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Stanislavski An Actor Prepares Undertak Analysis

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An Actor Prepares is quite an undertaking. Stanislavski strives to communicate to his audience the highly theoretical and, therefore, obtuse concepts of acting. Theoretical concepts are many things, not the least of which is accessible to a broad audience. Stanislavski attempts to remedy this dilemma by formatting his book as a fictional class with fictional characters who explore and learn about the theoretical concepts that he possets are essential to truthful art. This classroom format makes the book particularly accessible for acting students who can recognize themselves in the various students of the book as well as the trials, tribulations, and eventual successes that these fictional students experience along the way. This fictional classroom follows a similar progression to our own Acting 101 class because like Stanislavski’s imagined students, we have begun with the most elementary, sophomoric aspects of acting and built up from there. Many of the exercises that the students in An Actor Prepares …show more content…

The idea of finding an inner motivation to justify our external actions has been reflected in many of our exercises—in particular the clap game in which we perform some task (such as freezing, hiding from danger above, being late, jogging, or moving in slow motion) based on an assigned number of claps. You consistently emphasize that we needed to find a motivation for what we are doing. So when you clap twice, I concoct a story in which I am hiding from fire breathing dragons gliding above me in the sky. Without this motivation for why I am hiding, the action is empty and boring. The students in An Actor Prepares experience the same conclusion. Finding a motivation for an action gives it purpose; it gives me the reason for which I am doing

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