You have to know that you must have it -- the portfolio.
First, your resume.
Your headshot.
....for now go to the Students directory, the sample are there.
In Acting One I ask for a minimum: two contrasting monologues before we go to the scene study (after the break). Yes, comedy and dramatic (see monologue pages).
[ see mono pages for samples ]
In order for me not to repeat myself you have to do some traveling and clicking:
Accoring to Aristotle (see 200X Files): we have Tragedy (hero above average) and Comedy (comic hero is below average). Of course nowadays, we say Drama.
So what is comical? We have to look at two main elements of genre: comedy of characters and comedy of sitiation. [ I rather start with comedy, because it's easier to make people lagh than to cry. ]
Comedic conflict: extremes, the opposites. All our 5W's must be view within the comedic genre parameters: what, who, when, where, why? Visualisation and physicalization simple and even primiotive. Walk, master-gester -- recognizable and big enough for parady by others in class. The same with vocalization: defects, accents (no choices = no comedy == laughter = no good grade for comedy monologue).
Select the monologue and do your homework (Actor's Text); bring it to class.
[ later about your dramatic monologue for your portfolio -- sample, The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov ]
LOPAKHIN. [Listens] No. . . . They've got to collect their luggage and so on. . . . [Pause] Lubov Andreyevna has been living abroad for five years; I don't know what she'll be like now. . . . She's a good sort--an easy, simple person. I remember when I was a boy of fifteen, my father, who is dead--he used to keep a shop in the village here--hit me on the face with his fist, and my nose bled. . . . We had gone into the yard together for something or other, and he was a little drunk. Lubov Andreyevna, as I remember her now, was still young, and very thin, and she took me to the washstand here in this very room, the nursery. She said, "Don't cry, little man, it'll be all right in time for your wedding." [Pause] "Little man". . . . My father was a peasant, it's true, but here I am in a white waistcoat and yellow shoes . . . a pearl out of an oyster. I'm rich now, with lots of money, but just think about it and examine me, and you'll find I'm still a peasant down to the marrow of my bones. [Turns over the pages of his book] Here I've been reading this book, but I understood nothing. I read and fell asleep. [Pause.][ female, sample, Cherry Orchard ] LUBOV. Oh, my sins. . . . I've always scattered money about without holding myself in, like a madwoman, and I married a man who made nothing but debts. My husband died of champagne--he drank terribly--and to my misfortune, I fell in love with another man and went off with him, and just at that time--it was my first punishment, a blow that hit me right on the head--here, in the river . . . my boy was drowned, and I went away, quite away, never to return, never to see this river again. . . I shut my eyes and ran without thinking, but he ran after me . . . without pity, without respect. I bought a villa near Mentone because he fell ill there, and for three years I knew no rest either by day or night; the sick man wore me out, and my soul dried up. And last year, when they had sold the villa to pay my debts, I went away to Paris, and there he robbed me of all I had and threw me over and went off with another woman. I tried to poison myself. . . . It was so silly, so shameful. . . . And suddenly I longed to be back in Russia, my own land, with my little girl. . . . [Wipes her tears] Lord, Lord be merciful to me, forgive me my sins! Punish me no more! [Takes a telegram out of her pocket] I had this to-day from Paris. . . . He begs my forgiveness, he implores me to return. . . . [Tears it up] Don't I hear music? [Listens.]
Acting = Movement
