Acting Skills Bank

Character Creation Exercises

Researching Character/Play

Historical, Cultural, Social, Political

            Finding given circumstances

Hot Seating

Improvised Scenes

Create the previous scene

Working with physical objectives

            Playing objectives

            Finding useful physical objectives

3 Line Scenes

Taking Direction

Working on a prescribed set

Acting Skills

Voice Warms Ups

Sirening

Breathing

The tip of the teeth and the lips

Peter picked a peck of pickled peppers

Physical Warm Ups

            Cat stretch

            Rolling down the spine

            Pull and Pressing Exercise

            Shoulder Rolls

Energy

Status

Emotional State

Physicality

Evaluation

Skills Audit 1

Skills Audit 2

Evaluate what learnt already

Evaluate how you’ve improved.

Evaluate your ability to communicate character using voice and body.

Evaluate your awareness of audience and space.

For character creation exercises we research the character to find out more about the character, there background and why they act a certain way towards a certain subject. I researched Rwandan genocide as the play is based around this topic and to understand the play fully i needed to understand and learn more about the genocide. Also the Rwandan genocide is a significant moment in history and has effected and is still effecting a lot of people today all over the world. I think that finding the given circumstances (the facts from the scripts) is very useful because you need to be sure to base your character around these circumstances to make the play more believable.

I think that hot seating is very useful because you can learn a lot about a character due to hot seating that you couldn't learn about in the play, characters deepest feelings. It is also good because the person who is being hot seated can find out things about the character that they didn't even know themselves. Hot seating is putting someone on the spot and asking them question relating to the character that they are playing. Whilst rehearsing for the play we improvised the previous scenes, trying to think about what the character would say before the scene that we were rehearsed. I think that this is useful because it helped me understand more about the character and how they might have been feeling in my scene, also why they were feeling this way. I also improved on my improvisation skills.

Throughout the weeks of working on this play we have been practising working with objectives - not just any objectives but physical objectives. A physical objective is an action that can be played without using any speech. Even though working with physical objectives may look and sound easy it isn't because it is hard to find and objective that is physical and represents what you are trying to do. However after finding the right objective it makes becoming the character and understanding how the character responds to certain situations a lot easier.

When we improvised 3 line scenes it was really helpful because we were able to focus more on the actions and less on the actual dialogue. Working on a prescribed set is more useful than working on a set that is made up because when performing your piece it is best to know your surroundings and be able to adapt  to them and be used to them however not knowing your surroundings can lead to problems e.g. The audience not being able to see you. Each action is worth 1000 words.