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Action: whether acted as in relation to another actor (or actors) as a means of achieving his objective. Active fantasy: the use of the daydream state in a structured way to create any emotional truth or justification, for his preparation, his given circumstance, his relationships, and his characters. Remember to use your five senses to live the experience. Anticipate: to react to an event before it happens, usually out of knowledge of its happening, as with a set of dialogue or business, instead of waiting for and acting on the impulse created by the actual happening. As if "The Magic IF": the substitution of personally stimulating analogous circumstances for the imaginary circumstances of the play as a means of inducing the greater personal identification. "It is as if I..." or "it is like the time I...". Beat: Russian Miss pronunciation of the word " bit or bite," and which is used to denote a section of a scene. Most scenes contain several beats, and these beats are frequently concomitant with the beginning and the end of the character's major action. Behavior: any and all of the actor's physicalized life, which includes words and the sounds, manner of speech, tone of voice, gestures, movements, body posture, and facial expressions; all of which are the outward manifestations of his inner life. Blocking: those actor's movements that must remain consistent from one performance to another and that are usually set early in rehearsal by the director as an expression of his concept or interpretation, or sometimes discovered jointly by the actor and the director during the course of the rehearsal and set before performance. Blocking should never go beyond instructions of what to do and when, that they including the elements of how. Business: any physical doing, usually the responsibility of the director or the playwright. Very closely allied with independent activity. The play's physical business is a customized independent life. Casual: an attitude or behavior that is lacking in any element of concern or importance. This is also labeled superficial. Character: an individual's consistent particulars of inner life and the outward behavior that makes him distinct from the rest of humanity. Character Essence: a simple summation of the various elements in the character into an essential point of view or driving force that unifies and makes inevitable those elements. Concrete: having the quality of being tangible or sensually perceivable, as opposed to an abstract or intellectual concept. Dramatic Faith: (or scenic faith) an actor's ability to treat imaginary facts or circumstances as if they were life truth. Effective: any self-conscious stage stance or action, usually preplanned, that hopes to excite, startle, or in any way impress the audience with its imaginative insight or drama. Emotion: the actor's deviance from relative psychological stability which is caused by his sensitive awareness of his imaginary circumstances or his environment, and that always manifests itself in physical symptoms. Emotional Essence: summarizing the imaginary facts of the situation into a statement that points to it's universal human experience. Emotional Memory: a method of recreating any emotion by recording the specific sensual facts of the experience that involved that emotion. One does not tell the story but lives the experience through the five senses moment to moment. Environment: the human or static influences, conditions, or forces which play upon the actor's moment-to-moment awareness. Essence: result of reducing a group of related facts into their most significant component. AN -- in event or condition the veracity of which is beyond question. "Whether you like it or not, it is a go that..." General: having been negative quality of being vague or diffuse as opposed to being specific. Generality: purposeful expansion of specifics into a statement that encompasses all similar human experiences. Imaginary: outside of one's literal immediate or passed experiences. Imaginary Cirumstances: those circumstances specified in improvisation or scene that are outside the actor's true life circumstances. Immediacy: the quality of the situation that demands an immediate resolution. Improvise: to act from one's true responses to the imaginary circumstances and the moment-to-moment changes in the environment, especially in one's partner. Improvisation: and exercise in which two or more actors start with imaginary circumstances and act out their spontaneous responses to those circumstances and their partner's behavior. Improvisational Guide: an expansion of a scene's specifics into a general statement containing the essence of the circumstances, objective and relationships, and used as a stepping stone in building a specific improvisational structure related to the scene. Improvisational Structure: the predetermined imaginary elements in an improvisation: the circumstances, objective, independent activity, justifications, and relationships. Improvise in the scene: working from one's true response to this scene's imaginary circumstances, and letting the dialogue ride on one's moment-to-moment impulses, especially as a result of awareness of the other actor's behavior. Impulse: a spontaneous, subjective reaction to an awareness of one's environment, especially the other actor's behavior. Independent Activity: a physically or mentally involving activity that an actor independently justifies and performs. Indication: self-consciously pretending to react or feel what one prejudices to be correct or effective. Inorganic Acting: acting that tends to be a "dramatically effective imitation of human behavior." Intent: the effect a character hopes his actions or words will have upon another or several other characters. Justification: the imaginary reason(s) why an actor does what he does (activity-action) or wants what he wants (objective). Justify: the act of inducing the greater personal clarity, belief, or motivation in any of the imaginary acting elements through use of specific, personal, and sensual facts. Leaving oneself alone: the active giving of free expression to one's true responses, and the absence of any forced feeling or response. The lack of any self -manipulation. Letting it happen: see: leaving oneself alone. Living off the environment: see: improvise. Making it one's own: the actor viewing or justifying any stage or play element in such a way that it can be relaxedly accepted as an imaginary part of one's subjective or personal reality or mode of expression. Manipulate: the active attempting to change any aspect of the environment or oneself so that it conforms to one's preconceived ideas of what is socially acceptable, morally correct, or theatrically effective. Meanings: see: intent. Moment to moment: spontaneously reacting to one's sensitive awareness of the ever changing environment without clinging to the past or anticipating the future. Objective: something one actor desires from another or several other actors. Sometimes referred to as a want. The objective should have the quality of a life-and-death situation so the actor knows the stakes for which he is playing. He should want it now. He should have a time limit. Obstacle: anything (fact, person, attitude, situation, etc.) that presents a difficulty to the actor in the attainment of his objective. Organic Acting: behaving truthfully in imaginary circumstances. The actor who is doing truthfully. One thought, one emotion, one gesture, and one breath. Personal: (1) directly related to the specific facts of one's own life experience. (2) having to do with only one's self. Personalize: to do, view, understand, or justify any imaginary element through the use of the specific facts of one's own life experience. Physicalize: to physically act out one's response to any element of the imaginary circumstances, or the moment-to-moment happenings. Place: the essence of the relationship between the imaginary facts of the place and the actor's subjective imaginary circumstances. Playing Results: attempting to fulfill a preconceived set of behavioristic responses, usually intended to be dramatically effective. Plot: (1) (an improvisation) the preplanned imaginary facts. (2) (a play) the beginning, current and historical imaginary facts and the story of their resolution. The beginning, middle, and the end with the climax. Point of view: the actor's subjective attitude toward the overall imaginary circumstances, as a result of his objective or relationships within those circumstances. Preparation: the off-stage work an actor does to induce within themselves any emotional state or focus that is harmonious with the improvisation or scene essence. Pushing: forcing one's reactions in attempt to be effective, usually coming from a fear of boring the audience. relationship: the actor's subjective emotional reaction to another, as a result of the sensual specific and imaginary physical or historical fact. A relationship between two actors exists only when each has an immediate response to the fact of the other actor's presence. Deep relationship is a collection of organic statements over a span of time which creates a specific point of view about another actor, or actors. What did you do to me for good or ill when I was 6 years old, 10 years old, 16 years old, 21 years old, 30 years old, and so on. This is called a relationship history. Relaxation: the absence of muscular tension. Repetion excercise: an exercise wherein two actors keep their attention on each other and respond spontaneously to their awareness of each other's behavior, and, whenever possible, repeat each other's dialogue. What is meant by repetition exercise is the emotional repetition or behavioral repetition. Results: for various aspects of behavior such as vocal Wagner and, intonation, word stress, gesture is, movement and facial expressions. Use negatively in connection with pre - determining in behavioristic terms "how" on moment should be played. Scene Essence: a simple statement that extracts from the fundamental scene facts the essential human condition or conflict. Sense Memory: recalling the specific nature and quality of a sense experience: the smell of burning leaves, the details of a room, the taste of marshmallows, etc. Sense of Truth: the sum of an actor's dramatic faith and his ability to leave himself alone. Sensitive: possessing a high degree of sensual perception and responsiveness. Sensual: anything or aspect of a thing that can be experienced directly through one or more of the five senses. Slice of Life: any behavior justified solely on the basis of daily habit or social convention, as opposed to behavior that results from one's true response to the imaginary facts or moment-to-moment reality. Specific: a definite, particular or singular fact, as opposed to general or universal categories. Spontaneous: an immediate and unmanipulated response to a stimulus. Style: (1) a dramatic work's form, language and point of view that combine to make it an author's personal road of expression. (2) those specific facts about the environment of a play that set it apart from the actor's contemporary reality, especially having to do with historical, social, and language differences. Subtext: the true meaning or intended effect that motivates a character's actual dialogue. Taking for granted: assuming a knowledge of a condition, attitude or fact prior to a full and curious investigation. Taking your time: allowing the nature of one's impulses to determine the quickness of response, as opposed to rushing, usually out of a fear of boring the audience. Technique: (1) an actor's technical mastery of his craft. (2) frequently and erroneously used to describe only an actor's control of his voice and body, ignoring completely the "inner" technique. Time: only superficially a clock or calendar time; and more importantly the actor's subjective sense of time as it relates to his imaginary circumstances. "Five 0' clock. An hour before I die." Want: see: objective. Word game: see: repeat exercise. This is a slang term for the exercise. This should never be used.
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