Open Forum

Hello -  I have the unique experience of teaching a 5-week independent study class with an advanced acting female student.  The student signed up for Advanced Acting, but because of scheduling, she is the only one who could actually fit it in her schedule, but she still really wants to take the class.  I have a few ideas of how to make her time valuable as a solo artist in my class, but I'd love a few good ideas!  What would be some meaningful "advanced acting" projects I could give her that would allow her to keep learning about acting and her craft, but not feel like she is doing all paperwork and research, or all monologues?  Thanks for your help:-)

Krista

I assume she will have a schedule of times to have tutorials with you.  That seems essential.

It also is a good idea to give her some sort of scaffold or structure for the learning and some sort of end product.

I love Richard Boleslavsky's Acting: the First Six Lessons.  It is a collection of 6 articles the former Moscow Art Theatre member wrote for Vanity Fair magazine and published as a book in 1933.  It has never gone out of print.  It is very short and written in the same sort of narrative style that Stanislavski used, meaning that the student would have to extrapolate the lessons, with a little guidance from you.  

You might have your student select three or four one to two-minute monologues, then use those to explore Boleslavsky's six lessons.  

When my Theatre II class is small enough that we finish the work of the term a couple of weeks early, I introduce them to Boleslavsky and have them apply the lessons to their final contrasting monologues, and they always love it.  

Hello -  I have the unique experience of teaching a 5-week independent study class with an advanced acting female student.  The student signed up for Advanced Acting, but because of scheduling, she is the only one who could actually fit it in her schedule, but she still really wants to take the class.  I have a few ideas of how to make her time valuable as a solo artist in my class, but I'd love a few good ideas!  What would be some meaningful "advanced acting" projects I could give her that would allow her to keep learning about acting and her craft, but not feel like she is doing all paperwork and research, or all monologues?  Thanks for your help:-)

Krista