This curriculum unit will be directed toward second and third year acting students at The Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School. Two prerequisites for this course are: (1) possession of basic acting skills and experience, and (2) strong commitment both to the individual study of acting and to the concept of theatre as a collaborative art form. Prior formal classwork will have included Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov, Edward Albee, and August Wilson. My students will have a strong background in improvisation, story-telling, and play and character analysis. My main focus will be an emphasis on acting technique and building a character based on what has come to be known as the Stanislavski system.
The acting style of most American actors is based on this system (known as American Method Acting). Students of acting need a thorough knowledge of this style of acting since they see it every day on American television and in American movies. The students especially enjoy acting scenes from films. Just this spring, they produced a student-acted, student-directed production that included scenes from COMING TO AMERICA, FRIED GREEN TOMATOES, and THE BREAKFAST CLUB.
I plan to teach acting technique and building a character through the practical application of some of the tenets of American Method Acting. This course of study will revolve around the films of Marlon Brando, who is considered to be the quintessential American movie actor. Three of Brando's films will be viewed and studied intensively in regard to building a character. These films are: ON THE WATERFRONT, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, and VIVA ZAPATA! . All three films are directed by Elia Kazan, one of the founders of The Actors Studio, where Brando studied "the Method." ON THE WATERFRONT will be studied in conjunction with the final shooting script, which is the last draft of the screenplay submitted before filming begins. A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE: ACTING EDITION, the playbook for performers published by Dramatists Play Service will be studied. This acting edition is a reprint of the 1947 Broadway production's final, official promptbook. It contains detailed accounts of movement, behavior, and inflection. Kazan's famous set of notes on his concepts and planning of the production contained in DIRECTORS ON DIRECTING will be of value to our work. These notes also describe his approach to helping the actors develop their characters. The film of VIVA ZAPATA! will be studied along with selected material on the life and times of Emiliano Zapata and a novelette of VIVA ZAPATA!
Through the study of the tenets of American Method Acting, the students will learn to critique the acting in the films, as well as their own acting, perform scenes from the films, videotape their work, and develop acting technique through Method acting exercises.
American Method Acting originated in Russia with Konstantin Stanislavski, who opened the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898. The Moscow Art Theatre is primarily associated with the productions of the plays of Anton Chekhov and the beginning of Russian dramatic realism.
By observing himself as an actor as well as the other actors with whom he worked, and more especially by studying the great dramatic artists in Russia and abroad, Stanislavski developed an approach to the teaching of acting that became known as the "Stanislavski system." The effects of his teaching were felt in America in the 1920 s when Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya, both alumni of the Moscow Art Theatre school, emigrated to America and established The American Laboratory Theatre.
Stanislavski didn't invent his system; he investigated and charted the acting process that good actors used intuitively. He systematized that process so that it could be studied and developed consciously. He was interested in how to maintain a consistent performance and how to be a conscious human being on stage. The Method is a pragmatic way of working to create both the interior life and the logical behavior of a character, a way that can be taught, practiced, monitored, and corrected.
Using method tenets, the students will learn to analyze the work of the actors in the films. They will also look at how the actors play the subtext. According to Stanislavski, an important aspect of building a character pertains to the subtext. The subtext is the meaning behind the words of the text. For Stanislavski, the subtext is the inward "life of a human spirit. . ." that constantly flows under the words of a role. Words are only a part of a given moment on stage, and are related to thoughts, bodily expressions, and images. Actors need to see images and transmit those images to the acting partner. Images need to grow in detail and become richer.
Questions are asked by the actor. Why did the playwright write these words at this time in the play? To make the playwright's words his own the actor needs to know why the author gave these lines to the character: what is my purpose in saying these lines? How do I make that purpose known? Under what conditions would I think, behave, do, and perceive as this character does? As the actor I must be willing to submerge myself in the life of the character.
Some of the tenets of Method Acting are: verisimilitude, seeking logical character behavior, justification and super-objective, expression of true emotion, drawing on the self, ensemble acting, improvisation, and use of objects.
Students will use these tenets as the basis for discussing the acting in the films and film clips that we will be viewing. Through acting exercises based on these tenets, the students will learn specific acting technique in order to portray character. We will also explore some of the fundamental differences between acting for the stage and acting for film.
