Beginning Actors: Exploring Your Resources 2

"Actor training should be broadly humanistic, involving the study not just of dramatic literature and theatre history, but of languages, literature, and history generally, and should be centered on acting in plays rather than just exercises, improvisations, monologues, or even scenes." - Richard Hornby

The answers to the questions you have asked yourself will all come only after an arduous journey. Here you will systematically discover what you have in your historical imagination that might help bring your portrayal of your character to life on stage.

You have now encountered the world of the actor at rehearsal. Your goal as a student of acting is to bring to rehearsal a method of studying a role that will enable you to access the necessary raw materials for creating and performing it. These raw materials constitute the accumulation of your own knowledge and are composed f everything you have experienced or imagined in your lifetime. Your actions onstage are limited to your personal history and imagination. For the role you are playing, you will need to find elements within yourself that will allow you to create and believe in the circumstances of the unfamiliar character. Just as you are dependent on your voce and body to carry out your actions, you are also dependent on your mind to provide the proper impulses for those actions.

Fortunately, your history is not confined to what you have experience in person. It comes from reading, listening, and observing countless sources. Research and the expansion of your historical imagination are important parts of your quest to unearth the truth in the world of the play. And part of talent is the ability to deepen and extend experiences in the imagination.

But how do you know where to find these inner sources that may be deeply rooted in the subconscious regions of your mind? How can you begin to match your own experiences with that of the character? You begin with the script. First discovering the physical actions the character must perform. Even before that, however, we shall begin by giving rise to an environment that encourages maximum inspiration for the discovery of these actions. A truly creative state where you will be able to achieve full artistic expression.