Open Forum

I would like to introduce my students to various acting teachers' methods. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to sum them up and fit them into one or two semesters. Please share any course outlines or materials, if you're willing. Thank you!

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Taylor Horne
Upper School Theatre Director
Jacksonville FL
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Original Message------

I would like to introduce my students to various acting teachers' methods. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to sum them up and fit them into one or two semesters. Please share any course outlines or materials, if you're willing. Thank you!

------------------------------
Taylor Horne
Upper School Theatre Director
Jacksonville FL
------------------------------

Here are two great resources to get you started:

I use this video at the end of the year with my beginning theatre class to review theatre history and to introduce Stanislavski: 

The Origins of Acting and "The Method"

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The Origins of Acting and "The Method" The Origins of Acting and "The Method" Trace the origins of acting technique by following the roots of theater going back all the way to the Ancient Greeks, through the Italian Renaissance and finally to the psychological approaches of the 20th Century under the term "Method" Take the full Filmmaker IQ course on the history of Method Acting with sauce and bonus material at: https://filmmakeriq.com/courses/origins-acting-method/ View this on YouTube >

The following is an easy and fun book to read and includes many early methods as well as Stanislavski and those he inspired.  I use it with my advanced theatre classes.


Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods / Edition 1

Barnes & Noble		remove preview
Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods / Edition 1 Ask any great actor how it happened and you will hear about a great acting teacher. The Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods explores the acting theories and teaching methods of the great teachers of acting - among them Stanislavski, Adler, Meyerhold, Strasberg, Meisner, Brecht, Grotowski and Suzuki. View this on Barnes & Noble >

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Marla Blasko
Theatre Arts Director
Columbia MD
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-28-2017 23:41
From: Taylor Horne
Subject: Method Acting

I would like to introduce my students to various acting teachers' methods. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to sum them up and fit them into one or two semesters. Please share any course outlines or materials, if you're willing. Thank you!

------------------------------
Taylor Horne
Upper School Theatre Director
Jacksonville FL
------------------------------

Get the book Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods.  Each chapter outlines a different acting teacher, their method, and outlines different activities you can do in your own classroom.  
I've used it for several years; it's incredibly easy for students to understand!

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Annie Rice
Spring Hill TN
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-28-2017 23:41
From: Taylor Horne
Subject: Method Acting

I would like to introduce my students to various acting teachers' methods. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to sum them up and fit them into one or two semesters. Please share any course outlines or materials, if you're willing. Thank you!

------------------------------
Taylor Horne
Upper School Theatre Director
Jacksonville FL
------------------------------

I also use Great Acting Teachers and Their Method and recommend it. Something else I have done is had the kids do research on different acting styles and present both an overview of the style and an example of one of the common exercises used in the technique. I've had to help them through teaching the class the exercise but I find that it really helps cement the information in the brains of both the kids presenting and the kids learning it. It also helps the kids become more exposed to a variety of options.
This assignment is offered as either a group or individual project. It is entirely up to the kids to decide. The only caveat is that multiple groups cannot present the same exercise and must get together and decide which group will teach what. It has really helped them stay on topic and work when the opportunity is given to them. They have to tell me which group is presenting what on a certain day to ensure there is no overlap and, if they can't, then they automatically get a 0 for that portion of the project. I usually give them about 3 days to do a basic amount of research and decide on possible options. They get approximately 15-20 minutes in class to "argue" about who is doing what.

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Shira Schwartz
Chandler Unified School District
Chandler AZ
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-29-2017 12:30
From: Annie Rice
Subject: Method Acting

Get the book Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods.  Each chapter outlines a different acting teacher, their method, and outlines different activities you can do in your own classroom.  
I've used it for several years; it's incredibly easy for students to understand!

------------------------------
Annie Rice
Spring Hill TN
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-28-2017 23:41
From: Taylor Horne
Subject: Method Acting

I would like to introduce my students to various acting teachers' methods. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to sum them up and fit them into one or two semesters. Please share any course outlines or materials, if you're willing. Thank you!

------------------------------
Taylor Horne
Upper School Theatre Director
Jacksonville FL
------------------------------

I am a fortunate person having studied with some of the greatest American theatre teachers. I was very young and they were all very old, but that being said they were at the top of mountain at that point in careers and teaching. These are my overall breakdowns of their approaches to acting. All of these individuals had a real ability to peer inside their students to their very soul and impart decades of wisdom and clarity about the art of acting.

Stella Adler: Concentration on the choice and the majesty of the theatre. She's the one who brought it to America from Stanislavski. She said, "you bring with you to the stage every man and every woman that ever lived and all the power that they possessed." When you have that statement realized in your acting, you can start to begin the majesty of the theatre that Stella brought to us.

Sanford Miesner: ACTING IS DOING. when I asked him where that came from, he replied, "I looked it up in the dicitionary." All action is do-able. It can be completed. Another sense from Sandy was the ability to go back to kindergarten with each role. Start fresh explore and dive in to the character complete freedom just like a kindergarten student would do.

Uta Hagen: She was the mistress of the one liner. She could wrap up a whole concept in short simple words and you could understand it and put it into your work. Of course, Respect for Acting (her major work) goes without saying. She was the queen of the subtext and being so in the moment of the scene that the reality of the play shines.

Micheal Shurtleff: Of course, his were the guideposts. Strongly focused on understanding the character's goals and objectives and obstacles to those goals and objectives.

Three individuals who had already been laid to rest by the time I came studying were Herbert Berghoff and Bobby Lewis and Lee Strasberg.

Herbert Berghoff: Herbert Berghoff was married to Uta Hagen as well as being her teacher. Together they owned and operated HB Studios in NYC. From people I know who studied with him, they say the honesty and being able to bring yourself to the characters was the biggest walk away from Herbert. He used to say to students, "You are enough. Bring YOU to the part and the stage." Acting is ability to run the race of character in your shoes.

Bobby Lewis: Under the same sphere of influence as Stella Adler with the group theatre, Bobby's focus was choice and doing. Strong thought to the objective as well.

Lee Strasberg: The father of THE METHOD or method acting. The Strasberg Method is a invoking real response to imaginary stimuli. The method uses sense memory and the actor's senses to discover real truthful responses on the stage. Once those truths are found in the discovery and rehearsal processes they can be repeated on the stage. Relaxation is another focus for the Strasberg Method.

Someone I am studying now a days is Rudolf Laban. He was a movement theorist. Which is used mostly in dance but has a real place in the theatre as well.

Rudolf Laban: The Laban Movement analysis is a physical approach to character discovery pairing kinetics side with the language thought side of the brain to develop characters from the outside in. Which is different from most of the other styles of the American acting study. But fascinating and can have great success.

These are some of my experiences and how I have pared them down into my own working. There is not one branch of study and philosophy that I say, "Yeah, that is the only way." All of them work, all of them bring something different to the table for the actor who has eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to feel. Every actor in the end does what works for them and as teachers of this great, it is our responsibility to expose our students to a vast collection of theatre so they can find what works for them.

Break a Leg and may all your theatre seats be filled.


Original Message------

I would like to introduce my students to various acting teachers' methods. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to sum them up and fit them into one or two semesters. Please share any course outlines or materials, if you're willing. Thank you!

------------------------------
Taylor Horne
Upper School Theatre Director
Jacksonville FL
------------------------------

Kelly, I am envious of your experiences with these teachers!

Stella Adler was already familiar with Stanislavki's work when she went to Russia to work with him in 1934, because she had been a member of the American Laboratory since 1926.  That group was formed by Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya after the MAT toured to the U.S.A. in 1923. 

Boleslavsky's Acting: The First Six Lessons is the first text to which I introduce my students.  It is written in the narrative style Stanislavki used.  He wrote it as a series of articles for Vanity Fair magazine and published it as a thin little volume in 1933.  Boleslavky thought that the actors who left the Lab after a year to form the Group Theatre put too much emphasis on the internalization of character and emotion, too little emphasis on dramatic action and character objectives.

I also use Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods, although students often find it dry.

------------------------------
C. J. Breland
Asheville High School
Asheville NC
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-28-2017 23:41
From: Taylor Horne
Subject: Method Acting

I would like to introduce my students to various acting teachers' methods. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to sum them up and fit them into one or two semesters. Please share any course outlines or materials, if you're willing. Thank you!

------------------------------
Taylor Horne
Upper School Theatre Director
Jacksonville FL
------------------------------

All of these suggestions are wonderfully helpful! What I would have given to have all of you when I first start teaching! Thank you!

------------------------------
Taylor Horne
Upper School Theatre Director
Jacksonville FL
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-30-2017 13:24
From: C. J. Breland
Subject: Method Acting

Kelly, I am envious of your experiences with these teachers!

Stella Adler was already familiar with Stanislavki's work when she went to Russia to work with him in 1934, because she had been a member of the American Laboratory since 1926.  That group was formed by Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya after the MAT toured to the U.S.A. in 1923. 

Boleslavsky's Acting: The First Six Lessons is the first text to which I introduce my students.  It is written in the narrative style Stanislavki used.  He wrote it as a series of articles for Vanity Fair magazine and published it as a thin little volume in 1933.  Boleslavky thought that the actors who left the Lab after a year to form the Group Theatre put too much emphasis on the internalization of character and emotion, too little emphasis on dramatic action and character objectives.

I also use Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods, although students often find it dry.

------------------------------
C. J. Breland
Asheville High School
Asheville NC
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-28-2017 23:41
From: Taylor Horne
Subject: Method Acting

I would like to introduce my students to various acting teachers' methods. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to sum them up and fit them into one or two semesters. Please share any course outlines or materials, if you're willing. Thank you!

------------------------------
Taylor Horne
Upper School Theatre Director
Jacksonville FL
------------------------------

You are right about the internalization of the acting style with the Group. The American Theatre really focused into that as a way to study acting where the English school of acting was from an external point of view with its sets of faces and expressions and body stances got you into the character. Laban really looks at the physical into he emotional. We are so fortunate to live today and combine so many "methods" and approaches to acting. The art of acting is so personal and we as actors put ourselves out there so exposed to an audience that we have to find what works best for us personally to come prepared to the stage and face those audiences. I try to expose my students to all of it and to the tough business they are entering (if they go into acting). All of the great teachers I had wanted the same result: find the character bring the play to life and share this noble and great art with others.

Thanks for all you do in the arts and may all your theatre seats be filled!


Original Message------

Kelly, I am envious of your experiences with these teachers!

Stella Adler was already familiar with Stanislavki's work when she went to Russia to work with him in 1934, because she had been a member of the American Laboratory since 1926.  That group was formed by Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya after the MAT toured to the U.S.A. in 1923. 

Boleslavsky's Acting: The First Six Lessons is the first text to which I introduce my students.  It is written in the narrative style Stanislavki used.  He wrote it as a series of articles for Vanity Fair magazine and published it as a thin little volume in 1933.  Boleslavky thought that the actors who left the Lab after a year to form the Group Theatre put too much emphasis on the internalization of character and emotion, too little emphasis on dramatic action and character objectives.

I also use Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods, although students often find it dry.

------------------------------
C. J. Breland
Asheville High School
Asheville NC
------------------------------

I personally would do something that breaks down various acting methods in a simple way - focus on a couple key points from each method and expose your students to them - rather than delve super deep into one or two methods.  That way they get a taste of all the different methods and get to add them to their actor's toolbox.  They may find one that works really well for them and that they can really use, but they won't know that if they are introduced to them.  It also will help them in the future at university or being in plays if they can recognize their directors or professors styles or preferred acting methods and know how to navigate them.  But I prefer to leave the deep layered work to a higher level of training when students are more experienced and mature.

I have had students research methods themselves and peer teach in the past and it's been quite successful.  This kind of ownership has really done wonders for their own acting work as they strive to teach it to their peers along with an exercise or two and creating a handout on the acting method.  A great cornerstone assessment is then some kind of performance where each students chooses a method (the one they studied or one that was presented to them) to follow as best they can throughout the acting rehearsal process before culminating in a class performance (monologue or scene or such).  Their reflections after all this are amazing because of the confidence and growth.

Good luck - it's so awesome that you're opening your students' eyes to different methods of acting!  So they see there are so many ways to tackle a role.

------------------------------
Shawnda Moss
BYU Theatre & Media Arts
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-28-2017 23:41
From: Taylor Horne
Subject: Method Acting

I would like to introduce my students to various acting teachers' methods. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to sum them up and fit them into one or two semesters. Please share any course outlines or materials, if you're willing. Thank you!

------------------------------
Taylor Horne
Upper School Theatre Director
Jacksonville FL
------------------------------

​Taylor -- I used to use the peer method also.  Advanced students chose a theorist to study, then taught the rest of the class about them. Each student did a 10-15 presentation, then led a workshop with the students using the theorist's techniques.   Result:  each student had fairly thorough knowledge about one theory
and familiarity with several others.  They could explore the others on their own.

------------------------------
Murray Mintz
Executive Director
FATE Florida Association for Theatre Education
Largo FL
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 07-01-2017 16:35
From: Shawnda Moss
Subject: Method Acting

I personally would do something that breaks down various acting methods in a simple way - focus on a couple key points from each method and expose your students to them - rather than delve super deep into one or two methods.  That way they get a taste of all the different methods and get to add them to their actor's toolbox.  They may find one that works really well for them and that they can really use, but they won't know that if they are introduced to them.  It also will help them in the future at university or being in plays if they can recognize their directors or professors styles or preferred acting methods and know how to navigate them.  But I prefer to leave the deep layered work to a higher level of training when students are more experienced and mature.

I have had students research methods themselves and peer teach in the past and it's been quite successful.  This kind of ownership has really done wonders for their own acting work as they strive to teach it to their peers along with an exercise or two and creating a handout on the acting method.  A great cornerstone assessment is then some kind of performance where each students chooses a method (the one they studied or one that was presented to them) to follow as best they can throughout the acting rehearsal process before culminating in a class performance (monologue or scene or such).  Their reflections after all this are amazing because of the confidence and growth.

Good luck - it's so awesome that you're opening your students' eyes to different methods of acting!  So they see there are so many ways to tackle a role.

------------------------------
Shawnda Moss
BYU Theatre & Media Arts
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-28-2017 23:41
From: Taylor Horne
Subject: Method Acting

I would like to introduce my students to various acting teachers' methods. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to sum them up and fit them into one or two semesters. Please share any course outlines or materials, if you're willing. Thank you!

------------------------------
Taylor Horne
Upper School Theatre Director
Jacksonville FL
------------------------------

This is an Acting Approaches Chart that I created several years ago. I hope it helps

------------------------------
James Van Leishout
Olympia WA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-28-2017 23:41
From: Taylor Horne
Subject: Method Acting

I would like to introduce my students to various acting teachers' methods. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to sum them up and fit them into one or two semesters. Please share any course outlines or materials, if you're willing. Thank you!

------------------------------
Taylor Horne
Upper School Theatre Director
Jacksonville FL
------------------------------

​Terrific chart!!  May I share it?

------------------------------
Murray Mintz
Executive Director
FATE Florida Association for Theatre Education
Largo FL
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 07-02-2017 11:54
From: James Van Leishout
Subject: Method Acting

This is an Acting Approaches Chart that I created several years ago. I hope it helps

------------------------------
James Van Leishout
Olympia WA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-28-2017 23:41
From: Taylor Horne
Subject: Method Acting

I would like to introduce my students to various acting teachers' methods. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to sum them up and fit them into one or two semesters. Please share any course outlines or materials, if you're willing. Thank you!

------------------------------
Taylor Horne
Upper School Theatre Director
Jacksonville FL
------------------------------

Wow, thank you for sharing that wonderful chart! I am headed to AZ Thespian Leadership camp this week. Do you mind if I share it with the other faculty there?


------------------------------
[Ron] [Gingerich]
[Drama Teacher]
[Phoenix] [AZ]
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 07-02-2017 11:54
From: James Van Leishout
Subject: Method Acting

This is an Acting Approaches Chart that I created several years ago. I hope it helps

------------------------------
James Van Leishout
Olympia WA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-28-2017 23:41
From: Taylor Horne
Subject: Method Acting

I would like to introduce my students to various acting teachers' methods. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to sum them up and fit them into one or two semesters. Please share any course outlines or materials, if you're willing. Thank you!

------------------------------
Taylor Horne
Upper School Theatre Director
Jacksonville FL
------------------------------

I love this chart.  I'm curious about the dashed lines.  I can't quite decipher what the meaning of the connections are.  Is it connecting two names together or separating out a section?  Can you share more about your reasoning?

Aileen

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Aileen Zeigler
Theatre Arts Director
Omaha NE
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 07-02-2017 11:54
From: James Van Leishout
Subject: Method Acting

This is an Acting Approaches Chart that I created several years ago. I hope it helps

------------------------------
James Van Leishout
Olympia WA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-28-2017 23:41
From: Taylor Horne
Subject: Method Acting

I would like to introduce my students to various acting teachers' methods. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to sum them up and fit them into one or two semesters. Please share any course outlines or materials, if you're willing. Thank you!

------------------------------
Taylor Horne
Upper School Theatre Director
Jacksonville FL
------------------------------