Reflection on theorist presentation

From the acting theorist presentation, I learned many brilliant ideas from each actors/directors. They are focusing on these topics, strategy for actors to perform better, ways to explore their emotion, connection between the audience and actors, etc.

Famous actor and director Vsevolod Meyerhold presented a technique called "Biomechanics". By using this technique, actors can explore emotion potential; this could help actors to perform better, since it was to widen the emotion potential of a theater piece. If I use "Biomechanics" to train myself before I perform, Tom's characteristics will be easily to act out. Another famous actor called Sanford Meisner said that:" Good Acting Comes From the Heart." It asks actors to put personality into characters. This makes me think about what is the Tom's real characteristics beneath his family. I think Tom feels good when he left his family, but he feels guilty at the same time; because without him, Laura and Amanda are living in desperate. Also, Meisner said actors always need to ask themselves when they are acting:" What are you playing? What are you doing?" I think by keep asking questions to oneself, it reminds actor what situation he or she stays in, so that he or she will know the emotion of characters. This technique must be important and popular in the past period, because Uta Hagen, the famous American actress, also has the similar technique. In Uta Hagen's technique, actor needs to ask themselves:" Who am I, What time is it, Where am I, etc." I think this kind of technique puts actors into the play, so they will know in each scene what they should do, like the body movement, hand gestures, facial expression... My presentation is talking about an English director, Peter Brook. He thinks that actors really need to make the emotion visible for audience. So sometimes actors need to exaggerate characters' feeling. Like in the fight between Amanda and Tom, Tom's voice should be really loud in order to show he is mad, and probably Amanda should grab Tom's collar band and shout to him because when she knew Jim had a girlfriend, she feels desperate. Also, he says that:" Reality itself must be the goal." In order to make a play looks real, he uses some activity to train his actor in one of his play, The Tightrope. In the trailer, he asks many of his actors to pretend they are standing on a rope; although actors are standing on a carpet, but their action looks like they are actually standing on a rope. It makes me think about how can I use this activity in The Glass Menagerie. My part is the fight between Amanda and the ending monologue. The fight scene shows the relation was broken in this family and the ending monologue shows that Tom feels lonely. Probably I need to have a walk at night around the campus to find Tom's feeling at the ending monologue.

Overall, working on the emotion can helps not only actors but also audience to understand characters well. Also, always asking oneself question when acting so that actors can focus on their act. By the way, using activities will let actors know what kind of behaviors(Body movement, facial expression...) they should do when they are acting.