, I am currently reading Inherit the wind and intend on performing one or more monologues from it. 

An Update...

Since I last blogged a lot has happened: I've made a decision, I've made progress, and I've reached an obstacle.


The Decision...
I've finally turned that mess of monologues into a conceivable project. Step 1, break the monologues up into pieces, and rearrange them as dialogue in a scene. The characters in the scene won't be made up, but the actual characters who had spoken the monologues in the movies originally. Step 2, watch the monologues being performed in the movies over, and over, and over again. Analyze every detail of the actresses performance, down to the simple blink of an eye or twitch of a finger. Step 3, filming. I will not so much copy but embody what the actress has created with the monologue. I will attempt to recreate exactly what they had done. I will film myself playing each of the parts, and then edit it together to form a coherent scene. 


Progress...
Script? Check. Cutting down and rearranging the monologues was easier than I thought. I mean, simply the fact that I picked the monologues meant there was inevitably going to be a relationship between them all, but it even still I was surprised as to just how easy it was to piece them together as dialogue (that actually made some sense). In the end, I was left with a strange script about dreams, and love, and loss. It wound up discussing something quit profound, that I don't think I could've come by consciously. It's almost as though I created something that's a little beyond my capability to understand, which is kind of cool. 


The obstacle...
Im stalling. I have the idea, I have the script, and now it's time to film, but I can't get myself to do it. All I need to do is just start. I mean, just because I film something doesn't mean  I have to use it (there's this wonderful button on digital cameras that's called "delete"). I can film, re-film, and film again, as many times as I want. So what's stopping me? I wish I knew what could possibly be so scary. 

Monologues...

So thanks to my community (aka Sarah) I was able to finally find some monologues. Now the problem is deciding which ones to do!


Here are some of the ones I found: 


From the Freedom writers (Hillary Swank)...
Maybe we should talk about art. Tito’s got real talent, don’t you think? You know something? I saw a picture just like this once, in a museum. Only it wasn’t a black man, it was a Jewish man. And instead of the big lips he had a really big nose, like a rat’s nose. But he wasn’t just one particular Jewish man. This was a drawing of all Jews. And these drawings were put in the newspapers by the most famous gang in history. You think you know all about gangs? You’re amateurs. This gang will put you all to shame. And they started out poor and angry and everybody looked down on them. Until one man decided to give them some pride, an identity and somebody to blame. You take over neighborhoods? That’s nothing compared to them. They took over countries. You want to know how? They just wiped out everybody else. Yeah, they wiped out everybody they didn’t like and everybody they blamed for their life being hard. And one of the ways they did it was by doing this. See, they print pictures like this in the newspapers, Jewish people with big, long noses. Blacks with big, fat lips. They’d also published scientific evidence that proved that Jews and blacks were the lowest form of human species. Jews and blacks were more like animals and because they were just like animals it didn’t matter if they lived or died. In fact, life would be a whole lot better if they were all dead. That’s how a Holocaust happens. And that’s what you all think of each other.


From Million Dollar Baby (Hillary Swank)...
I can’t be like this, Frankie. Not after what I’ve done. I’ve seen the world. People chanted my name. Well, not my name, some damn name you gave me. They were chanting for me. I was in magazines. You think I ever dreamed that’d happen? I was born at two pounds, one-and-a-half ounces. Daddy used to tell me I fought to get into this world, and I’d fight my way out. That’s all I want to do, Frankie. I just don’t want to fight you to do it. I got what I needed. I got it all. Don’t let ‘em keep taking it away from me. Don’t let me lie here ’till I can’t hear those people chanting no more.


From Practical Magic (Sandra Bullock)...
Sometimes I feel there is a hole inside me, an emptiness that, at times, seems to burn. I think if you lifted my heart to your ear, you could probably hear the ocean. And the moon tonight, there’s a circle around it, a sign of trouble not far behind. I have this dream of being whole, of not going to sleep each night wanting, but still sometimes, when the wind is warm or the crickets sing, I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for. I just want someone to love me. I want to be seen. I don’t know. Maybe I’ve had my happiness. I don’t want to believe it, but there is no man. Only that moon.


From The Lovely Bones (Saoirse Ronan)
I was slipping away, that’s what it felt like, life was leaving me, but I wasn’t afraid; then I remembered: “There was something I was meant to do; somewhere I was meant to be.” … I was in the blue horizon between heaven and earth. The days were unchanging and every night I dream the same dream. The smell of damp earth. The scream no one heard. The sound of my heart beating like a hammer against cloth and I would hear them calling, the voices of the dead. I wanted to follow them to find a way out but I would always come back to the same door. And I was afraid. I knew if I went in there I would never come out. When my mother came to my room, I realized that all this time, I had been waiting for her. I had been waiting so long, I was afraid she wouldn’t come. … Nobody notices when we leave. I mean, the moment when we really choose to go. At best you might feel, a whisper or the wave of a whisper, undulating down. My name is Salmon, like the fish. First name: Susie. I was 14 years old, when I was murdered on December 6th 1973. I was here for a moment, and then I was gone. I wish you all, a long, and happy life.


From Up in the Air (Anna Kendrick)...
Sometimes it feels like, no matter how much success I have, it’s not gonna matter until I find the right guy. I could have made it work, he really fit the bill, you know. White collar, 6’1, college grad, loves dogs, likes funny movies, brown hair, kind eyes, works in finance but is outdoorsy. I always imagined he’d have a single syllable name like Matt or John or Dave. In a perfect world, he drives a 4 runner and the only thing he loves more than me is his golden lab. And a nice smile. What about you?


From Alice and Wonderland (Kathryn Beaumont)...
Why, how impolite of him. I asked him a civil question, and he pretended not to hear me. That’s not at all nice. I say, Mr. White Rabbit, where are you going? He won’t answer me. And I do so want to know what he is late for. I wonder if I might follow him. Why not? There’s no rule that I mayn’t go where I please. I will follow him. Wait for me, Mr. White Rabbit. I’m coming, too! How curious. I never realized that rabbit holes were so dark and so long and so empty. I believe I have been falling for five minutes, and I still can’t see the bottom! Hmph! After such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling downstairs. How brave they’ll all think me at home. Why, I wouldn’t say anything about it even if I fell off the top of the house! I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time. I must be getting somewhere near the center of the earth. I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny that would be. Oh, I think I see the bottom. Yes, I’m sure I see the bottom. I shall hit the bottom, hit it very hard, and oh, how it will hurt!


From Mean Girls (Rachel Mcaddams)...
Let me tell you something about Janis Ian. We were best friends in middle school. I know right, it’s sooo embarrassing. I don’t even… whatever. So then in eighth grade I started going out with my first boyfriend Kyle, who was totally gorgeous but then he moved to Indiana. And Janis was like, weirdly jealous of him. Like if I would blow her off to hang out with Kyle, she’d be like Why didn’t you call me back?! And I’d be like,Uh, why are you so obsessed with me? So then for my birthday party, which was an all girls pool party, I was like, Janyce I can’t invite you because I think you’re a lesbian. I mean, I couldn’t have a lesbian at my party! There were going to be girls there in their bathing suits! I mean right, she was a lesbian! So then her mom called my mom and started yelling at her and it was so retarded and then she dropped out of school because no one would talk to her and she came back in the fall for high school and her hair was all cut off and she was totally weird and now I guess she’s on crack. Oh my God! I love your skirt, where did you get it?


And thats not even the half of them. I clearly have a lot of decision making to do!

A Community...

It's always been there, and I've always been using it, but I'm just now becoming aware of it. 

Artistically, of course the community is helpful, but I have to admit, I don't really know how to use it in that regard just yet. I guess it's like a new tool that I just have to get a handle on.

The emotional/mental aspect of community is what I'm getting total use of. It's basically like having a group of friends, who truly understand you. Maybe not who you are as a person, but who you are as an artist (or maybe thats the same thing, I'm not quit sure). Friday was the first day that I was really aware of my use of community, and how helpful it is. Sarah, Viviana, Grace, and I were all sitting around discussing our ideas for our projects. I think my explanation of my project sounded something like "I want to do monologues working on my film acting, but I'm not sure what monologues to do or how I want to present them." So clearly I still have a lot to figure out. Artistically, my community did help me come up with some ideas, but like I said before, where they really helped me was on the emotional/mental side of it all. I felt like I had a support-system, someone to have my back, and most importantly someone to cheer me on. Lately I've been feeling a bit lost. I mean I know exactly what I want, but for reasons that I cant explain, I don't know how to go about getting it. It's a strange feeling. It's like understanding everything but having nothing make sense. My head is in the clouds ,and its not quit clear and sunny but it isn't overcast either. I don't really know. Maybe the thing to do is to just stop thinking. Even so, it's comforting to know someone is there to listen to your crazy thoughts, and better yet, understand them better than you can yourself. If nothing more, it's comforting to know my Community is always there.

A Somewhat Decision...

I haven't blogged in, well, too long and I think it's about time I fill you in on whats going on in my life.
Actress; It's what I love, It's what I want want, It's what I am. So obviously I want to do something having to do with acting, theres no surprise there, but what? To say I want to act leaves a lot of questions unanswered. To narrow it down I want to concetrate more on film acting. It's not that I like film acting more than stage acting, it's just I've had many more oppurtunities to act on the stage than I've had to act on the screen, and for that it intrigues me. I'm curious, to learn about it, and even more so, I'm curious to see if I can pull it off. The thing is, on the stage there are so many layers of, for lack of a better word "fakeness" that you can hide behind. Masked by the makeup, cosutmes, lights, sets, music, and fellow actors, it is easy to create the illusion that you are acting, when in fact you are just faking. This is when the art of acting turns into the art of performing, and yes, by default acting is performing, but I want to do more than that. I want to be more than that. What really appeals to me the most is the the truth of film acting (that even though stage acting should share that same truth, like I said before, it is easy to create lies that simply just look like the truth). The fact that in film, every lie and every truth are magnified until you are basically standing there completley revealed and vulnerable scrares me, but it also inspires me. It overwhelms me but also motivates me, and that inspiration and motivation, having been growing inside me slowly and steadily over the past few years, is just about to burst. So I want to do something with film acting, but what. I have to say scenes are fun, but I've always been a fan of monologues. I don't know what it is about them that i find so appealing... maybe its the diva in me that likes to have all the attention on herself, or maybe its the irrational fear I have to depend on/open up to other people. I think the real reason is I feel like its a chance for me to reflect on my thoughts, and discover who I am, while doing something I love. So, when you add film acting with monologues, I think you get a reel. So I guess, as of now thats the shape my project is going to take. I'm a far way off from actually starting the filming of it all of course. I have to do some research. Read some books, search the web, that sort of thing. I also need to plan, rehearse, ect. That's basically where I am right now. I think its safe to say I've somewhat decided.

Acting...

First Week…

            We started with the script. Word by word we analyzed it until our heads were throbbing, our eyes were tearing and our fingers were aching. It was tedious work- the kind that makes you question why you want to be an actress in the first place. But when it’s done, it’s invaluable. First step- reading through the script and simply taking notes on your character. It’s like the first time you are meeting them and your noticing all their likes and dislikes, their personality traits etc. Second step is to divide the script up into French scenes. French scenes start and begin whenever a character enters or leaves the scene. Now that we have broken up the script into a smaller scale we begin to analyze it more closely. First we take note of the setting- where the scene is occurring. Next we take note on what is happening between the characters. After you take note on what the character wants from the other character. And lastly you take notes on what the character does. All this scene work seemed irrelevant and a waste of time but looking back it is anything but. As a young actress you don’t realize how clueless you can be when you get up on stage to perform a scene. It’s amazing how oblivious you can be to what is happening. The scene work forces you to sit down and truly think about it until it is practically ingrained into your mind, making the intellectual aspect of acting not only possible but a whole lot easier.

Second Week…

            Now it’s time to take all this thinking and actually apply it. This week we worked with objectives and actions. In a scene an objective is what you want from another character and an action is how you precede to get it. Sounds pretty simple right? Well, it is a lot more complicated than I expected. During this workshop I not only learned about acting but I also learned a thing or two about human beings. We as people never just say what we want or feel. It’s almost always hidden under the mask of meaningless words which is kind of ironic because the purpose of words is to allow us to say what we want and feel. When approaching the script with objectives and actions you use the dialogue as clues to the characters wants and feelings until you can dig deepm enough way past the words, into another dimension. When you reach this point the words become completely irrelevant. So much so that you can say, “I love you” by saying, “Make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” Although this came somewhat naturally emotionally it was hard to grasp intellectually. For some unknown reason I wanted so much to understand the words and act the words and feel the words but in reality it’s just not that important. The words are just there to forward the plot and as long as you say them with the correct objectives and actions, the audience will somehow make sense of it all.

Third Week…

            Now it’s time to throw everything we learned in the first two weeks out the window. No more analyzing, no more thinking, just plain old doing. We were working with monologues but they were just there to give us something to say, nothing more.

 It didn’t matter what the character was feeling or doing. What mattered now is what you, the actress were feeling. In one of the handouts Luke gave us there were two sentences that made the lightbulb go off. “It is much harder to keep your brains and emotions alive while dealing with a script and react to the words as you hear them and as you say them. Too often we just switch ourselves off in an attempt to switch on the character.” That was my problem right there, trying too hard to become a character that I forgot to be Sabrina.

It’s such a strange idea though, and so we did some exercises to try and get acquainted with it. Such as, speaking aloud the random thoughts that come to your mind as you are reading the monologue. For instance- if you find the monologue boring in the middle of the monologue you would say, “I’m bored.” But this caused a problem to arise. I might be bored but the character isn’t. And then, I learned another piece of information that made the light bulb go off once again. Whatever you are feeling, the character is feeling because you are the character, it is as simple as that. The character isn’t real; they are simply some words printed on a piece of paper. You give the character life, and therefore you give it the emotions and not the other way around. That right there was the most valuable realization I had in the whole workshop. To not fight your emotions but to simply feel them. 

Who..

Constantin Stanislavsky developed the "Emotion Memory System". In this "system" actors were forced to recreate memories they have experienced in their own life, rather than their imagination. Really, almost no imagination was involved. It makes sense if you think about, if you want your performance to be truthful, you have to come from a place of reality, not fantasy. He was all about truth. Living and breathing the character. This system was proven ineffective however, due to the fact that many actors who applied it, suffered from hysteria. His system then evolved into what is known as the "Physical Action Method". in this method, an actor will preform physical movements or actions, to reach the desired emotion. Essentially, the actor is working from the outside in, which seems like the complete opposite from his original system. I think, only by applying both methods can you find some value in it. 


Micheal Chekov's approach, was using the outside to get in touch with the inside. He would explore the physicality of a character, in hopes of getting accessing the deep and subconscious side of a character. Chekov was one of Stanislavskys students, and so it makes sense that his technique is really a cross between Stanislavsky's two methods.


When discussing Lee Strasberg, you are really discussing Method Acting. Method Acting deals with combining the phycological state of the character, with the phycological state of the actor, until they almost become one. It is not so much playing a character, but playing yourself and making people believe that you are the character. A common question that is asked is, "What would motivate me, the actor, to behave in the way the character does?" It would be like if I'm in a scene in which I'm crying because I just found out my best friend died, I wouldn't be focussing on that actual circumstance to access the emotion, I would be focussing on something, that I Sabrina, could relate to.


Robert Lewis co-founded The Actors Studio. He focused on inner action and intention. "We must never settle for "what" we are doing and "why" we are doing it, but we also must ask "how" we are doing it. And if we have found the "how" we mustn't forget to justify the "what" and "why." He views what we are thinking as having a much greater importance that what we are saying or what we are doing. 


Stella Adler's technique was all about imagination, completely contradicting Stanislavsky, who incidentally was her teacher. There are four key points in her technique. One, acting is doing. An actor must always be performing an action while on stage, and must always know what the justification is for that action. Two, developing the imagination. An actor must observe the real world to enhance the imaginary world they create on stage. Three, training the mind. The actor must really know what is going on in the play. They need to read, analyze, explore and research. Four, size. Everything an actor does on stage needs to be big, and done with conviction. There must also be a deeper meaning to everything you are doing. 


Sandford Meisner's technique focused on how people interact. Their behavior, their reactions, their expressions... It was based on an actor's natural reflexes and impulses. Although this is most easily applied to improv, it can also be used in approaching a script. 

Expressionism...

What do I think about Expressionism? 

Well my first though was "Gee, expressionism sounds like expressing", which I now know is no coincidence considering that expressionism is all about the expression of feelings. Yes that's what all art is, but with expressionism, that's really all it revolves around. It's not about ideas, stories, or plots. It is more concerned with conveying emotion. I think anything more that, that can be found in expressionist art is the source of our imagination rather than the actual art itself. For example, when you see a painting of a little girl all alone standing in a field, your mind automatically begins making assumptions about who she is, why she's there, what she's thinking ect., but all the painting it really offering you is feelings of loneliness or perhaps curiosity. Yet there is no way to know if that was the artists intention. Maybe he really was trying to convey a detailed and in depth story about this little girl. There's no way to know. It seems that, by passing something off as expressionist, what you're really doing is simplifying something that is too complex for you to understand otherwise. So is expressionism a way of approaching art intellectually rather than creatively? It seems that way to me. I'm not saying that this is good or bad, or even if I like it or not (because I'm not really sure yet). All I'm saying is that it's interesting.