Toronto Zombie Walk 2011: Your Not-So-Normal Acting Exercise

It's not every day you get to act out your zombie apocalypse fantasies.  I think it's a great idea to celebrate a birthday, too.  It's actually on October 25th, but everyone's always doing something on the weekend after my birthday, and they've usually planned it months in advance, y'know?  I figure I just join a party already happening this year with Nick and a couple of our friends.  And believe it or not, I took this in as a great acting exercise, since I had decided I wasn't going to break character during the entire event.  Preparations abound!

L-R: Tony and Nick as 'survivors' and me as their 'zombie captive'.  Check out the Nerf firepower!

Nick has an awesome collection of Nerf guns, some he's repainted to look like some heavy-duty artillery.  He's been waiting for an opportunity like this to put them to 'good use' in a costume or roleplay, so he and his friend, Tony, picked up a couple of 'em and dressed up as 'survivors'.  Tony's holding the Nerf Vulcan automatic machine gun with ammo belt, while Nick proudly shows his Nerf LongShot painted in grey and tan.  We kept teasing Tony that he looked like Jesse Ventura from Predator (pictured left), especially with the hat!  Tony's friend, Daniel, came as a companion zombie - the only time a man would ever let me put makeup on his face outside of a theatre.

The bathroom looked like Dexter's killroom when we were done.

Respect for Acting: The Characteristics of an Actor

 

I meet so many people nowadays who tell me they've always wanted to be on stage and perform, but didn't know if they had it in them, how far they could go with their natural talents.  Most of these people also aren't very familiar with the necessary training one needs to acquire to really harness the gift, but it all starts with a few personal traits and disciplines within yourself that will get you far.  Uta Hagen outlines a few characteristics of actors who are excellent at their craft in all fields in Respect for Acting.

"For a would-be actor, the prerequisite is talent.  You can only hope to God you've got it," Ms. Hagen writes.  I feel as if this could be a debatable point when it comes to 'natural talent' and if it's the foundation of successful acting.  Acting, apart from other artistic mediums, can be a primal trainwreck if out of control of the art itself.  The natural talent, I believe, comes from the understanding and awareness of the gift and the basic idea of how to control and manipulate it.  It's a trait that can be discovered anytime in life, but comes without formal training.  You may come from a family of artists or you may be the 'black sheep', but there's no denying whether you've got the 'talent' or not.  

Talent, as Ms. Hagen defines it, is:

"... an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting - intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate one's own experiences and sensations, to make one's self heard and seen."

To me, talent and ability walk a fine line together.  There are people with outgoing personalities and possess unique traits who don't fare as well as actors because of the lack of training and the focus that comes with it.  The natural ability makes the training much easier, almost necessary to understand the training itself.  I believe everyone has this natural ability because it lies as an innate reaction, albeit more dormant in some people than others.  The natural ability comes from having an open and curious mind to the world and to learn about it as much as you can in the short time that you have, and the talent lies in the desire to communicate what you've learned to the world.  Ultimately, you want your human experiences to be heard and seen, whether they are literal or translated through the character.  How do we develop such diverse skills in emotive and physical communication to successfully portray a 'natural' character?  What do we need to develop within and outside of ourselves as unique individuals to be able to connect with these characters we portray?

Respect for Acting: Representational vs. Presentational, Outer vs. Inner Techniques

I am a student of Stanislavski when it comes to building acting technique, learning about how his method is much like a fine-tailored suit specifically for the actor wearing it.  However, my suit won't fit you perfectly, it will need to be altered for your form in certain ways for your own preferences.  Stanislavski himself interviewed the finest actors of his day to determine the formula for a successful actor in his craft, finding that although certain techniques were common, they were given different approaches depending on the actor's conditioning.  It can all relate to our own personalities and how we retain those experiences, how we recall them when retelling anecdotes from days or years ago.  Whether they're childhood memories, personal morals or even table manners, they have all created a system of responses that are at your fingertips when it comes to a reference library to use in your acting technique.  The question is now how to apply them.

Building 'Respect for Acting'

"Overcome the notion that you must be regular.  It robs you of a chance to be extraordinary."  -Uta Hagen

It seems at the most serendipitous times, the universe gives you what you ask for ... even when you haven't asked for it yet.  When it came to my acting skill, I have to admit that it's all a God-given gift with high-school training and work experience.  My first mentor in the theatre arts, Harry Wilson, was my high school drama arts teacher who saw potential in my untamed energy.  (Seriously - I needed a helmet in freshman year, I was bouncing off walls!)  I have fond memories of late nights with cast and crew of students and 'Mr. Wilson' performing a labour of love for Sears Drama Festival plays or Remembrance Day assemblies.  He taught me about Stanislavski and how his 'actor's suit' had to be tailored for each actor, because each one requires a different fit.  Each actor has his or her own rituals and mental processes of connecting with a character, but may not suit another actor's technique or opinion.  Each actor has a personal technique tied with something that has been learned and refined, which is a constant process.  Any artist who's told you he's learned all he needs to know is lying!

My Personal Library

Books are great.  I love books.  I've been a bookworm since I was a kid, my nose usually stuck in some story book with ideas on how to act them out later.  I imagined that I would have a large two-storey mahogany library full of books with a fireplace and those wheeley-ladders you'd need to get to the highest shelf.  I will never have a big enough book collection, and it's getting almost ridiculous.  I have books about everything - science, art, music, psychology, medicine, history, religion, children's stories, philosophy, biographies ... Well, here.  This is what's directly across from me at the moment; you'd have the same view if you were sitting beside me on my couch.  Have a look.  It's not everything, but it's most.

We have yet to find a 'bookshelf' that we really like.  In the meantime, my boyfriend had found this gurney in a 'free stuff' pile outside Peel Memorial Hospital.  It's currently being supported by a couple of milk crates on either side, those ones are holding magazines and paperbacks.  This is the bulk of it, more of it is scattered around the apartment.  Within arms reach anywhere in the apartment, you'll hit a stack of books.  I've got rainy afternoons, lazy Sundays and sick days taken care of!

I love the fluid motion of turning pages, how words on paper can create images in the mind's eye, fleshing out people we feel connections with and places that we dreamed before.  Reading is the best exercise we can give our minds and imaginations, not to mention our vocabulary.  It can open up so many doors and endless possibilities of communication and compassion, help up conquer and overcome our deepest fears and better ourselves through education and knowledge.  It can also help us understand ourselves better, as individuals and how we are connected through history and storytelling.  An actor's ability to use the 'mind's eye' to 'flesh out characters' is important when it comes to reading scripts, and reading is the best way to exercise that 'mental muscle'.

An actor's ability to become a character from paper all comes, first and foremost, from the script.  Words are crafted in a certain way to show a specific intent, whether it's made obvious in a spoken line or dubious in a veiled action (sometimes such instructions that'll show up in the script usually in parenthesis and italics, for those who haven't read a script format).  For an actor who truly wants to 'create' the character as supposed to 'represent' a character, one would be studying the human reaction within the script as supposed to recreating someone else's performance in the same production.  We do this when we read our favourite novel, but the author has done us the favour by including detailed descriptions of the atmosphere, affecting the character's mood, which in turn reveals the 'inner monologue' - we could only ask for such luxury in a script!  We receive a few paragraphs of the room in which the scene takes place, followed by the characters' lines in order with the few occasional directions of interaction with the set and props, as well as direction of emotional speech.  Read a script - you'll see the difference!  

I've got a pretty good collection of scripts and classic theatre plays, as well.  Stuff ranging from Sophocles and Shakespeare to Shaw and Sondheim ... and a few more in between.  Again, above isn't everything, but a good chunk.  I'm excited to revisit these favourites, and some I haven't even the chance to sit down and read myself.  Shakespeare is my favourite to read because of the language itself, how iconic it becomes when you really pay attention to the symbolism and poetry.  The theatre of ancient Greece and Rome has always fascinated me, as it served as a sort of worship to deities and leaders when actors and musicians would reenact victorious battles and historical moments.  I have a great collection of modern classics I'm excited to read through again, having not really touched them since high school.  All of this stuff I'm excited to share with my new students at Synergy, because these are beautiful works of art that will broaden their repertoires, shape their technique as actors, and deepen their compassion as human beings.

But ... first thing's first.  Let's get my technique down, shall we?

The first book I'm reading is something I've already read, but I'm now defacing it with margin notes and highlighter: Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen.  I've heard this is used as a textbook in most colleges, which makes me a little more excited that I found this in a thrift store.  Ms. Hagen is a brilliant teacher at HB Studios in New York City, where she has been a stage and screen actress and teacher for more than 20 years.  I've gotten about a chapter and a half into the book with copious notes, incredibly introspective into building an actor's technique by using human experience and instinct.

My boyfriend and I don't subscribe to cable television, which relieves a 'tether' on us, where we flip it on and plant ourselves on the couch, and suddenly - whoa, where'd the past three hours go?  I do that with books now, and I feel a heck of a lot more productive, and take my afternoon nap with a lot less guilt.  Don't get me wrong - sometimes Lost is playing in the background, but it's on our schedule.  I feel like I have 'all the time in the world' to finish my library, because books are my television.  I'd be happy to share book recommendations for you; between me and a few other friends, we've got a rather large library to stock!

Read, read, read kids!  Your imaginations can do a million things more than any television can think of!