Sept.25 Post

What I had learned from the past few weeks about theatre, is not how to perform as an actor, but some general knowledge about what acting and what theatre is. I will now categorize what I had learned into two parts, the first part is stage, and the second part is acting.

There are three types of theater stages, Proscenium is the most common one, Thrust has three sides of audience and Arena is what people called, “Theater in the Round”. Different types of stages have their own pros and cons when it comes to performing. On the stage, there are nine areas that has been divided in the shape of a side of a rubix cube. The most center area is called center stage, the audience’s side is called down stage, it is called down stage because the stage used to be tilted, so the side that is closer to the audience is called down stage, the side that is further away from the audience is called up stage. Facing the audience, actors’ left side is called left stage and the right side is called right stage. Combining the words there goes up-right, up-left, center-left, center-right, down-left and down-right stages. The place where actors do preparations are called back stage, the left and right sides of the back stage is called wings. Each place of the nine areas on the stage has their own effect on performing. Such as when it comes to a quiet monologue, actors would stand in the center stage or the down-center stage. If something secret is going on, that action should take place in whether down-left or down-right of the stages. When it comes to using the stage. Putting the actors in the up stage area can show the audience that they are not important, they are just people in the street. Putting people all over the stage by using the whole stage, it shows the audience that this is a powerful scene. There are also a concept of the layers and the levels on the stage. They represent the high to low of each performer and their location (near to far from the audience). Still, the purpose is to create this visual impact for the audience.

The second thing, is about acting. There are three levels of acting. The first level would just simply be on the stage, follow the script and say the words on it. The second stage requires more, human expressions inside. Such as facial expressions, movements, blocking, emotions, gestures and reaction. This is basically when the actors try to put their real life motions into the play to make it more realistic. However the actors cannot develop too far from their character, they still need to follow the stage directions. I didn’ t really catch what level three would be, but I still remember that, each character should has his/her own motivation and obstacles, these are things that has given by the play itself, Actors should be able to comprehend the circumstance that has given to them, and act the character as it’s real life because there needs to be some senses of truth in acting.

There are also some term of acting that are important. Such as a Tableau, a scene or a picture that actors create on stage, and Declamatory acting, is exaggerating the character in a way that it has a great presence on stage, but hard to tell its true character because everything is exaggerated. There is also, a technique, called Emotional memory, that is when the actor thinks about his anecdotes of certain feeling in life to remind the character’s emotions.