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.