At the end of the day, a character is fully created when it is no longer seen as a character, but a person. But how do we make this change? Where do we get the necessary information and tools to make this possible?

This is the 2nd of a four week series in which we will look at all these tools: today we look at observation.

OBSERVATION:

When experience is not enough, observation comes into play. The main problem though, is that we see, but we don’t really look. This routine has made us superficial. Since seeing is an activity that requires no effort, its results are passive and blurry, but looking requires an effort to appropriate oneself with a reality through a voluntary act. To look to really look, gives us a part of that reality; and with that fragment we can make the whole reality, assimilating it as if we had lived it. For example, observing prostitutes in their walks, pregnant women and their difficulties to move, blind in their hesitant walk, crazy people in psychiatric hospitals, are means to grasp a part of their circumstances and from that, as much as possible, deduce their entire personality.

When we speak about the necessity for actors to have an intense life, we try to make them understand that their body should be very sensitized to absorb what happens around them, and that this sensitivity absorbs and is stimulated when you visit museums, when you read good books, even listening to good music…

Next week we look at our next tool; Research.

For the full article…Click Here.

Like every week we post a book review on a subject related to acting, health, personal growth or anything related to the showbiz industry. In this case we talk about Ned Manderino’s  THE TRANSPERSONAL ACTOR.

Manderino  makes very good points with which I agree right off the bat. Such as the need to respect for tradition, but the belief that techniques of Stanislavski or Boleslavski should have been used as a springboard for further development. Not as something static.

His writing has a very scientific undertone and he focuses his logic on areas technically un-related to the actor. The book is comprised of 2 very distinct parts. The first a review on Strasberg/Stanislavski and ancient Greek Sensory work. He includes plenty of exercises, improv and scene work.

The second half focuses on the “transpersonal” actor. He uses Imagination exercises, and uses the physiological and phychological functioning of the body and mind to guide his work. There are also plenty of interesting animal behavior exercises as well as vocal work.

Overall the book is more of a varied technique-exercises, than a guide. Is it worth buying? Personally, NOT. It’s a book worth looking at on a bookstore, but the problem (as with plenty other books) is that you get just as much reading over the index as you do reading the entire book. Some exercises are great, but not worth purchasing the entire book.