March 2021 – Beginner-Intermediate Independent Activity Class 2
Homework:
- Read Chapter 3* of “On Acting” by Sanford Meisner.
- Memorize your parts for the following scenes according to the rules for memorization given in the Beginner-Intermediate Independent Activity Class 1.
- *Beginning of Instinct Work (as described in Chapter 3 of “On Acting”). I shall go into this in greater detail in class. We will be putting greater focus on this in the Fundamentals Class, the attendance of which is paramount to help you with greater success in this class.
Schedule:
Weeks 1-4
Independent Activity / Door Class as before. (Re-acquaintance with what is expected). You will have the time before class formally commences and these 4 weeks to memorize your scenes from below. (Urgency, Difficulty, Meaningfulness all come from the Independent Activity/Door set up).
Weeks 5-8
Bring an Independent Activity and Door appropriate to the ‘emotion of the character you’re playing in the scene’. The exercise will be ‘set’ in the house of one of you. (Urgency, and Difficulty both come from the Independent Activity/Door set up).
Weeks 9-12
Using the learnings from weeks 5-8 to attempt to bring Emotional Truth to your work in the scene. No Independent Activity or Door required for these weeks. (Urgency and Meaningfulness both come from the author’s scene).
Set up
The Scenes below have been assigned as follows:
Moon is Blue: Sara & Nirish
The Owl and the Pussycat: Phil & Sara
Johnson’s Greek: Nirish (as Berg) & Phil (as Olson)
Each Actor to learn 2 scenes. (I suggest you commence learning as soon as possible). In the event you are unable to attend a class (maximum of 2 misses allowed as before), you will decide between yourselves who will work with whom in the next class. This is important so that you determine the appropriate Independent Activity/Door to bring to that class. I recommend you have a back up Activity/Door for each class in the event your second scene is going to be performed ie all 3 of you show up.
(Disclaimer: I don’t aim to have you do 3 scenes each class. I’d rather we spend quality time on 2 scenes or even 1 scene from which everyone will learn. However 2 scenes mean 1 person will work twice. And 1 scene means 1 person won’t work at all. So, I hope you welcome this opportunity to work more as it will accelerate your growth.)