This document provides an overview and outline of acting for the stage. It discusses three main challenges of acting: making characters believable, physical acting involving voice and body, and the synthesis and integration of these skills. To make characters believable, it describes Konstantin Stanislavski's system of realistic acting and how modern approaches have built upon this. It also discusses the importance of physical training, including voice, body, and techniques from other disciplines. The document outlines exercises and tasks to develop performers' skills and notes additional demands placed on actors in different theatrical styles. It concludes that audience members should understand acting techniques to properly judge performances.

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Acting for the Stage
Overview and Outline
All human beings engage in certain forms of acting; imitation and role-playing are excellent
examples of acting in everyday life. Acting onstage, however, differs from acting in everyday
life. Historically, stage performances have required exceptional physical and vocal skills: moving
with agility and grace, to engage in such things as sword fights and death scenes; dealing with
poetic devices (meter, imagery, alliteration, etc.); and projecting the voice to the farthest reaches
of the theatre space.
From the end of the nineteenth century to the present day, many plays have been written in a very
realistic, lifelike style. The characters in these plays resemble ordinary people in their dialogue,
behavior, etc. Presenting them requires that performers make the characters they portray
believable and convincing.
A Russian director, Konstantin Stanislavski, developed a system or method of acting to enable
performers to believe in the “truth” of what they say and do, and to project this to the audience.
Modern approaches to realistic acting by such teachers as Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Sanford
Meisner, and Uta Hagen have built on and departed from aspects of Stanislavski’s theories. Two
other approaches are those of Robert Cohen and Robert Benedetti.
Global influences on actors’ training include the work of the Russian director Vsevolod
Meyerhold and the French director Jacques Copeau, as well as the Polish director Jerzy
Grotowski.
Exercises and tasks have been developed to train performers. These include numerous physical
and vocal exercises and techniques taken from other disciplines such as tai chi and the circus.
Centering is often emphasized as part of body and voice training. Avant-garde theatre and certain
other types of theatre make additional demands on the performer with regard to voice and body
training.
Audience members should familiarize themselves with the problems and techniques of acting in
order to judge performances properly.

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I. Three Challenges of Acting
A. Making Characters Believable
1. The Development of Realistic Acting
a. The Stanislavski System: A Technique for Realistic Acting
i. Relaxation
ii. Concentration and observation
iii. Importance of specifics
iv. Inner truth
v. Action onstage: What? Why? How?
vi. Through line of a role
vii. Ensemble playing
b. Stanislavski and Psychophysical Action
2. Modern Approaches to Realistic Acting
B. Physical Acting: Voice and Body
1. The Actor’s Instrument: Voice and Body
2. Centering
3. Training for Special Forms of Theatre
C. Synthesis and Integration
II. Judging Performances
Features:
Making Connections: Acting
A Historical Perspective: Demands of Classical Acting
Warm-Up Exercises for Body and Voice
Global Cross Currents: Puppetry around the World
Terms
acting
beats
biomechanics
centering
circle of attention
emotional recall
ensemble playing
given circumstances
integration
magic if
psychophysical action
realism
relaxation
superobjective
tai chi
through line or spine
viewpoints theory

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Topics for Discussion
Discuss the concept of believability. Does the concept essentially mean “true to everyday
life”? Or is there a difference between believable and “true to everyday life”? What about
characters like Frodo and Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings: Are they true to life? Are they
believable? What about musicals? In “everyday life,” people do not burst into song to express
their thoughts and feelings. Does this mean that performers in a musical do not have to be
concerned with believability? Discuss how this relates to the concept of “willing suspension
of disbelief” described in Chapter 2. Discuss the idea of the “audience contract”: the rules of
a play or film that let the audience understand what is realistic within the world it depicts.
Please respond to the question in the Discussion Section of the online class.