The Science Of Acting Book

List of illustrations xi

About this book xiii

Preface xxi

Acknowledgements xxviii

Introduction 1

The Four Paths 2

Education 12

Part 1 The Foundations 15

1 Complexes 17

Formation of Complexes 20

Well-known Complexes 21

Jesus and Judas 22

2 Awareness 27

Why do we have visible and invisible thoughts? 30

The boy and the Mars Bar 31

Mushrooms 32

The Model of Awareness and creating a character 36

Emerging Awareness 38

3 Events 43

What is an Event? 44

The Event Graph 47

Events and the actor's life 48

Foreburn and Afterburn 50

Unexpected Events and beautiful acting 52

Accumulated Events 55

Mindquakes 56

Events and Unfinished Thinking 56

4 Purposes 59

The formation of Purposes: Mind Erosions 62

The seven qualities of a Purpose 64

The 'cinema screen' metaphor 69

Different types of Purposes 71

Fluidity of Purposes 74

The Super-Purpose and Unity of Purposes in a script 75

Conflict 76

5 The Formation of Consciousness 78

The Natural Frame of Reference (NFR) 79

Prenatal 80

People in charge (PiCs) 81

Awareness and Self-Conditioning 86

Non-Biological 90

Emerging Awareness 93

Somatic 93

6 Mindprint 95

Warning 96

The character's Mindprint 97

1 Ultimate Communion Event (UC) 99

2 Shame Events (ShE) 100

3 Sex Events (SxE) 100

4 Life Events (LE) 101

5 People Events (PE) 102

6 (Ghouls and) Ghosts (Gh) 103

7 Auto Directives (AD) 104

8 Adjusters (Adj) 104

9 Mental Statements (MS) 105

10 Guidelines (GL) 105

11 Objectives (O) 107

12 Purposes (P) 108

13 Self Events (SE) 108

14 Super-Purpose (SP) 109

15 Germ (G) 110

Some examples of Mindprints 110

7 Actions 113

Qualities of Actions115

Devices 117

Main Actions and acting 119

Acting and the state of mind 120

List of Actions 122

8 Finishing-off Thinking 124

Questions for Finishing-off Thinking 127

Going Limp 129

I want to want ... 132

Foreburning and Afterburning 132

Further tools for Finishing-off Thinking 133

9 Tempo-Rhythm 136

How do we pick up other people's pictures? 137

Clapping custard 139

Eyes, falling in love and Tempo-rhythm 141

Part 2 Qualities of an Actor 143

10 Imagination 145

Creating a character 146

Different types of Imagination 150

I can relate 154

'I' and the character 156

11 Attention 158

Different types of Attention 160

The Dot of Attention 162

Attention and creating a character 164

Creative Attention 168

The Five Ws 169

12 Free Body 171

Natural and Acquired Tensions 172

Awarely and Unawarely Acquired Tensions T73

Tensions and the character 174

13 Talent 177P

Part 3 Working on a Script 183

14 The Ten Steps 185

Beginning of analysis (Steps 1-3) 186

Character analysis and actor's contemplation (Steps 4-8) 193

Standing up (Steps 9 and 10) 204

A Marriage Proposal Anton Chekhov 213

Author's Afterword 226

Final Word 228

Appendix 1 List of Purposes and their definitions 231

Appendix 2 List of Actions 242

Appendix 3 The Ten Steps table 245

Glossary 247

Notes and bibliography 254

Index 259