University of Saskatchewan
Drama 121.3
Raymon Montalbetti

Final Exam
Spring Session 2003
3 hrs.

Instructions: Answer all questions. Each question is of equal value.

1. Directing / Identify the elements you consider to be essential to the experience of directing. Organize your thoughts into an articulate model and develop a rationale to support your position. Please document any source material used in answering this question.

2. Readings / Our textbook suggests that directing cannot be taught but it can be learnt. What do you consider to be the meaning of this statement? Include, in your answer, what you have learnt from any directing class experience and discuss one experience in detail. Use observations from your journal as a point of departure for these notes on yourself as learner.

3. The Play / Develop a concept for your chosen play. Start with an idea that has strong intellectual, theoretical or literary significance. Then give form to the idea using the director’s materials: Action, Scene, Voice. Next imagine how that idea can evolve with your “team” - the actors and designer(s). Finally create a checklist of your main objectives. Conclude with a brief personal statement which simply expresses how you see the play.

The End

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?

University of Saskatchewan /Drama 117.3/Final Exam

Instructions: Answer all four questions. Each is of equal value. Time: 3 hours

1. Scene/ Scenes are structured dramatic material and approaching the scene is part of the actor’s task. Through involvement on different scenes you have developed powers of analysis and imagination. A scene is built both by the depth of the interplay between actors and by the incorporation of clear structural and psychological understandings in the playing. Examine the different paths you and your classmates chose in the creation of a scene. Formulate and organize your thoughts into an articulate statement on how actors “work” a scene.

2. Process & Play/ Course work this year was premised upon the belief that the art of acting involves (1) mastery of the materials of acting - the self, partner, space and text; (2) physical and vocal freedom of expression; and (3) the mysterious imaginative ability to play, to express one’s own human vitality in a form - in short to undergo transformation. I suggest these three fundamental skills analytical, expressive and spiritual shaped our class experience. Insofar as the living actor is at the center of any theatre, the class treated not only the actor but also theatre itself and was designed to stimulate an examination of certain values which you pursue in your own way. Respond to the various issues and challenges raised in class. Reflect on class exercises, discussions, readings, shared experiences and your own personal “journey/work”. Finally reflect on theatre as a collective experience. Explore Brecht’s “He Who Says Yes” and “He Who says No”, for plays are as ambivalent in their meanings as the world they mirror. Explore emotionally as well as intellectually. Explore the image and associations evoked and finally explore what does or doesn’t remain with you.

3. Readings/Stephen Wangh in An Acrobat of the Heart writes: “But the inner emotional life which vivifies your acting is not something you can control.” Comment.

4. Theatre/ Penetrate your experiences and impressions of the live theatre you encountered this year and formulate a manifesto for the art of acting. A manifesto is a brief, passionate and personal statement of belief and purpose. Include:
a. What you want to do for the world through your acting?
b. What you must do to empower yourself to achieve you purpose?