Journal Entry #9

Sanford Meisner

This week in Mr.Evans class, we studied Sanford Meisner and his techniques.

Meisner believed that "the foundation of acting is the reality of doing".

He did a series of exercise's where he used repetition designed to eliminate all intellectuality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLXqlhmlRPU

Above is a link of one of Meisner's ex-students who talks a bit about her experience with Meisner's workshop.

Brief Background:

• Meisner was born in August, 31st, 1905.



• He pursued a career in acting despite his parents advice.



• He trained famous people such as Grace Kelly, John Voight and Diane Keaton.



• He invented the Meisner Technique.

In class, we did a few exercises where we practised some Meisner-inspired activities. It took us a few tries to perfect the activity because from instinct, we began to change the line's a bit.

For example, if you were working in a pair, and your partner said "you have nice hair", you have to repeat that EXACT line. We, however, had a tendency of changing this line to first person by responding "I have nice hair" instead of "you have nice hair".

I found Meisner's technique very interesting because he uses repetition to make the actor believe what he is hearing. I find that people, in their everyday lives, sometimes talk to themselves to support themselves.
For example, before a big race, I remember hearing someone whisper to themselves repetitively saying "I can do this, I can do this, I can do this."

Frank Wedekind (1864-1918)

We also learned a bit about Wedekind who wrote Spring Awakening.

• He worked in buisness and in the circus before he became an actor and singer.


• Spring Awakening was about the tragedy of childhood.


• He writes extremely contraversial plays that critizes society as a whole.


• He implies that parents and teachers are the most ignorant/mentally indolent class.
  

Theatrical Convention

We learned that a theatrical convention is a system or technique that is argued upon by the audience and the artist. The theatre production we saw a while ago called Shun-Kin used this idea with their wooden sticks which they used to create trees, and hallways.

This is because the audience understood that the actors were using the sticks to represent trees.

Another example, which generally relates to any theatre production, is when the curtain opens. Once the curtain opens, the audience understand that the show is about the begin, and the actors, know that they have to be in character when the curtain goes up.

Other ways to show theatrical convention is with the use of technique, costume, staging, props, use of space, and acting style.

Masquerade African Theatre

To begin this unit, we watched this video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cni-ytR2siI

From this video, we realized how essential every beat of the drums are to the movement of the dancers or actors.

• We also learned ""Adiro akwu ofu ebe enene nmanwu" which translates to "one does not stand on one spot to watch a masquerade."


• African Masquerades involve a team of dancers, vocalists, instruments etc.


• There are different types of masquerades for example,


• AGABA masquerade=warrior


• ODOGWU= youthful, and agressive


• OJIONU=water spirit and involves non-stop dancing by sea creatures such as crocodiles or sharks.


• Masquerades embodies spirit and human worlds.

These masquerades use their masks to make it easier for people to know right away what their characters are like. Where other theatre productions use make-up, or costumes to help build their characters, African theatre relies on their masks.

This reminded me of a course I took this summer in Argentina. I took a theatrical make-up course where I learned to apply make-up on someone to transform them into geisha's, mermaids, kabuki actors and more.

Where the africans depended on their masks, Kabuki actors rely on their make-up to show their characters emotions and character.

For example, to show that someone was dissapointed or evil, we would first erase their eyebrows with wax, then apply their white make-up and then draw their eyebrows arched and higher up their forhead.