Beauty Is Not Between A Size 0 And A Size 8.

 I've had a but of a revelation, In terms of my own personal development:
 Last week I found myself in a situation, surrounded by others in the industry, those whom I am well acquainted. Now these girls are obsessed by 'prettiness' to almost an extreme. They are not actors, but singers, and they are in a line of work where looks almost concur all. It is not necessarily their fault, they have been working for someone who is making them a product, the girls are being told to look good at all times and are being put on strict diets. 
I was made to feel that I had no self worth by them. The worst thing about this - is that I don't even think the girls even knew they were doing it. 

Body image and being 'beautiful' is a huge insecurity to all girls. Especially performers that are judged by their looks every audition they go to. But what happens in ten years time when these girls have lost their looks? There is so much more to life than asymmetry and large assets. 

 I was talking to my friend Missy again about everything that had gone on and how awful they had made me feel, our conversation eventually changed course and we started to talk about when we are listening to our iPods and want to sing out loud in a public place. She said, from everything she has seen in New York, when people just break into dance and just start to jam as they are working down the street, she said, "Just go for it! Who cares what other people think!" 

This made me think about Strasberg. He has an exercise called, private moment. This is where you simply do the things you would if you were at home alone..in front of others. So I did a little experiment. I decided to walk for about an hour around London, singing aloud. At first, I found it very difficult, singing quietly and stopping if I thought anyone was looking at me, or came too close. Eventually I pushed myself to just do it! And although I did have a few people looking, it wasn't half as bad as I had thought. Plus it was raining so I was able to hide a little under my umbrella!! This has made me realise, people need to care less about what others think, it's going to be difficult, but by taking yourself out of your comfort zone, it helps you develop and learn and you find, things aren't half as bad as you thought they were going to be.

My Artefact

Blake Curtis-Woodcock - Module Three - Professional Artefact

My Artefact

I have decided to call my artefact: What is method acting?

This is going to be a finished product which is a small insight into what method acting is.

I am going to cover the basics of method acting; relaxation; a few of Strasberg's exercises; looking at a few method practitioners and a few videos showing the use of method acting from both famous actors and me.  

I have decided my audience will be someone that doesn't know anything about method acting. It will give them some idea of what method acting is, and hopefully surprise them with what they learn.

I am going to show this as an audio usual video. I believe this will keep it interesting for the person who will be learning about the topic.
I have started to plan what I am going to do and I have drawn up a story board.

EUREKA!!!!

It made me laugh looking at my overview of my blogger page today. Seeing that a few days ago my page views had zoomed to 114 in one day! Where they are usually a maximum of 6, maybe 7 if I had written a particularly good blog.

Yesterday late afternoon, I went into Middlesex Uni to use the computers to try and get some work done, as life (Especially getting my tax's done for the self employed!!!) is taking over at the moment and I am finding little time for my degree.
I ended up staying till midnight!! (It is a 24 hour library which actually comes in very handy!)
This is either because I am very keen, or I am worried I am not doing to get everything done by the time I go away at the end of this month.
I am going to pretend it's the first option.
So seeing how my page views had risen dramatically, it seems that I am not the only one!

However, I am so glad that I did this!! I have had an Eureka Moment! I know what and how I am going to be doing my Artefact! Better start planning!

Relaxation

Something that I did notice about what Missy was saying in our interview was that in the Meisner technique, they could sit however they like.

This shows a huge difference between the techniques, as relaxation is imperative in Strasberg's method.

In the book the Fifth Key Theatre Directors, Shomit Mitter, talks about how important Strasberg thought relaxation was.

'In Strasberg's work there was therefore an elaborate programme of carefully 
orchestrated preliminary work, the first stage of which was to get the actors to 
relax physically. Relaxations, for Strasberg, was the most fundamental condition of all creative work: it was so
important that he would often take all the allotted time in rehearsal just to achieve a properly

relaxed state.'Just relax', he would say,'If you never get to the exercise, I don't care' ' (Shomit Mitter 2004)

This web page describes what relaxation is and how is works.

What Relaxation Is And How It Works


This looks like a very strange picture, But this is exactly what relaxation looks like.

Why Would You Want To Be An Actor?

After the interview Missy and I spoke about one of the exercises she was talking about: Where we had to say how we felt.
I started to tell her that at the Lee Strasberg Institute, in one of the method acting classes, before we did scene work we had to improvise the scene we had been working on. We didn't need to say any of the lines, but just go though the thought processes with the character saying how we felt. I was telling her that my partner and I had worked on a scene from The Dreamer Examines His Pillow, Our teacher Mauricio Bustamante, who had been taught by Strasberg in the last few years of his teaching, was pushing me to say how I felt, he pushed me more and more when suddenly, I just burst in to tears, shouting 'WHY DON'T YOU LOVE ME!?!' So much so that the tears were making puddles on the floor!
Here is a link to an early rehearsal of the scene: Blake Curtis-Woodcock - The Dreamer Examines His Pillow
Missy laughed and said how great it was, (A connection that I believe only people that have worked with the method can understand) She said that there is a video on the internet of one of her teachers doing exactly that!
Here is a video from the American Academy Of Dramatic Arts, It's a great video to watch all the way though, but if you want to skip forward to my example, it's from 2:28- 2:38.

Why Would You Want To Be An Actor?

Conversation With A Professional External..

This is my friend Melissa McAnulty. She has trained in method acting in New York too! However this interview was interesting for me as she trained in the Meisner Technique.

She is in a band called State Of Play which are doing really well at the moment.
Here is a link to their Facebook page, if you could give them a cheeky 'like' it doesn't cost anything and it would mean the world to them :) Thank you!
State Of Play - Facebook


This interview has given me a lot to think about and there are more blogs to come!!

Other Ideas I Had For Literature..

• Actors VS Dancers - (Mind Sets)
• Phycology
• Organisation books
• What to expect from an acting career 
• - Lee Strasberg, the father of Method acting - Melgussow 

Mind Maps

I drew some mind maps to help me think about what I should be reading into for my literature.