THTR 1031 - Acting Methods and Performance

Credits: 3
Hours/Week: Lecture 3 Lab 0
Internship hours per week 0
Course Description: The course develops the basics of acting through study, practice, and application. In training and developing the actor’s voice and body, the course explores methods to enter a creative state, create the world of a play, create characters and scenes of a play. Course activities include vocal and physical warmups, reading plays, and applying acting vocabulary and concepts. Additional activities include writing performance plans, working with physical and imaginative exercises, analyzing play texts, and attending and evaluating the acting in live theatre productions. The course consists of a combination of lecture/discussion, improvisation, acting exercises, presentation of audition pieces (monologues), rehearsal, presentation and critique of small group works alongside first and second semester classmates.
MnTC Goals
Goal 6

Prerequisite(s): None
Corequisite(s): None
Recommendation: None

Major Content

1. Analyzing Acting
2. Audition Techniques, Head Shots, Resumes
3. Choosing performance pieces that are right for you
4. Finding the Objective and Through Line.
5. Improvisation to develop characters
6. Laban movement
7. Principles of Warming up the Voice and Body
8. Stanislavsky
   1. Working with the senses
   2. Given circumstances (Who, What, Where, When?)
   3. Units and objectives
   4. Logic and believability
   5. Creative state of mind
   6. Learning to enter the creative state of mind
   7. Sensory memory
   8. Spheres of attention
9. Techniques for Physical and Vocal Warmups
10. Use of the voice
    1. Abdominal breathing
    2. Phonation
    3. Resonance
    4. Pitch
    5. Intonation
    6. Topping in on a line
    7. Using phonation and pitch to explore character
    8. Placement of the Voice
11. Using Tactics and Committing to the Objective
12. Vocal and physical anatomy primer

1. make informed acting choices based on knowledge of what makes a successful performance.
2. define and apply acting vocabulary to character creation.
3. synthesize vocal and physical skills with analysis, creativity, insight and emotional commitment to create a compelling character.
4. create the environment of a scene using non verbal means.
5. use their bodies with an increased range of flexibility and gesture.
6. determine appropriate character objectives, and what stands in the character’s way.
7. enter a creative state of consciousness using a variety of possible cues.
8. demonstrate creativity (originality and insight) through monologue and scenework.
9. use their voices with greater volume, projection, and clarity.

06. 03. Respond critically to works in the arts and humanities.

06. 04. Engage in the creative process or interpretive performance.
Theme Goals (MnTC Goals 7-10)
N/A

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