When I first starting reading this text it felt a little dense and tough to read I think mostly due to not understanding a lot of the jargon and references (even though the actual workbook was all about teaching me the definitions!) However I kept at it and found a bunchhhh of very interesting tidbits that I think is helpful to keep in mind when crafting a performance.

I wanted to tackle this blog post in 2 ways.

1. I wanted to list out all points from the workbook that I found interesting and then maybe make a few comments from there.
2. I want to talk about this idea of being bad at something

Part 1

The best way for a director to isolate the event is to give the scene a title (e.g., “Hamlet loses heart”).

I feel like I often have trouble narrowing down what I want the main event to be in some of my projects so this seems like it would just help in creating that structure

A waltz is a neutral movement that can become dramatic when one of the dancers is trying to seduce the other . . . as a director you want to watch for neutral movement and infuse it with dramatic tension.

This was a super helpful example to try and explain the difference between a dramatic movement and a neutral movement. The idea here is to be mindful of movement and continue to add emotion and feeling to your performance

Skilled playwrights know just how long they can sustain dramatic tension without wearing down or disengaging the audience

Ahhhh, how do I become this!! This is a crazy important skill to have. I talked about this in one of my other classes that asked how we felt about waiting. There’s this fine line between being so terribly eager to get to that pivotal moment and waiting so long that you get annoyed.

For whatever reason as we know even from Aristotle humans find some degree of tension pleasurable

What kind of weird little creatures are we.

Directors should look at a scene as if the audience were deaf in order to confirm that the stage movement is conveying the essence of the action and story

This was also quite a powerful quote to think about how important the actors movement/body language/facial expressions all contribute to the essence of the performance

Residual context is something left on stage that continues to resonate after the scene is over.

Its almost this little lifeline that keeps us attached to the scene so we can ruminate on it further

It is important that what is magnified or extended be grounded in a real impulse or else risk the moment becoming simply cliché, camp, or parody.

Thats like a super fine line, I think sadly I have this need to try an get the audience to understand what I’m trying to convey that I end up going to the campy route most of the time. This is definitely something that I want to work on and improve

It is important to remember, however, that for something to be an old friend, it must be absent from the stage long enough for it to fade from the audience’s awareness, making its return a surprise.