Acting 2

Acting Syllabus

AUDITIONING

• PA605.PR4.1.8.b – Use various character objectives and tactics in a drama/theatre work to overcome an obstacle.

PERFORM IN A LARGE ENSEMBLE PRODUCTION​

• PA605.Pr6.1.8.a – Perform a rehearsed drama/theatre work for an audience.​

READING AND ANALYZING SCRIPTS

• PA630.Re9.1.I.a - Examine a drama/theatre work using supporting evidence and criteria, while considering art forms, history, culture and other disciplines.

DIRECTING

• PA605.Cr2.I.b – Investigate the collaborative nature of the actor, director, playwright, and designers and explore their interdependent roles in a drama/theatre work.

PLAYWRITING

• PA605.Cr2.8.a – Articulate and apply critical analysis, background knowledge, research, and historical and cultural context to the development of original ideas for a drama/theatre work.

​CRITIQUING

• TH.Re7.1.I.a - Respond to what is seen, felt, and heard in a drama/theatre work to develop criteria for artistic choices of a drama/theatre work.​

READING AND ANALYZING SCRIPTS

• PA605.RE9.1.8.a – Respond to a drama/theatre work using supporting evidence, personal aesthetics and artistic criteria.

THEATRE HISTORY

• PA605.Re8.1.8.b – Analyze how cultural perspectives influence the evaluation of a drama/theatre work.

ACTING TERMINOLOGY AND PERFORMANCE SKILLS 

• PA605.Cr3.1.8.b – Refine effective physical, vocal, and physiological traits of characters in an improved or scripted drama/theatre work.​

QUIZ #1

• ASIDE.     A line spoken directly to the audience.
• BEAT.     A pause of varying length in the scene, usually to emphasize an emotion or a thought
• MILK.     To draw the maximum response from the audience through the use of comic lines or action.
• RUNNING GAG.     Device of comic anticipation that requires three exposures to provoke laughter:
• the plant, the establisher, and the clincher.
• SLATE.     The process of verbal identification by a performer in an audition. The term come from film where a small chalkboard and clapper device, often electronic, are used to mark and identify shots on film for editing. 
• SPEED THROUGH.     A rehearsal exclusively for lines. Actors recite their lines quickly without blocking. This is often to help the actors with memorization.
• STAGE PRESENCE.     The ability to command the attention from an audience by the impressiveness of one's manner or appearance.
• UPSTAGING.     Stealing a scene by improperly taking attention from an actor who should be the focus of attention. Originally based on taking focus from an actor that is farther downstage.
• HOLDING FOR LAUGHS.     Waiting for an audience to quiet down after a humorous line or scene.
• SUPER-OBJECTIVE.     A concept developed by Stanislavski that would carry the through line for a character through an entire play.

 
QUIZ #2

• PICKING UP CUES.     Speaking immediately on the last word of the previous speaker to reduce pauses that slow down the play or musical.
• FEEDING.     Giving lines and action in such a way that another actor can make a point or get a laugh.
• OFF-BOOK.     Rehearsals without scripts.
• OVERLAP.     To move or speak before another actor has finished speaking.
• PARAPHRASING.     Restating lines in one's own words.
• SIDES.     Booklets containing half sheets of paper on which the cues and lines for one character are written.
• SOLILOQUY.     A speech given directly to the audience, ordinarily with no one else on stage.  Usually played as a direct address to the audience, sometimes played as a character thinking aloud in the audience’s presence.
• OPEN AUDITION.     A call for actors that anyone can attend.
• MONOLOGUE.     A scene or a portion of a script in which an actor gives a lengthy, unbroken speech without interruption by another character.
• CAST.     All of the actors in a production. 

 
QUIZ #3

• ​DICTION.     The selection of and pronunciation of words and their combinations in speech.
• INFLECTION.     Modulation, variety in pitch.
• NASALITY.     The quality of sound produced through resonators in the area of the nose.
• PITCH.     The relative highness or lowness of the voice.
• PRONUNCIATION.     The manner of saying words using eh correct sounds and placing the accents on the stress syllables.
• VOLUME.     The strength, force, or intensity with which sound is made.
• RATE.     The speed at which words are spoken.
• RESONANCE.     The vibrant tone produced when sound waves strike the chambers of the throat, head, nose, and mouth.
• QUALITY.     The individual sound of a particular voice.
• MONOTONE.     An unvaried speaking tone; lack of inflection throughout a speech.

 
QUIZ #4

• ALVIN AILEY. A dancer, director, choreographer, and activist who founded a dance school as a haven for nurturing black artists and expressing the universality of the African American experience through dance.
• BOB FOSSE.  An American musical-theatre choreographer and director. Created a distinctive style of choreography that included turned-in knees, jazz hands, rolled shoulders, sideways shuffling, and use of hats. They are known for their choreography in Chicago and Cabaret.
• JEROME ROBBINS. An American choreographer and director who worked in classical ballet, on stage, film, and television. Known for directing and choreographing West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof.
• KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKI. An actor and director whose principal fame and influence comes from creating a system of actor training, preparation, and rehearsal technique. Wrote An Actor Prepares, Building a Character, and Creating a Role.
• MARCEL MARCEAU. A mime actor who established a pantomime school in Paris. A 20-year friend of Michael Jackson, who influenced the pop star’s dance steps.
• MICHAEL SHURTLEFF. A major force in casting on Broadway during the 1960s and 1970s, who wrote Audition, a book for actors on the process of auditioning for theatre and film. 
• SANFORD MEISNER. An American acting instructor who developed an approach that emphasized "the reality of doing.”
• STELLA ADLER. An American actor and acting teacher who founded an acting studio in New York City in 1949. Their school still operates today in New York City and Los Angeles. Created a method of acting that is based on use of the actor's imagination.
• UTA HAGAN. An actor who became a highly influential acting teacher and authored the best-selling acting text, Respect for Acting. Created a series of "object exercises" that built on the work of acting techniques that came from the Moscow Art Theatre. Won two Tony Awards for acting.
• VIOLA SPOLIN. An American theatre educator and acting coach who wrote a book called Improvisation for the Theater, which includes a philosophy on teaching and coaching methods that is often considered the "bible of improvisational theatre". This educator’s son used the techniques to found Second City in Chicago.   

 
QUIZ #5

• TEMPO.     The speed at which the action of a play moves along.
• RHYTHM.     The overall blending of all the elements of a production with particular sets on tempo, action, and dialogue.
• TIMING.     The execution of a line or a piece of business at a specific moment to achieve the most telling effect.
• PACE.     The movement of tempos of the play as it progresses.
• CUT-IN.     To break into the speech of another character.
• CUT-OFF LINES.     Lines interrupted by another speaker and indicated in the script by dashes.
• FADE-OFF LINES.     Lines that actors trail off rather than finishing.
• HIT.     To emphasize a word or a line with extra force.
• TAG LINE.     A final line in a play, especially one that served to clarify a point or to create a dramatic effect.
• TOP.     To make a line stronger than the line or lines preceding it by speaking at a higher pitch, at a faster rate, or with greater volume and emphasis.

 
QUIZ #6

• SWEENEY TODD.     A musical composed by Stephen Sondheim with lyrics by Hugh Wheeler about a barber who returns to London to get revenge on a judge that stole his wife and has kept his daughter. The barber sets up shop above a woman that owns a meat-pie shop. 
• HAIRSPRAY.     An American musical with music by Marc Shaiman and lyrics by Scott Whitman and Marc Shaiman with a book by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan about an overweight teenager in 1962 that wins a role on a tv dance show and then pushes for social change to integrate the show.
• THE FANTASTICKS.     A musical with music by Harvey Schmidt and lyrics by Tom Jones. It tells the story concerning two neighboring fathers who trick their children, into falling in love by pretending to feud. The show's original Off-Broadway production ran a total of 42 years (until 2002) and 17,162 performances, making it the world's longest-running musical.
• THE SOUND OF MUSIC.     A musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. It won a Tony Award for best musical and an Academy Award for best picture.
• THE PHILADELPHIA STORY.     An American comic play by Philip Barry. It tells the story of a socialite whose wedding plans are complicated by the simultaneous arrival of her ex-husband and an attractive journalist. 
• PICNIC.     A Pulitzer Prize winning play by William Inge about  a neighborhood function on a Labor Day when a drifter who arrives in town looking for work and to visit his college friend.
• FENCES.     A Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play by American playwright August Wilson about a sanitation worker in 1950s Pittsburgh. Having dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player, but was too old when the major leagues began admitting black athletes. He takes out his frustration on his wife and his son. 
• PROOF.     A Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play by the American playwright David Auburn. The play concerns the daughter of a recently deceased mathematical genius and professor at the University of Chicago, and the struggle between mathematical genius and mental illness.
• THE GLASS MENAGERIE.     A play by American playwright Tennessee Williams featuring characters based on its himself, his overbearing mother, and his mentally fragile sister. 
• JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT.     A musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice that is based on a bible story from the book of Genesis.