Theatre & performanceLesson 1 of 2 in the course Acting

Acting: Craft, Training, Performance Meaning, and Stage Fright

5 flashcards · 5 quiz questions · 5 match pairs · 5 fill-in sentences · English

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Summary

Acting tells a story through a performer’s enactment of a character. This lesson introduces acting as a craft, its core expressive skills, and an important moment in the history of Western theatre.

Acting is the activity of telling a story by enacting it. An actor adopts a character and communicates through a medium such as theatre, television, film, or radio. The actor does more than recite lines: choices of voice, movement, timing, and response help make the character and story understandable to an audience.

All flashcards

Acting
Telling a story by embodying a character through performance.
Improvisation
Performance created in the moment rather than fully fixed in advance.
Semiotics of acting
The study of how performance choices function as signs that audiences interpret.
Rehearsal
Shared practice that prepares a performance with actors and production collaborators.
Stage fright
Anxiety experienced in front of an audience.

Quiz questions

  1. What characterizes improvisation in acting?Answer: Performance created in the moment through attention and response.
  2. Which acting tradition in North America derives from Stanislavski’s system and was popularized as method acting?Answer: A tradition developed and taught by practitioners including Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner.
  3. In Brecht’s theatre, what can a gestus reveal?Answer: A social relationship or attitude through behavior in context.
  4. How does an audience typically participate in an acted story?Answer: It engages with the events as real within the scene while knowing they are performed.
  5. What is an audition intended to show a casting director?Answer: An actor’s skills through material such as a monologue or selected lines.

Based on the Wikipedia article Acting, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Adapted into a summary, flashcards and quizzes.

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