DEVELOPING THE CHARACTER'S PHYSICAL POINT OF VIEW (DCPOV)
This workshop will lead the actor through a progressive physical understanding of the circumstances, relationships, and objectives within a monologue or a scene. The actor will extract the meaning of the moment through paraphrasing, and will experiment with how the character would physicalize that meaning. Topics covered include: The Actor as a FORCE - The concepts of mass, acceleration, and friction are examined as they apply to contact between the actor and other actors, physical objects, and objectives. Integrating the ‘SCORE’ - There is nothing by which an actor should remain unaffected. Everything in the sphere of the senses constitutes a ‘score’ to which she must respond physically and emotionally. Actors will experience various scores and gain an awareness of how that score can affect both internal and external factors. States & Sources of ENERGY - Actors will learn to identify sources of energy within a circumstance that will enable them to be an active part of the scene’s energy system. They will experiment with the balance between potential and kinetic states of words and physical actions and learn to maximize the use of each.The proportion between energy required and energy expended should be a conscious choice. Actors will perform exercises that help them employ the entire range of a given circumstance - no more, no less. The aim of the workshop is to have given the actor a VISCERAL understanding of key moments in the scene or monologue, an understanding to which she can return and integrate into the power and specificity of her character’s actions and words. This process can help an actor perform from a Truthful and Physical Point of View rather than a cerebral and censored one.
Past DCPOV workshops:
Sibiu International Theater Festival - Sibiu, Romania
La Bienal Arte Joven - Buenos Aires, Argentina
ACTING – in the interest of National Security (AINS)
The classical definition of acting is ‘living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.’ Contrary to the common perception that acting is ‘pretending,’ the working process of actors (as well as of directors and writers) is an exploratory journey to revealing the truth of every moment, the sum of which must build a narrative that connects to and transforms the audience. This workshop-lecture will highlight several functional aspects of an actor’s craft that are also pertinent to the national security practitioner and policymaker: training to truly listen, attaching action to words, using the ‘what if’ to create and to foresee possible scenarios, choreographing the sequence of actions and meanings to achieve a scenario objective with maximum impact, and more. These elements of an actor’s craft can add value to the existing toolbox of the national security professionals who aim to ‘live and operate truthfully under real circumstances’ in which they deal with real domestic and international ‘actors.’ More importantly, as we ‘try on’ some of these processes in the workshop, we may viscerally begin to discover the critical element achieved through the study of acting without which all pursuits are bound to be less than fully effective: knowing oneself.
Past AINS workshops:
Tuesday, August 4, 2020. 5pm - 6pm — WEBINAR LECTURE as part of the Student Speaker Series sponsored by The Institute of World Politics.