How the Truth Gets Twisted

Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has devoted her career to proving that memories don't just fade, they can also change.

By Ann Marsh and Greta Lorge


http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=57592&CSRT=1444742095335907025

This is an insightful article from the Stanford University Magazine on how memories work, and do not work. It is disappointing and frustrating when we cannot recall something important. It is perhaps painful that one's unreliable memories are actually misleading or lying to oneself. 

An Actor Prepares : Chapter Four

If you speak any lines, or do anything, mechanically, without fully realizing who you are, where you came from, why, what you want, where you are going, and what you will do when you get there, you will be acting without imagination.

Our work on a play begins with the use of  if  as a lever to lift us out of everyday life on to the plane of imagination. The play, the parts in it, are the invention of the author’s imagination, a whole series of ifs and given circumstances thought up by him. There is no such thing as actuality on the stage. Art is a product of the imagination, as the work of a dramatist should be. The aim of the actor should be to use his technique to turn the play into a theatrical reality. In this process imagination plays by far the greatest part.

An Actor Prepares : Chapter Three

"On the stage it is necessary to act, either outwardly or inwardly." All action in the theatre must have an inner justification, be logical, coherent and real.

The external immobility of a person sitting on the stage does not imply passiveness. You may sit without a motion and at the same time be in full action. Frequently physical immobility is the direct result of inner intensity, and it is these inner activities that are far more important artistically. The essence of art is not in its external forms but in its spiritual content.

On the stage, there cannot be, under any circumstances, action which is directed immediately at the rousing of a feeling for its own sake. To ignore this rule results only in the most disgusting artificiality. When you are choosing some bits of action leave feeling and spirited content alone. Never seek to be jealous, or to make love, or to suffer, for its won sake. All such feelings are the result of something that has gone before. As for the result, it will produce itself. You must not copy passions or copy types. You must live in passions and in the types. Your acting of them must grow out of your living in them.

if acts as a lever to lift us out of the world of actuality into the realm of imagination. The secret of the effect of if lies first of all in the fact that it does not use fear or force, or make the artist do anything. On the contrary, it reassures him through its honesty, and encourages him to have confidence in a supposed situation. It arouses an inner and real activity.  if is also a stimulus to the creative subconscious. One fundamental principle of acting is "unconscious creativeness through conscious technique".

To achieve this kinship between the actor and the person he is portraying add some concrete detail which will fill out the play, giving it point and absorbing action. The circumstances which are predicted on if are taken from sources near to your own feelings, and they have a powerful influence on the inner life of an actor. Once you have established this contact between your life and your part, you will find that inner push or stimulus. Add a whole series of contingencies based on your own experience in life, and you will see how easy it will be for you sincerely to believe in the possibility of what you are called upon to do on the stage. Work out an entire role in this fashion, and you will create a whole new life.

Pushkin said, "Sincerity of emotions, feelings that seem true in given circumstances - that is what we ask of a dramatist." 

'given circumstances' mean the story of the play, its facts, events, epoch, time and place of action, conditions of life, the actors' and the regisseur's interpretation, the mise-en-scene, the production, the sets, the costumes, properties, lighting and sound effects, - all the circumstances that are given to an actor to take into account as he creates his role. If is the starting point, the given circumstances, the development.

'sincerity of emotions' means living human emotions, feelings which the actor himself has experienced.

'feelings that seem true' refers not to the actual feelings but to something nearly akin to them, to emotions reproduced indirectly, under the prompting of true inner feelings.

First, you will have to imagine in your own way the 'given circumstances' offered by the play, the regisseur's production and your own artistic conception. All of this material will provide a general outline for the life of the character you are to enact, and the circumstances surrounding him. it is necessary that you really believe in the general possibilities of such a life, and then become so accustomed to it that you feel yourself close to it. If you are successful in this, you will find that 'sincere emotions', or 'feelings that seem true' will spontaneously grow in you.

An Actor Prepares : Chapter Two

The director says the following for acting.
"Side by side we see moments of living a part, representing the part, mechanical acting and exploitation."

"Living a part" are moments when we are creating according to our inspiration, improvising, as it were. Technique is important, because with no technique, if this inspiration does not turn up then neither you nor they have anything with which to fill in the blank spaces.

We need to think about the inner side of a role, and how to create its spiritual life through the help of the internal process of living the part. You must live it by actually experiencing feelings that are analogous to it, each and every time you repeat the process of creating it.

Our aim is not only to create the life of a human spirit, but also to express it in a beautiful, artistic form. An actor is under the obligation to live his part inwardly, and then to give to his experience an external embodiment. The body depend on the soul. In order to express a most delicate and largely subconscious life it is necessary to have control of an unusually responsive, excellently prepared vocal and physical apparatus. This apparatus must be ready instantly and exactly to reproduce most delicate and all but intangible feelings with great sensitiveness and directness.

Tortsov commented on Paul's acting to explain "representing the part".
"In our art you must live the part every moment that you are playing it, and every time. Each time it is recreated it must be lived afresh and incarnated afresh. This describes the few successful moments in Kostya's acting. For Paul, I was astonished in a number of places by the accuracy and artistic finish of a form and method of acting which is permanently fixed, and which is produced with a certain inner coldness. However I did feel in those moments that the original, of which this was only the artificial copy, had been good and true. This echo of a former process of living the part made his acting, in certain moments, a true example of the art of representation.

"You must be careful in the use of a mirror. It teaches an actor to watch the outside rather than the inside of his soul, both in himself and in his part."

"Mechanical acting" is having rather elaborately worked out methods of presenting the role with conventional illustrations. The origins and methods of mechanical acting is characterize as "rubber stamps". To reproduce feelings you must be able to identify them out of your own experience. But as mechanical actors do not experience feelings they cannot reproduce their external results. With the aid of his face, mimicry, voice and gestures, the mechanical actor offers the public nothing but the dead mask of non-existent feeling.

Whereas mechanical acting makes use of worked-out stencils to replace real feelings, over-acting takes the first general human convention that come along and uses them without even sharpening or preparing them for the stage.

The theatre, on account of its publicity and spectacular side, attracts many people who merely wants to capitalize their beauty or make careers. This is exploitation of art.

An Actor Prepares : Chapter One

Chapter One : The First Test

The writer ( Stanislavski ? ), Paul Shustov and Leo Pushchin had to prepare for a stage performance.  Stanislavski wrote about his preparation for the role of Othello.
Although he was satisfied with his practice at home, he sometimes could not do well in the rehearsal. At home, Iago was not present. At each rehearsal, the stage seemed not exactly the same as the last time.
During the performance, he was most pleased with the part where he flung out the famous line "Blood, Iago, blood !"  He felt approval from the audience, and a sort of energy boiled up in him. Paul seemed to be affected by it, and acted with abandon too.
The chapter ended with a description of another student's performance. She fell and cried "Oh, help me!" in a way that chilled the heart.

Chinese drama books

编剧理论与技法      陆军著     2005年     中国戏剧出版社     ISBN 7-104-01863-8 / J-806

 编剧理论与技巧     顾仲彝  （gù zhòng yí）

戏剧艺术原理        施旭升著  2006年  中国传媒大学出版社   ISBN 7-81085-551-4

戏剧原理                姚一苇著   书林出版有限公司   ISBN 957-586-250-3

戏剧概论与欣赏    Robert L.Lee 著 / 叶子启译     2001    杨智文化事业股份有限公司
English title : Everything about Theatre! The Guidebook of Theatre Fundamentals, Robert l. Lee, 1996

戏剧理论史稿        余秋雨著    1983年    上海文艺出版社

现代戏剧与现代性     吴星亮著     2007年     人民文学出版社

戏剧香港香港戏剧     李克欢     2007年    Oxford University Press    ISBN 978-0-19-548895-1

 现代戏剧叙事观  建构与解构        纪蔚然著    2006年   书林出版有限公司    957-445-129-1

香港话剧选     方梓員、田本相 编     1994年   文化艺术出版社    7-5039-1336-3/J-429

西方悲喜剧艺术的美学历程    程孟辉著   1997年   北京师范大学出版社      7-5602-1941-1/B.30

闲情偶寄.词曲部       李渔  

演员的挑战     Uta Hagen

戏剧与电影的编剧理论与技巧    Theory and Technique of Playwriting, John Howard Lawson

戏剧技巧                  乔治.贝克

剧作法          William Archer            Play-Making, A Manual of Craftsmanship


张先《剧本创作论要》，中国戏剧出版社2003年。
杨健、张先：《剧本写作初级教程》，中国戏剧出版社2002年12月版。
杨健：《拉片子》，作家出版社2008年9月版。

谭霈生：  《论戏剧性》，  北京大学出版社  1984年版。
约翰·霍华德·劳逊：  《戏剧与电影的剧作理论与技巧》   中国电影出版社 1979年版。
乔治·贝克：   《编剧技巧》，   中国戏剧出版社1985年版。
罗伯特·麦基：    《故事--材质结构、风格和银幕创作的原理》，    中国电影出版社2001年版。
丹尼艾尔·阿里洪：    《电影语言的语法》，   中国电影出版社1982年版。
阿契尔：    《剧作法》，   中国戏剧出版社1980年版。
罗念生，杨宪益译：   《外国剧作选》，   上海文艺出版社，1980年版。
孙建秋：   《美国当代短剧选》，   外国教学与研究出版社2005年版。
祝肇年：   《古典戏剧编剧六论》，   中国戏剧出版社1986年版。
马丁·艾斯林    《戏剧剖析》              中国戏剧出版社1981年版。

Faith Healer

I'm not sure if four monologues can make an interesting play. Faith Healer is, I think, better for reading than for seeing on stage.
Did Frank forget that Grace gave birth to a stillborn ? How could he forget ? Because he was really too drunk then ?  Why did he forget, or not even want to acknowledged to himself that it has happened ? He chose not to be with Grace for the baby's birth in order to visit her mother, but in the end, he was slightly more than an hour too late to see his mother at her deathbed, which he did remember. 
Presumably Grace did not leave Frank to go to Paddington. She had said to Frank that she would die if she left him. So Frank must have left her. Why did Frank leave her ? How could Frank leave her when she would die if she was alone ? Or did he leave her when he was too drunk to know what he was doing ?
A very touching story on how everyone needs someone.  

We Need to Talk About Kevin

The movie We need to Talk about Kevin is good. Fine acting for the roles of Eva and Kevin. Kevin looks a bit more normal in the movie than in the poster advertising the movie.  I don't know if I will have been able to follow the movie completely if I haven't known the story. Jumping from present to the past may have confused me a little if I didn't read the novel first.

What's missing in the movie are :
1.   all the questions and doubts that Eva had before she got pregnant with Kevin
2.   Kevin's last name is his mother's last name
3.   the incident with the neighbour and the teacher
4.   what happened to Celia's pet. Yes, the movie showed that the pet was missing, but there's more
5.   why did Eva had Celia  ( this may not be clear from the novel either )
6.   Eva was sued for being a negligent mother (the movie showed her leaving the court, but was it clear that she was being tried ? )
7.   the babysitters
8.   Kevin's buddy

Still, these missing beats are not important enough. The audience don't miss any significant part of the plot. But it's a pleasure reading the novel. The story is disturbing, what Kevin did is horrible, but it's a pleasant reading the prose. Lionel Shriver composed each emotional scene carefully, and I feel so heartbreaking, so sorry, so helpless, for Eva. The novel convinces me further that there is still a reason for novel to exist. We still need excellent writers to describe the innermost thoughts and feelings in a realistic settings. Perhaps most of us parents don't seriously believe that our kids will turn into murderers, but what woman or what human being has not felt apprehension over raising children or faced problems in their marriage or relationship with loved ones ?

Things We Do for Love

Things We Do for Love is a play written by Alan Ayckbourn. This is a two-act play, with the settings in sections of three flats at 56 Bloom Street, London.

Gilbert, Hamish, Nikki and Barbara are in an early Victorian terrace house which is divided into three flats on different floors. To one side, the front door from the street leads to a small hallway with stairs up to the first floor flat and another flight down to the basement flat. There is a front door leading off this hallway to Barbara's ground-floor apartment.

In view in Barbara's flat is the main sitting room. Leading from the living room are three further doors: one to the bedroom, one to the bathroom, and one to a small, galley-style kitchen. Upstairs, we can see part of the corresponding flat above Barbara's. However, our view of this is cut off at about knee level. This is therefore the view we are afforded of any occupant. We can see a carpet, the legs of a bedstead, chairs and tables.

Downstairs in the basement, below Barbara, we can see even less of Gilbert's flat. A foot or so of the ceiling of his bedsitting room is all that is visible, together with the top of a step-ladder supporting a trestle.

Gilbert is in love with Barbara. He painted an enormous nude picture of Barbara on the ceiling of his flat. Nikki attended St Gertrude School together with Barbara. They had not seen each other for 10 years but Nikki said that Barbara is her best friend. Both of them sang their school anthem various times in the play. The song was about girls being strong and independent. Nikki and Hamish moved into Barbara's apartment and occupied the top floor while waiting for their new home to be furnished. Hamish is a vegetarian. Barbara openly criticizes Hamish's tie and tells Nikki and Hamish that she thinks men who are vegetarians are wimps. Still she fell in love with Hamish. There were two love scenes between Barbara and Hamish, one in Hamish and Nikki's flat, and the other at Barbara's flat. There was also a serious fight, ending with broken limbs and head injury, between Hamish and Barbara.

A very funny story. We never can tell what attracts people. The most unlikely ones can become lovers. 

Structuralism

Culturalism takes meaning to be its central category and casts it as the product of active human agents. By contrast, structuralism speaks of signifying practices that generate meaning as an outcome of structures or predictable regularities that lie outside of any given person. Structuralism searches for the constraining patterns of culture and social life which lie outside of any given person. Individual acts are explained as the product of social structures. As such, structuralism is anti-humanist in its decentring of human agents from the heart of enquiry. Instead it favours a form of analysis in which phenomena have meaning only in relation to other phenomena within a systematic structure of which no particular person is the source. A structuralist understanding of culture is concerned with the 'systems of relations' of an underlying structure (usually language) and the grammar that makes meaning possible.

An Introduction to Cultural Studies, 3rd Ed, Chris Baker, SAGE Publications Ltd.,  Pg 15.

Notes from the Underground

I was a coward and a slave. I say this without the slightest embarrassment.  Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a slave.This is his normal condition. Of that I am firmly persuaded. He is made and constructed to that very end. And not only at the present time owing to some casual circumstances, but always, at all times, a decent man is bound to be a coward and a slave. It is the law of nature for all decent people all over the earth, If any one of them happens to be valiant about something, he need not be comforted nor carried away by that; he would cower just the same before something else. That is how it invariably and inevitably ends


Notes from the Underground, Part II, Chapter 1.  Dostoevsky.