*Ahem*. Anyhow. I watched those two scenes from Spiderman 2 again last night, and the inner life I saw this time around was completely different from the one I saw last time...I think a lot of the stuff I conjectured in my scene analysis was wrong, both in the longer one of Scene 20, and the mini-analysis in my Blown Away... post. And my attempts to describe in writing his facial expressions do not come even close to doing his performance justice.
I've also realized that in my last several entries, I've said, "I still have so much to learn!" but I haven't really clarified exactly what it is specifically that I feel I need to learn. So here it goes:
Even though I know how to break up a script into beats and analyze it that way, I don't quite get the whole uber-objective thing. It's very difficult for me to pick one thing the character wants through-out the whole piece, and simplify it, because it seems to change throughout. Perhaps rather than thinking of it as an objective or goal, I should think of it as a theme? What is the characters theme throughout the piece? Hum.
Another thing I don't get is why these objectives have to be almost a matter of life and death to the character. If the whole point of acting is to live realistically under imaginary circumstances, then doesn't putting such a high stake on everything in the scene make the whole thing melodramatic? I understand that having high stakes help create a dynamic performance, but I have a really hard time tying the more mundane actions & lines in the script to such high stakes in a way that is believable. It just doesn't seem to connect for me, doesn't make sense to me.
I also feel I need to work on making more dynamic character choices. In class last year, there was a scene I was working on that really clarified this for me. The scene is called "Final Placement", and I was playing the mother who had held her 4 year old son's hands over a hot stove until he had 2nd degree burns. She's come to the social worker to try and get her son back from foster placement, even though the courts have ruled that she can never have custody of her child again. The social worker tells her she won't get her son back, and the mother gets it in her head that the social worker has stolen her son, and attacks her. Upon reading the script, it seemed to me that this mother's character was really screwed up, but not necessarily malicious, she just didn't know better. (a victim). And I was going to play the whole scene like that, more or less. But then my teacher said, "She's not stupid, she's just not educated. She's very manipulative. And she needs to flip from pleading to primal." I wouldn't have come up with that read on my own.
I've been looking at the types of characters I am most often drawn to, and it's the characters that are victims. Because that's the role I've been in personally most of my life, until recently. (Yay for hard work and personal growth!) So I've decided as a learning experience to start looking at monologues with characters that are nothing like me. I know of at least four off hand that I can work on: There are three from "The Art of Success" by Nick Dear, and another from "Coffee After the Storm" by Lavonne Mueller. Each of the characters in these are so completely different from myself, I'm not even sure how to begin analyzing them.
I just realized, it would help if I actually read some books on acting technique. Hah. All the classes I've taken, and I've never read any of the books by the great acting teachers. The only book I've read is "A Practical Handbook for the Actor" based on the acting technique created by David Mamet and William H. Macy. And frankly, while it leads to emotional honesty in a performance, that method seems overly simplistic, and lacks in training how to physicalize a character, and how to make dynamic acting choices. I do have a book from my acting class last semester called "The Actor's Checklist", my teacher was very excited to have it because it combines a little bit of all the different acting techniques. I didn't read it for class (Bad Izzie!) lol, I really should. Maybe I can analyze those four monologues as I read through the book.
I've also heard the guests on "Inside the Actor's Studio" talking about creating an arc for their character, it seems an arc is the emotional journey a character takes throughout the scene, play or movie. I don't know how to do that either, but I think the other book I have "Improvisation Technique for TV and Film" by Stephen Book has something about that in there. I started to read through that book, but it's really a workbook of exercises meant to be used in a classroom situation. I started to do some of the exercises that could be done alone, but most of them are designed for groups. I really really want to find a group to work through that book with, I think there's so much to learn, but I haven't really figured out where to find people to start a group.
One last thought: I went to dinner last night with my family and my aunt & uncle whom we haven't seen for a while. I started telling them about this blog I've created, I'm so excited about it, I think there's a better chance of people finding this journal as a blog and reading it than my Diaryland journal. And I really want to share all of this with other people who are just as excited about all of it as I am, excited about learning and improving, and discussing what makes other actors so good, how we can incorporate what we see into our own work effectively. So I was telling all of this to my aunt and uncle, and my aunt wanted to know who will read my blog? I said I didn't know, probably not a whole lot of people, because this is such a special interest sort of thing. My uncle asked if there were other blogs like mine, and I said "No, I haven't found any." And I've searched Google up and down, the only blog I came up with was Everything In Between which is about a couple of people making an independent film, starting from the very beginning with the business plan, filming schedule and such...I haven't had a chance to read all the archives yet, but they started nearly a year ago, and they've only now cast the movie. Anyhow, I haven't found any other blogs like mine. So my uncle says, "Maybe actors don't blog, and bloggers don't act. Maybe all the actors are too busy acting."
That one hit home. Here I am writing about acting, but I'm not actually acting yet. The focus and determination is there, but not the action. And I do have a couple of options for getting involved that I haven't followed through on yet. I could volunteer at a local community theater, hopefully audition for a play at some point, but just being at the theater will put me in the acting community with others who care about acting as well. And a friend of mine recommended a group that has something to do with film-making...she just mentioned it in passing yesterday, I need to ask her more about it.
So. Now I have more specific goals to work on anyways, instead of just blabbing on about do I have what it takes or not, and my fears, etc. In another month or two, I'll be working as a Massage Therapist in an office, I've almost got my ducks in a row to get my liscence, and once I'm working, I'm anticipating being able to afford classes again. "See the tiny turtle crawling up the hill: Seems to you and me she's nearly standing still! Though the steps she takes are infinitely small, it's a step in the right direction after all!"
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