Monday, August 27, 2012

Stop Acting!


Wendell Burton
on
Method Acting


"So we're going to rehearse and then shoot for like 2 days and...the girl that's playing my sister was a very good actress but she was very...standoffish and [a] very private kind of person...when we weren't rehearsing she'd go back to her trailer so there was no real connection...I'm not a great believer in using your job to do exercises, that's what we do exercises for so that when you show up for your job you're ready to do your thing. But it occurred to me that I had a good relationship with my sister. Good in that everything's on the table. We yell, we hug, it's very intense and very honest so I just started talking to her like she was my sister. It was an immediate connection on her part as well. It completely broke through all the acting stuff. It was really fun. Since then [personation has] been one of my favorite exercises to share because it's such a simple one. There was no acting, it was just me talking to my sister. That's really what we're supposed to be doing and whatever we can find to help us do that that's what method acting is all about it finding a method to get through all the acting stuff and to connect and to make something really great. Because when it's real to you, it's real to the people watching."



Personation

In personation, everyone was asked to think of a REAL person in his/her life and then think of something that we had always wanted to say to that person.


For information on the upcoming screenplay click here.