Course Summary

Congratulations! Great job! You have now gone through all the steps of the acting process.

In this course I’ve tried to present all the basic elements, as I see them, of building an organic, truthful, present, and engaging performance. Of course, there are endless more things to explore and learn. But these are the things I always seem to come back to, no matter the genre or style or medium.

Having gone through these steps you now have what you need to continue developing your acting in a structured and creative way. It’s just a matter of applying these ideas and learn from your experiences as you go along.

Now, let’s quickly go over all that you’ve done.

We started the course by establishing a shared understanding of what we mean when we talk about acting, creating truthful life inside an imaginary circumstance. I then laid out a couple of basic principles for doing that, the reality of doing and listening and answering. And everything else we’ve talked about after that has built on those ideas.

The second week we talked about the building blocks of a scene, activity, objective and relationship. And then you got to analyze a scene you had chosen and pick out these three things. The idea being to find the information that is useful to you as an actor.

And then this week we’ve looked more specifically on the words of the scene and how to use them. To think of the script not just as things to say but as a roadmap to behavior. We’ve also talked about getting on stage and start acting, in rehearsal and performance. And now, as we’re coming to the end I want to stress that everything we’ve done has really been about informing and deepening those first two things we talked about, the reality of doing and listening and answering. What am I doing and why? Who am I listening to? And from what point of view do I answer?

Fulfilling the learning outcomes

At the beginning of the course I introduced you to the learning outcomes, now that we are at the end these should now be part of your skillset. You should by now be able to:

• Identify some basic acting principles and concepts
• Apply the principles discussed during the course on your own work with a role
• Reflect on the work of other actors and what makes an organic performance
• Evaluate a scene from a play from the point of view of the actor
• Develop a way of working that is focused on what you do rather than on yourself
• Explore some key elements to a relaxed and spontaneous performance
• Investigate how you can approach your acting in a structured and creative way

But it doesn’t end here!

I hope that you now by the end of this course feel like you have a better understanding of the acting process and where to put your focus as you work. If you’ve found what I’ve had to say useful I strongly encourage you to keep exploring these ideas in an acting class or in the work you’re already doing.