My daughter is stage-struck. I’d like her to get some idea what the profession of acting is like, how to do it properly, etc.
I’ll bet we have several professional actors, stage & screen, as well as teachers of same here on the Dope.
Please recommend material for a not-particularly-mature 15-year-old who has great stage presence but, to be blunt, isn’t getting the best advice from her teachers at school.
My college acting professor based a lot of his exercises on Uta Hagen’s Respect for Acting.
She could try reading An Actor Prepares. Stanislavski and the method style that evolved from it has greatly influenced American theater. (A little too much, if you ask me. It’s gotten to the point where people seem to think if something isn’t ‘realistic’, it isn’t good.)
There are probably as many ways of ‘acting properly’ as there are people acting. The sort of acting you see in Oklahoma is far different than the acting in Waiting For Godot is far different than A Dream Play is far different than Fefu and Her Friends. I think the best advice is to encourage her to read plays. Lots and lots of plays and then find recordings of them. My college had access to a database called Theatre in Video that was hundreds of recordings of plays. It was a bit scattershot but a lot of the big ones were on there and the really big ones had multiple versions so you could see how people saw Hamlet in 1950 vs 1970 vs 1990. Your local library might have something similar.
I had dreams of becoming an actor, a long time ago. It never happened. I haven’t read them in years, but here’s a couple I remember.
For advice on acting technique, An Actor Prepares and following books by Konstantin Stanislavski.
For advice on things like getting an agent, and finding auditions, *The Job Of Acting *by Clive Swift.
Maybe there is a community theater in your city? Look into it. We had one that would put on plays written by locals. They had locals in the play for acting, grips, construction, lights, etc. Was one of my most cherished experiences, being in a play. With all the rehearsals, you actually become family, in and out of character.
“How to do it properly,” eh? Well then I guess I can’t recommend The Art of Coarse Acting.
[QUOTE=Michael Green]
I would define a Coarse Actor as one who can remember the lines but not the order in which they come. It is, perhaps, not an entirely satisfactory definition, and a close friend whom I regard as easily the most desperately bad amateur actor in West Bromwich suggests that a Coarse Actor is one who can remember the pauses but not the lines.
However, that definition falls down because most Coarse amateurs don’t have any pauses. They regard their lines rather as a machine-gunner regards a belt of ammunition: something to be shot off in the vague direction of the enemy and then replaced as rapidly as possible.
[/QUOTE]
This is what I’d recommend. A book doesn’t tell you much that actual experience can’t do better. Aside from the on-stage experience she would get, there are other actors to learn from, either by watching them do their stuff (rehearse, memorise lines, prepare backstage, perform, etc) or asking them questions directly. Even if she’s only a stagehand for a few shows it can teach her a lot.
Movie and TV acting is somewhat different to stage acting (though sitcoms are really mini-plays in a lot of ways) but most actors start out on stage so it’s definitely a good step.
Plus, it’s fun. I used to work in a small Repertory theatre, as stagehand, set painter, performer, and even co-writer. It taught me a lot about acting (and theatre politics) but most importantly it was just a lot of fun.
Auditionby Michael Shurtleff is an outstanding book. I’d second the Uta Hagen recommendation above.
For improv, the bible is Viola Spolin’s “Improvisation for the Theatre”.
There’s nothing like working with other actors, coaches and directors, though, whether that’s old school, method or improv classes.
Acting: The First Six Lessons is a really great (and short!) book.