From Chapter Four, First You Sit on the Floor:

Acting is probably the reason most of your kids are in the group. They love the idea of acting, and know nothing at all about it. As mentioned earlier, Spolin's* work is incredibly useful, and I won't try to rewrite her stuff here. Instead, let's try to arrive together at a general theory of acting from which you can apply specific exercises, by Spolin and others, with understanding. Later we'll include a list of suggested texts, for those of you who are novices or who haven't taught acting before.

Listen to Hamlet:

For most amateur and student actors, "performing" is deadly. The kids who want to act are performers already---it's in their blood, so to speak. That means they are for the most part eager and willing to violate all the famous advice given by Hamlet to his players, and will "saw the air" with impunity. They will mug, ham, emote, and turn somersaults to gain audience approval. They will not want to take risks, which might lead to audience disapproval, which translates as acute embarrassment. Performing obviously is also the heart and soul of acting----if it is integrated with a technique which allows the actor to create "reality" within the stage context.

To put it simply, the kids your group attracts will be a bunch of hams. They will be prone to cliche mannerisms and styles, but have no real idea of the actors' technique.

Roy G. Biv and the Seven Emotions

No, it's not a band. Many of you already know Roy: you met him in Art Class. When talking about pigment colors (light colors are different) the primaries are Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, or ROY G BIV. These are the basic building blocks, which, with black (the presence of all of the above) and white, (the absence of all of the above) make up the millions of colors that we perceive each day. But can you name the seven basic emotions? A surprisingly large number of people can't.

Here they are again: mad, glad, sad, lonely, scared, embarrassed, hurt. These basic seven make up the pallette from which all of our millions of shades of human emotion are blended. Actors need to know this, but more importantly, they need to know this, which most actors do not know:

You can't play an emotion! It simply isn't possible. What you can do, as an actor, is carry out a physical task, such as washing the dishes (Spolin's What) while also activating a verb, such as punishing, towards your scene partner.

Here's an acting exercise for you to do right now in your head: imagine yourself carrying out the task of washing dishes (by hand.) Now, include in that scene a partner, say, a spouse, whom you wish to punish. You have no words in this scene, only the task. Can you punish your spouse with the task? You might choose to slam the much beloved Waterford Crystal about mercilessly...or you might simply lavish great physical care and precision on the task, while ignoring the spouse (your scene partner) completely. That'll show'em! What you've just done is imagine yourself choosing one or another specific set of actions to accomplish a task and a verb.

So:

T= Task (washing dishes)

V= Verb (to punish)

SV= Sub Verbs: your choice: to bang about the crystal or to work with great care and precision while ignoring (a second sub verb.) You may have any number of sub-verbs in here.

R= audience Reaction

In the mathematics of acting, this yields an equation

T+V+(SV*x)=R

Note that we haven't mentioned an emotion in here. It's my job, as your audience, to fantasize about your character's emotions. I see you, and I use your work, plus the work of the playwright, lighting designer, etc. to decide that you are hurt and mad, a combination of two emotions. The way your spouse picks up the piece of cracked Waterford and dries it, (task) while cradling it so very gently, and reassuring it as if it's an injured child (verbs/subverbs: in this case the spouse is carrying out the verb to shame, using cradling and reassuring (subverbs) to do so.) Spouses's work leads me to conclude that spouse is sad and hurt.

Fact of the matter is, you as an actor may be not at all angry, both you and the other actor may be delighted to have work, excited about opening night-you can't deny these real emotions, so you don't try.

Acting is not temporary psychosis. If I am playing Hamlet, ruminating about "To be or not to be", I had better not be really considering suicide, or I'll likely never make it through the run! Instead, as a technician, I have set for myself a series of tasks and verbs which will show the audience a reality which allows them to fantasize. If I and the director have chosen well, the audience reaction is of high quality, and appropriate. If not, well, we've all seen that outcome.

The Alchemy of Acting

Having said this, you and your actors will then sometimes find that the actor starts to feel actual emotion as a result of playing the task and verb. When this happens for a professional actor, it's sublime: there is nothing better than that full emotional involvement, and audiences will be enthralled. Acting, in fact, is a profession where one is delighted to find oneself beating the crap out of oneself emotionally, on a regular basis, say, each night at 8:47, when that scene comes around. However, the professional actor knows that this emotion must be used, as a tool, and not allowed to run rampant.

Routinely acting students are taught to sternly instruct the emotion thus resulting from scene work to "stop!"once the scene in question is over. Any felt emotion which is the result of acting work is no longer appropriate as soon as the scene is over-it is very important for actors to develop that discipline. This is another acknowledgment of the power of psychodrama, and the danger inherent in letting aftereffects of deep trauma erupt in your workshop without a competent therapist on hand. I've stressed this several times in this tome-I'm not trying to scare you; simply to encourage you not to meddle too deeply. Real emotion will erupt in your workshops...you must be able to know when it's time to intervene and when it's best to let it flow. You've got to trust your gut on this. Another reality: you won't be perfect at this, either.... So don't beat yourself up over it, or let it keep you from the work.

So, back to acting theory: We have a task, a verb, and a perceived-by-the-audience emotional reality. We, as actor/technicians, have to experiment with the combination of task/verb which will make the director (who represents the audience) happy.

Most directors in the theatre don't know this. They will ask the actor to "be angrier!" When they really don't know what they want. But, like art, they know it when they see it. So if you and your youth troupe can catch this concept, you'll be way ahead of the game.

This model is also incredibly helpful from a behavioral point of view. If you are working with a group of "difficult" or "high risk" kids, you may see passive or not-so-passive aggressive behaviors which are habitual. Getting this concept of emotion/verb/task across, then discussing with your group the fact that when I feel (x emotion) I have a number of choices as to tasks/verbs to express/help me deal with that emotion, can really help you cut through some old (unwanted) behaviors. In fact, this allows you to casually name a behavior or verb, relate it to an acting concept, and (in a healthy way, of course) coerce the youthful actor/rebel out of that particular behavior! It beats the hell out of assigning detention, which, if you are in an after-school program, is not an option!

Another main advantage of this "task" approach: it helps you get the actors out of their own way.

Looking back at Hamlet's advice: All of the things which drive him nuts are the hallmarks of self-conscious acting. If you can train your troupe to get so busy on stage that they have no time as actors to step outside of themselves and watch, which is the audience's job, I guarantee you will make some beautiful, engaging theatre.

*Spolin, Viola, author of several key resources, including Improvisation for the Theatre, Chicago, Northwestern University Press, 1999 ed.

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From Chapter Seven:

About Transitions

We've all been to the school play where the curtain is used, and used, and used. After a stilted little scene, viewed by seventy five parents (armed with forty camcorders,) and heard by no one, the curtain is closed. Suddenly, in the one inch gap between the bottom of the curtain and the floor, we see the tantalizing evidence of the real and lively drama of the scene change taking place. Around the auditorium parents whose faces have previously been frozen in a mask of false approval are truly interested, amused, and involved as they crane their necks to watch the rushing back and forth of feet and the dragging of scenery. There is a loud crash, and fifty people wince as one. A loud "SHHHH!" is followed by a whispered and torrential conference, somehow more audible than all the "real" scenes in the play, which elicits amusement and wonder from the parents. Then, after a few minutes, the curtain opens, and performers and audience alike sink back into their collective coma. No one seems to be aware that the best and most vital part of the show, filled with the greatest creative tension and most real drama, has been hidden, but for that little one inch strip. What a shame!

Obviously in the kind of facilitated skits described above for a primary school audience, transitions are talked through by the facilitator and audience as the next skits' chairs and props are set. But in a more advanced piece, for an older audience, the transition/transformation is key.

Curtains

If you are working in a conventional auditorium space with a curtain, you will find the curtain, closed, is a great shield for your actors in training. It shelters the stage from the huge empty auditorium, creating a small and somehow safe-feeling space, unique among the spaces found in schools, churches, and community centers. For performance, however, starting in the very early workshops, I highly recommend that the "curtain" be Spolin's verbal one: scenes should be begun and ended with the spoken word curtain rather than with the actual closing of the object. This will help set a paradigm which will facilitate the development of transitions as vital parts of the piece, not as big gaping holes in it.

Transformation is the key. If you, and your actors, can truly master "transforming the motion" early in training, you will be able to evoke transformation as the shift from scene to scene and place to place. Consider the importance to the modern film and video of the cross-dissolve, where one scene blends into another. We, as an audience, demand that the action not start and then stop again, but that it flow. We are trained to accept the abstract. Consider the bludoobludoo effect, or a thousand other transitions your actors can come up with . Don't use the curtain. The transition, the transformation, is what it is all about.

This is important, too, because you are creating a consciously, proudly, almost defiantly low-budget theatre, in the grand tradition of agitprop. The curtain doesn't belong here....Unless, perhaps, it is a home made one, a patched, self-conscious, clothesline-pulley operated affair, which, as a deliberate choice on the part of you and your cast, makes a dramatic statement.