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Theatre is about play, serious play. Our fundamentals from first quarter - pretend, trust, working with others, competition, stakes and importance in theatre - lay ground rules for getting onstage with your ensemble members and your content. This quarter we'll be applying our ability to play together to creating performance onstage: What is a plot? What is character?
Performance analysis: Psycho
Performance analysis: Psycho
The horror genre always gets me to feel something: feeling tension and terror, getting a jump scare, and hiding my eyes during the scarier parts are all ways I react to horror movies.
Why do I feel so much during a horror film? Is it the movie? Is it the acting? Is it the camera work?
This week we'll watch and discuss Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock. What makes a good horror film?
Performance analysis: Poltergeist
When we're talking about how cinema and performance affects us, we need to break the artistic expression to its components to find a deeper understanding.
Cinema Components for Analysis
Cinema Components for Analysis
Directing (how the components interact)
Performance (how the actors communicate story)
Cinematography (how the camera communicates)
Meaning (theme, tone, genre, social connection)
Story (narrative, plot, sequence of events)
Editing (how the story is assembled)
Design (lighting, production sound, set, costumes/hair/makeup, sets, SFX)
Do you get into it? Do you care about the characters you see in the movies? I do! The actors and the production work is so authentic / believeable / empathetic that I feel it in the middle of body... "LOOK OUT!"
6 Parts of Drama, Aristotle
6 Parts of Drama, Aristotle
PLOT: Structure moving forward from the beginning to the end
CHARACTER: Roles in action, objective / obstacle / strategy
THEME: Message
DICTION: Method of communication
SONG: heightened theatricality, aesthetically "pleasing"
SPECTACLE: An attention-getting moment/event to put the audience's attention where you want it
Written around 330 BCE, Poetics was the original treatise on the functions of theatre. Aristotle's understanding - based on Greek playwrights and their expressions - grounds the ephemeral Art and outlines an objective recipe book on how to create and appreciate Theatre.
Learning to act is understanding two parts: HOW to perform and WHAT to perform.
Content of narrative structure is all the same, and in each act there are events that the actor needs to support in order for the audience understand the narrative.
Freytag's Dramatic Arc
Freytag's Dramatic Arc
Gustav Freytag's interpretation of Aristotle's Dramatic Arc
Act 1 Exposition: Intro of the world, the hero and the villain
Act 2 Rising Action: Starts with an event that kicks off the tension
Act 3 Climax: The moment of truth, change and "rebirth"
Act 4 Falling Action: The realization, the result of the truth/change
Act 5 Denouement: Resolution, tying up loose ends
Ferris Bueller's Day Off: Dramatic Structure in Application
Ferris Bueller's Day Off: Dramatic Structure in Application
Below is a breakdown of Ferris Bueller by time code with a few different systems of analysis (namely Campbell's Monomyth, Fields' 3-Act Paradigm, Snyder's BS2 and Theatrical Structure).
Ferris Bueller Script Analysis.pdfObjective / Action
Objective / Action
Drama / Conflict occurs between two opposing objectives:
Hero wants ------> !DRAMA! <------ Villain wants
An actor's actions are inferred by the objective. With the goal of what the character wants in mind, the actor will be set into action to go about getting what it wants. The series of actions performed - one after the other (plot) - makes up the story / performance the audience is there to see.
A Role is a set of unified given circumstances that exist in the world of the play;
A Role is a set of unified given circumstances that exist in the world of the play;
Character is the personification of action. Characters are what they do, not a description of a person.
Character is the personification of action. Characters are what they do, not a description of a person.
The Platform in Improv
Like Freytag's structure (and 5-Act theatrical structure) improv follows the same structure. Improv calls it The Platform, and every scene is crafted the same way:
Where (location and condition, exposition)
Who (status, exposition)
What (conflict that needs to be resolved, action)
Short Form Games are either limitating / restrictive, or endowments that are laid over a scene that operates on a dramatic arc.
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