Ch 5.

1. The actor should focus less on the “character” and more on their situation, this allows full realism to be achieved because people often do not think about themselves, and rather think about the situation they are placed in. This allows for correct physical actions because the actor is thinking and reacting like the character would, the performer is thinking what the character would be thinking. Like the book said, “we do not think about showing our own characer to other people, instead our consciousness focuses on world around us. This brings a more natural character

2. Focusing on a simple task and analyzing how the activity feels. The feeling of the object on your fingertips, the weight behind the object, how it feels to pick it up. By breaking down this simple action, it allows you to remove the artificial and taking for granted of everyday tasks. By pantomiming this action, the actor will do some vague actions but not fully grasp all the actions themselves and the properties the object has. The actor should focus on the feeling rather than the appearance, the appearance comes after.

3. Stanislavski tells his actors to start small and his previous actions seem to prove this point. The actor often gets focused on the overall tone of the show and character feelings and other things that are often hard to immediately grasp. When approaching a harder script it seems like an impenetrable wall of emotional dedication, by using Stanislavski’s methods, the performer can break down this wall bit by bit. By focusing on realism and the thinking of the character the emotion will immediately follow.

4. Stanislavski tells his actors to focus through spheres the first being the details closest to you and your character then the relationship between your fellow actors, this makes sense because of the need to bring a strong player to the party to easily interact with your fellow actor. Then focusing on the environment itself, with starting off on the smallest sphere the actor can easily create the other spheres, they lead to each other.

Ch. 6

1. Emotional acting can be controversial because of fear that an actor can get too involved in a performance and therefore be more of a personal expression rather than that of a character. I agree with this, but the hard part to point is the line in which this becomes a factor. When does the actor cross this line? Because several actors live through method acting and “live the character”, which could easily be seen as too far, taking the character off the stage and into their life. A personal expression or story denies the character instead of the work, which in turn brings the actor to the forefront rather than the work.

2. An actor can use the scientific definition of nerve endings creating web like stimuli throughout the brain to solidify a more personal meaning, the idea of organic emotions, they aren’t solidified in “just anger” or “just sadness” they follow an organic ebb and flow, they can’t be easily manipulated or used against their organic will. The actor must understand this so he can work with this, because he sure as hell can’t ignore or work around these emotions. A play without emotions is probably the worst thing ever

3. The other scientific analysis useful in an actors work is that of feelings and emotions, often times they are used as synonyms but according to neural scientists, feeling an emotion is a different cognitive response than the emotion itself. Feeling an emotion is a step above, 1 more reaction the human body has. Then, again the body has 1 more weapon up its sleeve the reaction to

itself, the reaction to its own emotions. This gives an actor 3 levels of analysis of emotions to play with.

4. The difference of the Stanislavski method and others is, many believe that an actor is creating an emotion, but rather it should be created organically through correct reactionary response. These feelings, in real life are not conscious responses, they are pre-concious, uncontrollable and created without your interaction, so the actor faces a great tasks if he goes out about creating emotions, this leaves his reactions stale. By using the reactions as steps to the emotion, the emotion feels real and organic.