August 11, 2022
Hello, in this episode, we're going to discuss what is the technique of classical acting? Stay tuned. The question of the moment is what is the technique of classical acting? Okay, classical. Work on your voice, and speech, work on your body. If something is classic it's withstood the test of time. Whether it's Shakespeare, whether it's Arthur Miller, whether it's Tennessee Williams, those are considered to be modern classics. Chekhov, Ibsen, Strinberg. But it's all about, do you have a muscularity of speech And do you have a powerful voice? If you do not work those muscles, you are severely limiting roles that will you know, you'll be able to tackle. When somebody says classical, you know, I think powerful. When I think not-so-good classical acting, we call like the little teapot school. My lord, I would speak with you. I'm a little teapot, right, with my leg turned out. Also known as, bloodless museum peace theater. It never moves anybody. If you think you don't like Shakespeare, or you don't like Shaw, again guys I mentioned Ibsen's, Strinberg, Chekhov, it's because you've never seen a really solid production of it. Once you do, you're going to say I want to do that. Now, do not be the actor that avoids this work because it will stalk you and haunt you like a demon.
You will feel for the rest of your life there's this stuff over here that you know shunned and then you're going to read for a film or a television show or a play that has some really challenging text. That work, the classical work is what prepares you to play anything. So, folks, remember, there's no such thing as classical emotion, right? Emotion is now as it always was. What makes something classical? It is that it's universal, right? So, we learn about ourselves because why we go to good film whether you realize it or not, and why you watch good television, and why you go to the theater is to make sense of the world. So, if you look at from the Greeks on through Shakespeare, Moliere, etc, you will learn something there, right? Now, because word constructs and words that were colloquial 450 years ago may not be now. But there's phrases that teenagers use that you go I don't really know what that means, right? But it has an emotional meaning for them just as Shakespeare does. A technique that I encourage you all to use, whenever you're working on any text but particularly something that doesn't feel contemporary anymore. Write it out in a notebook long hand, double space it, and leave room to take notes. I call this somewhat crudely, peeing on it. So, you're marking it up, you're making it your own. If you look at it what a composer does, right? You will see all kinds of marks on their score, right? What the conductor does all kinds of marks all over the place. You know, when an actor is doing a piece of general work and sometimes ask me I see your text and I look at it and it's clean it doesn't have any marks on it. Well, that means there were choices they didn't make. So, remember that your talent is in the choices. When you work on Shakespeare and you see a good one, right? You're going to go wow, it's creating a fearlessness. Because what we're really going for is a confidence and a fearlessness to play anything and that's what the classics gives you. If you're enjoying what you're learning here today, please click on the link below. Okay, so, if something's considered classical, it's because it's withstood the test of time that each generation. I mean you know, good plays in New York are remounted about every 10 years because it's a good machine and there's a new generation that hasn't seen it yet. So, it's done over, and over, and over again and again it addresses those universal themes, family, love, money. If you think about Romeo and Juliet,
didn't you date someone that your parents didn't like? If not, didn't you have friends your parents weren't so crazy about? Well, that's Romeo and Juliet, right? You add music it's west side story that was so successful they made it again. Another benefit of working on classical text is it requires you use your imagination, rather than just draw from your own history. So, folks, beware I mention this frequently and I'm going to mention it again beware of the myth of overnight success. You might get a job or two but a career that lasts 50, 60, or more years, is a product of real technique. So, people think well, you know, doing the camera you know, I don't need a voice because there's a microphone here which there is and there's a microphone here which there is, right? But if I sounded like this after about 30 seconds or so you'd go this is really unpleasant to listen to and it really doesn't show much versatility, right? So, there's a certain resonance here. Now, I'm not in a wider shot where I need to you- I don't need that but I know I have it and that creates a confidence. To be able to control the room and as an actor, your job is to write this down. Change the molecules in the room. To be able to do that, You must have control of your voice, you must have control of your body. So, this isn't happening when you talk, right? This is you know, whenever you see this people go, well, you know, I'm fill in the blank.
I'm from south America, I'm from Italy, I'm from Greece. So, we talk with our hands I go I don't want a surgeon who talks with his hands. Okay, not when he's doing his surgery. So, you might be this person except when it's time for a close-up, you have to know how to be still. That comes from work on your voice. So, don't avoid that, don't avoid it. You still need resonance for film work and television work. There's training and then there's those that think my personality is so outrageous that I'm going to be able to feed myself for the next thousand years. I'm not going to live that long. Okay, we do this work every Saturday, all over the world. I challenge you to work more deeply than you ever have before. Please come visit a class as our guest, and meet our community of very passionate, very dedicated, artists. You might find that you fit in really well, right? And a lot of these folks, when they first came in, I'm not interested in Shakespeare I'm not interested in that stuff, it's their favorite stuff. So, ready to accept the challenge? Come to class, click on the link below. See you Saturday.