Australian Screen Directors Association mini-conference, June 11, Storey Hall, RMIT.
This was packaged as The Essential Workshop for Directors and this conference delivered beyond its brief.
Shoni has a post that covers the conference content in detail, so I think I’ll focus on the aspects that had most impact on me.
Nina Landis, actor and teacher, began the day by taking us on an inspired journey through the history of acting technique. An accomplished lecturer/performer, Nina brought the material to life. As a friend said to me later,
I went through three years of acting college, spent two years studying media, and finally someone has connected the dots, explained what acting is really all about…
Her dissemination of contemporary theatrical acting technique in relation to acting for the screen was illuminating. Given the disjointed shooting structure actors must endure as a result of shot blocking, Landis emphasised the need for strategies that the director could employ to ensure an unbroken line of action.
To this end, affective memory (aka emotional memory) and how actors draw upon it (”the method”) was reviewed through constant referencing of the pantheon of modern theatre directors: Stanislavski, Strasbourg, Adler, Hagen.
When an actor creates emotion for a role,whose emotion does he or she experience when acting? His own, of course. The only emotional life the actor can create is his own, though granted the actor’s imagination can be added to his own truthful basis. The only imagination the actor has is his or her own, the only life history nesting there, in an actor’s subconscious, is his own. He cannot borrow Einstein’s emotional life, Brando’s, or his friends. The actors’ total being (physical,mental, emotional and spiritual) is his instrument - the only clay with which he has to work.
Thanks to modern psychological discoveries and the dedicated men and women who have explored, taught, directed and used acting techniques which lead to truthful, believable behavior, acting has finally become a craft and an art.
Lorrie Hull, Ph.D.(2005)
A few good sites on Acting
The Method & Affective memory
http://novaonline.nv.cc.va.us/eli/spd130et/acting.htm
