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Parts of a beat: MOMENTS

 MOMENTS

A moment comprises a purposeful action toward the beat objective and your assessment of your success or failure at achieving it, based on the response received from the situation or from another character. A moment is thus a cycle of intention-realization-reaction that circle of energy flow and communication. As a result of your feedback in the moment, you may decide to stay in the beat or make a tactical adjustment, moving to a new objective and a new beat. As long as the intention remains unchanged, you are still in the same beat, although you may have moved through several moments. 

 

Although each beat and moment is connected to your super objective and through-line, when you act, it is the needs of the immediate moment that determine your course of action.

The overarching concepts are there to keep your performance on course, but they are not part of your active consciousness, just as in life what you do at any given moment is usually a reaction to the immediate situation and not a result of pondering your life philosophy and goals. Who you are and what you want out of life are part of your internal sense of self, and you need not weigh them before every choice of action. They have become part of four identity. As you work more and more on a role, you will not have to think about the superobjective; it will become an unconscious guide for your acting choices.

You will hear actors use the expression "to be in the moment", this emphasizes the importance of staying alive and aware at all times on stage so that even the smallest unit of the script is responded to with centered energy and thought.

Each action and objective must stimulate the next, generating our performance from the immediacy of the moment. Thus, we build on the basic idea of constant energy flow in the smallest unit to create the dramatic action of a play.

When you do your homework on a role, you will work from macrocosm to microcosm, establishing the superobjective and through-action, then the smaller

scene objectives -> beat objectives -> moments 

On stage, the process is reversed.

moments -> beat objectives -> scene objectives

In performance, your attention will be focused on the smallest unit- the immediate moment--as you build the action of a play from the smallest unit, guided almost unconsciously by all that you know about the larger through-action of your role.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Felner, Mira. Free to Act. Allyn & Bacon, 2004.
Benedetti, Robert. The Actor In You. Pearson Higher Ed, 2015.

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