Class ON this Sunday, March 23. 2-5pm as always. You know the drill. Okay, time for another take-away! Heres one from the vaults that you may have seen me post before. SECONDARY ACTION This is a term I pulled from animation but what it means is just as relevant to live performance. A secondary action is literally action (ie. something you do with your body) that helps to emphasize the main action of the scene, but at the same time never steals focus. The purpose of secondary action is to reveal whats going on inside a characters head or heart. A character on a date might twiddle a cigarette out of sight. Or they might have a jittery leg. Both examples show (dont tell!) these characters are nervous, which in turns means theyre invested in the moment, which means they care, which gives us, the audience, reason to root for them. That being said, both the cigarette and jittery leg dont necessarily imply these characters likey-like whoever theyre on the date with. Thats the obvious choice, but maybe theyre nervous because this is the day theyve decided to break it off. Or confront their partner about the affair they discovered... Who knows what will happen? Its improv! But adding a specific secondary action to your performance will always reveal subtext and strengthen characterization. Heres a perfect example. Now STOP READING and just watch this scene: youtu.be/dHtJUWO7yeA Come back when youre done. Done? Okay, now watch it again and this time pay particular attention to how Marlon Brandos character Terry interacts with Edies glove. He cant touch her, so he gets as close as he can vicariously through that glove. That speaks volumes about his feelings for her. Thats secondary action. And brilliant acting. And incidentally, improvised. Not the words, but in this take, Eva Marie Saint dropped the glove accidentally and Brando just ran with it.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 16:32:29 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015