University of Saskatchewan / Drama Department / Acting 116.3

Final Examination

Answer all questions.
Time: 3 hours

1. Training/ Many of this course’s exercises encourage “letting go” resistances and static frames of reference; encouraging the point at which an individual’s spontaneity arises to meet a crisis; a moment of seeing things from a different point of view; an insight into the point of concentration. Reflect on your actor’s training to date. Precisely and concisely formulate what you consider to be the foundations of an actor’s training. As you identify the elements essential to an actor’s training use observations from your journal to support your position.

2. Text/ Stanislavski wrote: “ . . . The actor must not only know the words but take them into himself organically until he has transformed them into his very own. Words not impregnated with inner feeling, or spoken separately without relationship are so many empty sounds . . . Yet the simplest words, if they convey complex thoughts can change our whole outlook on life . . . Words can arouse all our five senses . . . Ideas . . . Action.” Articulate your understanding of “text work”. Discuss the processes involved in using text as a searching. Select a colleagues “text work” and penetrate your impressions of their work. Present any specific insights gained about the process of acting.

3. Theater/ What is theater? Develop your answer from the productions you have attended this term. Address the greater question of communication and expression.

4. Reading/ Formulate a question based on your readings or select a topic and write a short essay. The way of the actor has a history of struggle, progress and development. What are the concepts and practices that make an invisible actor? Explore this quote from Acrobat of the Heart

And ever since, performers and audiences have argued about how it is that actors manage this feat. At the core of the argument lie two related questions. The first is: Must actors really feel the emotions which they portray? And the second is: Do they achieve their portrayal by controlling the external expression of emotion or by inducing the internal experience?