Questions:  What is "good" acting?  Who do you think is a "great" actor?  What criteria do you use?

Actor's Goals

• communicate a character to an audience
• entertain and audience
• function in an ensemble

• body
• voice
• mind/spirit
• play text

Training Process

• learn own idiosyncratic traits of body, voice, mind
• neutralize body and voice; relaxation
• extend the range of body, voice, and mind to create other people
• study actual people

• focuses on technique for "inner justification" called "emotional substitution"
• dominates US stage since 1930's
• dominates US cinema since 1950's (Marlon Brando)

• Text analysis for given circumstances
• cintinuously train voice and body
• observe people in life
• from text and rehearsals, define actions to achieve objectives (or stimulus, response, changed state model)
• commitment to and concentration upon the fictional world of the play
• inner justification

• read play and study characters
• audition with monologues, cold or prepared readings (screen test)
• Read-throughs, text analysis for actions/objective as above
• blocking, business, character, relationship building rehearsals
• off-book
• introduce props, costumes, more business
• refining rehearsals in run-throughs for all of above, refine pace, through-line
• technical and dress rehearsals
• performances -- include audience factors

• difficulty of ever-changing term "realistic"
• for each era consider aesthetic qualities and employment conditions
• Greek (amateurs, competition)
• Elizabethan (sharing system)
• Comedie Francaise is 1st National Theatre 1680
• 19th century - popular and touring companies (star system)
• Turn or 20th century - Stanislavsky and Naturalism
• 4th wall
• ensemble
• "realistic" now means just like life
• 20th century - unions (contract system)
• AEA, SAG, AFTRA
• 15% union works at any given time
• acting is business of selling self; talent and casting agents