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"Единственный зритель, которого должен представлять себе автор, это идеальный зритель, то есть он сам. Все остальное имеет отношение к театральной кассе, а не к драматическому искусству." Nabokov [ The only spectator, any author should invision, is an ideal spectator, i.e. himself. The rest has relation to box office, not to dramatic art. ]

Fall 2005: scenes How to Write? Don't miss -- 2005 THR215 Dramatic Literature: new Williams Pages = The Glass Menagerie ("Seven Scenes").

* 2006

Cyber-Students:

... from biblio page: modern drama

+ books

+ references

+ links

+ list (support.txt)

[ script.vtheatre.net ]

playwright

"15 min Fest" SDA

Winter Shorts (Student directed one acts)

"Postmoderm Theatre Pages" 2007 pomo.vtheatre.net

Spring 2008 Theatre UAF PLAY Festival

google.com/group/playwright -- new

script.vtheatre.net/413 -- Playscript Analysis to use for WRITING?!

Therapist Helps Writers to Infuse Characters with Life
March 11, 2004 Laura Witsenhausen , Associate Editor

Many actors use Method acting techniques to learn everything they can about the characters they play'their backstory, motivations, desires and dreams.

''In Rachel Ballon's book, 'Breathing Life Into Your Characters,' she advocates that writers can use 'method writing' to make their characters more alive, interesting and well-rounded and therefore improve the quality of their fiction, plays or screenplays.

''Ballon will speak about her method on Thursday, March 18 at 7:30 p.m. at Village Books, 1049 Swarthmore.

''Ballon is a psychotherapist as well as a writing consultant and writer, who has integrated her two careers in the book, using psychotherapy techniques to help writers create three-dimensional characters and also using writing exercises to help clients delve more deeply into themselves.

''The book, her fourth about writing, is sprinkled with writing exercises and examples of memorable characters from recent works such as Alice Sebold's 'The Lovely Bones' and Jonathan Franzen's 'The Corrections,' as well as classics such as Henrik Ibsen's 'A Doll's House.'

''For example, for method writing, she offers an exercise for writers to do freewriting (fast, stream-of-consciousness writing with no concern about grammar, spelling or punctuation) about a sensory memory that relates to a feeling within one of their characters. In turn, they are better able to give their characters genuine emotion from their own experience.

'''You have to go back to emotional memories to infuse characters with emotion,' Ballon says.

''For example, one writer she worked with couldn't connect to his own vulnerability. 'As a child he was not allowed to cry, and his characters were very one-dimensional,' Ballon says. She had him write about the time he had wanted to cry and was reprimanded so he could re-experience the emotions of it. Then she had him write the same scenario again but change the ending, to say 'I am going to cry.' 'It helped him get in touch with love and softness. His characters could express love and vulnerability. He couldn't have done it if he hadn't worked through it,' Ballon says. 'It takes it out of the head and into the heart, past the unconscious. From there come the most honest and the most passionate stories.'

''Ballon has a private therapy practice in Westwood, where she often uses writing as a tool with clients. 'Writing helps get rid of never-ending stories or unresolved conflicts in a person's life.'

''A Brentwood resident, Ballon became a therapist after being inspired by a course that she took at UCLA in using poetry as a therapeutic tool. She began using poetry with children and older people and found what a potent tool it was in helping them express feelings.

''A teacher at UCLA Extension and USC School of Cinema and Television, Ballon has also written for television and film. Go to www.rachelballon.org.

"Method Writing?

From a paper presented at the Associated Writing Programs annual meeting, 1996

The "method," an acting philosophy/technique/aesthetic derived from Konstantin Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theater, first reached American shores in the 1920's. Because of its link with realism, its affirmation of Freudian psychology, and its focus on adolescent rebellion, it quickly became a natural dramatic expression of the way American's understood and define themselves, as seen in the work of actors like Marlon Brando, James Dean, Julie Harris, Blythe Danner.

While there has been much debate among its defenders and detractors about what the Method is and isn't, some of its tenets and notions may sound rather familiar to teachers and students of creative writing. Poets and memoirists also:

Realism. Concentration, observation, and sense memory (the recollection of sights, sounds, smells and textures) are the chief means of bringing the pulse of actual life into a work of art. When Flaubert, coaching the young de Maupassant, encouraged him to observe the cab drivers in front of a Parisian railway station, he may have invented "method" writing.

Character Development. Stanislavsky proposed the idea of a "super objective" which would articulate a character's motivation throughout a performance. In order to engage our attention, a character in a work of fiction must want something and want it intensely. It's a character's wishes, needs, and hopes that drive the plot of most stories.

Emotion. Method actors attempt to evoke genuine emotion by something called "affective memory" or "emotional recall" -- remembering scenes from one's own past to convey a character's emotion in the present. This memory can be closely tied to the physical circumstances of an event such as the time of day, the scenery, the weather; not unlike Wordsworth's notion, in poetry, of "emotion recollected in tranquillity."

Props. Lee Strasberg told one of his classes at the Actors Studio, "There are times when you pick up your shoes and see through them your whole life." Playwrights have employed stage objects as essential to the unfolding of the plot. When you add thematic or psychological layers to a stage prop it becomes, of course, a symbol or a metaphor.

Improvisation. Writing classes can benefit from the orchestration and observation of group scenes. As R. V. Cassill has noted, "In creating a scene you have to be something of an actor." The ad-libbing author/performer learns to stay in character at all times and in varying situations. Some excellent actors exercises that can be adapted to a writers workshop can be found in Marsh Cassady's Acting Games (Meriwether 1993) and Viola Spolin's Improvisations for the Theater (Northwestern University Press 1985). What if? by Pamela Painter and Anne Bernays (Harper Collins 1990) contains many writers exercises that resemble actors' improvisations."

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