Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? George -- and we all do. We like to act in real life, but a little bit. We stop from the real acting, trying not to break away from our own character. The actors on stage break away from their own indentity in order to live their characters' lives. They bring in their personality only as a material to flesh out the characters. And they do it, we have great acting and great roles.
Actor has to be in front of the text, not behind!
Very often in Acting One class I see students changing their monologues many times; they try to find "their" material. They behave as they are casting directors. What if we reverse this process and try to change the actors in order for them to play ANY character?
This is training and professionalism.
This is what the Method Acting is for.
There are many great characters, thanks to great playwrights. Your business is not to deliver their texts, but to use it as a material too. And you have to know HOW to do it, how to USE it.
So, you have to use both -- the text and yourself!
You have to develop this apparatus in you, the inner master, who is in control of your mind. You have to train yourself to make it work every time you need it! This is the craft.
Part One -- Character is after Prologue with three chapters/files: Method, System and Stanislavsky.With some chapters from the SCRIPT directory (like Exposition), only from the Acting Directory I have seven files!
LESSONS:
Text Breakdown