Acting and Actuality

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Acting and Actuality

• The Method Acting and
• the British Acting Tradition

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Table of Contents

• 1) Realist Acting
• 2) The Method Acting
• 3) The British Tradition

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Realism Acting

• Performance gt visual elements (appearance,
  gestures, facial expressions) and sound (voice,
  effects)
• Good performance Realistic performance
• Bad performance Unrealistic performance
• Mimetic performance historical and relative

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The Method Acting

• The Performance style and the training system
  widely accepted in New York theatre circle in the
  1950s.
• Especially in the Actor's Studio

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The Method Acting

• The Actors Studio, 432 West 44th Street, New York

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The Method Acting

• 'The Method' or 'the System', an offshoot of a
  system of training actors and rehearsing which
  was developed by Constantin Stanislavski at the
  Moscow Art Theatre

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The Method Acting

• Affective Memory
• To portray a characters emotions, the actor is
  required to recall the moment in their lives when
  they felt the relevant or similar emotions.
• Train the actor to work from within

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The Method Acting

• Belief
• Truth in acting can only be achieved by exploring
  a character's inner spirit, which must be fused
  with the actor's own emotions

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The Method Acting

• The Actors Studio at 432 West 44th Street, NY
• Founded by Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford, and
  Robert Lewis
• Intended to teach a refined version of method
  acting developed by the Group Theatre in the
  30s.

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The Method Acting

• The Group Theatre founded in 1931 by Lee
  Strasberg, Harold Clurman, and Cheryl Crawford in
  New York

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The Method Acting

• Lee Strasburg took over the Studio in 1952
• The Strasburg Method - to prepare an artist to
  feel and express the emotional subtexts of
  scripts
• Emotional Recall

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The Method Acting

• Edward Albee, James Baldwin, Norman Mailer,
  Tennessee Williams (writers)
• Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, James Dean, Gene
  Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Harvey Keitel, Steve
  McQueen, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino,
  Sean Penn, Sidney Poitier (actors)

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Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn, Sally Field, Jane
Fonda, Marilyn Monroe, Julia Roberts (actress)
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The Method Acting

• Rebel without a Cause (1955)
• Jim Stark is the new kid in town. He has been in
  trouble elsewhere. Here he also hopes to find
  the true love he doesn't get from his
  middle-class family.

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The Method Acting

• On the Waterfront (1954)
• Terry Malloy dreams about being a boxer, while
  tending his pigeons and running errands at the
  docks for Johnny Friendly, the corrupt boss of
  the dockers union. Terry witnesses a murder by
  two of Johnny's thugs, and later meets the dead
  man's sister and feels responsible for his death.

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The British Tradition

• British acting traditions - mastery of externals,
  based on close observation
• Exemplified by Royal Academy of Dramatic Art,
  Bloomsbury, London

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The British Tradition

• Richard Attenborough, Kenneth Branagh, Michael
  Caine, Ralph Feinnes, Albert Finney, John
  Gielgud, Anthony Hopkins, Trevor Howard, Glenda
  Jackson, Ceila Johnson, Mike Leigh, Vivian Leigh,
  Roger Moore, Joe Orton, Peter OToole, Harold
  Pinter, Alan Rickman

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Sir Lawrence Olivier
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The British Tradition

• 'I do not search the character for parts that are
  already in me, but go out and find the
  personality I feel the author created. I hear
  remarks in the street or in a shop and I retain
  them. You must constantly observe a walk, a
  limp, a run how a head inclines to one side when
  listening the twitch of an eyebrow the hand
  that picks the nose when it thinks no one is
  looking the mustache puller the eyes that never
  look at you the nose that sniffs long after the
  cold has gone.'

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The British Tradition

• He molded his characters like sculptor or painter
• Makeup for Olivier 'If you're wise, you always
  take off the part with your makeup.'
• Mimicing dialects 'I always go to endless
  trouble to learn American accents, even for small
  television parts. If it's north Michigan, it's
  bloody well got to be north Michigan.'

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The British Tradition

• Daniel Day-Lewis (1957 - )
• British character actor, known for versatility in
  the roles he play.
• Modern-day Olivier but his range of roles is even
  wider than the master.

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The British Tradition

• My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
• Plays a role of a disillusioned, homosexual punk,
  who has a relationship with a former Pakistani
  classmate.

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The British Tradition

• A Room with a View (1985)
• Plays a role of a upper-middle class gentleman
  who is intelligent but emotionally tight.

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The British Tradition

• Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)
• Plays a role of a young womanizing doctor, who
  grows more conscious of the oppressive political
  situation in Prague.

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The British Tradition

• My Left Foot (1989)
• He plays a role of Christy Brown who is spastic
  quadriplegic born to a large Irish family. He
  matures to be a writer who writes with his only
  functional limb, his left foot.

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The British Tradition

• The Last of Mohicans (1992)
• Plays a role of a orphaned settler adapted and
  raised by the last of Mohicans.

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The British Tradition

• The Age of Innocence (1993)
• Plays a role of an American aristocrat already
  engaged for marriage, who falls in love with his
  cousin.

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The British Tradition

• In the Name of Father (1993)
• Plays a role of an Northern Irish youth, who is
  falsely accused of bombing a pub in England.

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The British Tradition

• The Boxer (1997)
• Plays a role of a former IRA activist who is
  released from prison and opens a boxing gym to
  train young people.

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The British Tradition

• Gangs of New York (2002)
• Plays a role of one of the first gangsters in
  Manhattan.

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The British Tradition

• There Will Be Blood (2009)
• Plays a role of a silver miner turned old man,
  who ruthlessly quests for wealth in late 19th
  California

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The British Tradition

• Nine (2009)
• In this musical-romance, he plays a role of
  Italian film director who is tormented by lack of
  inspiration and women.