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Analyzing a Script for a Performance

 

The actor creates the embodiment of the author's idea. Your ability to penetrate a script's inner meaning and make a visceral connection with the text is vital to a successful performance. An actor must learn how to think about a play, a film or an episode on a show.

 

Acting students, above all else, want to be on set/stage acting, and this is as it should be. But you must recognize that all you will eventually do on set/stage depends on learning how to read a script effectively. As Stanislavski reminds us,”... the result of an artistic analysis is feeling."

 

An enlightened actor 

works with confidence.

Once you have learned 

to read a script for a performance, 

you can take the creative risks 

that are the mark of 

a fine artist.

 

 

THE PROCESS OF INTERPRETATION

 

When your understanding of a script deepens, the bond to the emotional life of a character becomes increasingly profound. This happens in all human relationships. As you grow to understand someone, your connection to her inner life strengthens, and inevitably your ability to share thoughts and feelings with this person increases. This is also true in your relationships with dramatic characters.

 

An actor's choices for a character must support the central idea inherent in the dramatic action. The decisions you make will be determined by your understanding of the script; if you circumvent the analytic process, you will be susceptible to doubts and uncertainties about creative choices. Such hesitation makes your acting tentative and ultimately unconvincing. Your "sense of faith" in what you do on stage affects your "sense of truth." Your intellectual homework affirms your belief and frees you to take risks and make the daring and inspired acting choices discussed. Your conscious, detailed examination of a play liberates the creative energy of the unconscious.

 

 

 

Felner, Mira. Free to Act. Allyn & Bacon, 2004.

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