How to analyze a play? Challenge of the week analysis show should start by describing the actor
because it occupies the center of the staging and the rest of the performance tends to revolve around him. But it is also the most difficult to grasp.
Before discussing the interpretation, performance or game player is to propose a theory of the actor. Patrice Pavis on "The analysis shows" offers a very interesting
theory of emotions: in the theater actors' emotions are not necessarily real or felt, should be primarily visible readable and conform to conventions of the representation of feelings. Emotional expression to be (smiles, cries, mimicry, attitudes, postures), found in the theater a range of emotions that are standardized and codified identifiable behaviors, in turn, create psychological and dramatic situations that form the frame of representation . However
demystifies other: Theory global actor: Apply it is very uncertain and complex as the actor's action is comparable to that of humans in normal situation, but with the added parameter of fiction, "as if "representation. The actor is set in the heart of the theatrical event: it is "the living link between the author's text (dialogue or stage directions), the guidelines of the stage manager and the attentive ear of the beholder, and is the point where they pass the descriptions of the show" .
After a theory designed to analyze the actor must recognize some characteristics:
The actor does not necessarily imitates a real person ; may suggest actions by certain conventions or through a verbal or narrative gesture.
From what point man takes the actor condition and what they consist of the specifics of his performance: the actor is constituted as such from a viewer, that is, an outside observer, looks up and sees it as "extracted" from the surrounding reality and as a carrier of a situation , a fictional role and activity, or at least different from their own reality of reference. But not enough that the observer determines that such person interprets a scene and is, therefore, an actor (in this case, we would be as BOAL called "invisible theater"), you also need to be aware that observed that plays a role in its observer and thus, the theatrical situation is clearly defined.
COMPONENTS AND PHASES OF WORK ACTOR
us not forget that, seeing a play, despite being in front of an ordinary human being into the scene we are confronted with another person that "lives" as duration of the show. Many times we indulge in the illusion of taking it as true to this character without regard to the components and steps that had to make the actor to "give birth" to that character.
- Evidence of the presence : The first thing is to be present this material perceived as being as real object belonging to the outside world and then imagine it in a fictional universe, as if it were not there before us, but in its space. The actor therefore has a dual status: it is real and present character and at the same time, fictional character, absent, or at least set to "another stage." Describe this presence is the hardest thing to exist, because the evidence is beyond any apprehension objective and the "mystical body" of the actor is offered immediately recanting. Hence all the misleading statements about the presence of one or another actor, actually discourses that are normative ("this actor is good, the other is not.")
- The relationship with the character : Stay in character to keep the interpretation and not break the illusion that this person is indeed complex whose existence we must believe. It takes concentration and constant attention, whatever the actor's inner conviction of being his character, and whatever your technique to make it simply an external image showing that it is another, or distance themselves from the paper, quoting, mock him or to enter and leave it at will. In any case, you must master always chosen encoding and interpretative conventions accepted. The description and interpretation required to observe and to document the evolution of the link between the actor and his character.
- diction: Must be credible, submitting to mimesis and ways of talking about the environment into which it places the action or it can be disconnected from all mimicry and organize it in a phonological system, rhetoric and prosody that has its own rules and not try to produce reality effects Copying authentic ways of speaking.
- The actor in the staging: Then the domain of behavior and diction actor enunciation imagine scenarios in which your text and adopt a sense actions. (By providing evidence from the scene his gestures, vocal or facial).
Management and reading emotions: The actor must learn to pretend and play in cold emotions (off) to be independent of spontaneity because as noted Strasberg "the fundamental problem of the actor's technique is the unreliability of spontaneous emotion." More than the inner domain of emotions, what matters ultimately is that the actor who plays resulting emotions readable by the viewer. It is built from isolated elements extracted from body parts (neutralizing the rest): hands that mimic every action, lighting of the mouth that excludes the rest of the body, or voice of the narrator who offers stories and plays various roles on . - or distance id: The actor is frequently identified with his character as if it were a likeness of the reality being that the character is a set of elements that make up in part by what gives the actor and the design is completed by the viewer is forged. The characters are often a projection of what we want to be (ie: the characters do not flee conflict or facing a terrible event.)
References consulted:
Strasberg, Actors' Studio L'et la méthode, Paris, Interéditions, 1989, p. 177
Pavis, Patrice The analysis shows, Paidós Communication 121 Part II: The actor .
