Objectives, Obstacles, and Tactics in Practice Perspectives on Activating the Actor

Objectives, Obstacles, and Tactics in Practice is the first book that compiles practical approaches of the best practices from a range of practitioners on the subject of working with Stanislavski's "objectives," "obstacles," and "tactics."

The book offers instructors and directors a variety of tools from leading acting teachers, who bring their own individual perspectives to the challenge of working with Stanislavski's principles for today's actors, in one volume. Each essay addresses its own theoretical and practical approach and offers concrete instructions for implementing new explorations both in the classroom and in the rehearsal studio.

An excellent resource for acting and directing instructors at the university level, directing and theatre pedagogy students, high school/secondary theatre teachers, and community theatre leaders, Objectives, Obstacles, and Tactics in Practice serves as a resource for lesson planning and exploration, and provides an encyclopedia of the best practices in the field today.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Introduction

PART I Playing Objectives

Chapter 1 Money in Your Pocket: Meisner, Objectives, and the First Six Lines

DENNIS SCHEBETTA

Chapter 2 Psychological Gesture: Michael Chekhov Exercises on Physicalizing the Objective

ANJALEE DESHPANDE HUTCHINSON

Chapter 3 Making Sport of Objectives: Teaching through Student-Developed Physical Competition

JOHN KAUFMANN

Chapter 4 Structured Improvised Scenes

TIMOTHY JOHNSON

Chapter 5 Scoring the Un-Scorable

MARIA PORTER

Chapter 6 Creating a Physical Score in a Snap: Using Social Media to Appeal to the Smartphone Generation

TOM PACIO

PART II Overcoming Obstacles

Chapter 7 Engaging Obstacles

KEVIN HOFFMANN

Chapter 8 Active Obstacle Image Scoring

DAVID HUGO

Chapter 9 Resistance

JANET HAYATSHAHI

Chapter 10 Returning the Dress: Demonstrating Objectives, Obstacles, and Tactics

DAVIDA BLOOM

Chapter 11 Improvised Fantasies: Heightening Objectives and Obstacles in Scene Work

HILLARY HAFT BUCS

Chapter 12 Optimizing the Obstacle: Using Indicators of Csíkszentmihályi’s Flow to Help Select, Test,

and Experience Stanislavski’s Obstacles

FABIO POLANCO AND DIANE BONFIGLIO

PART III Identifying Tactics

Chapter 13 The Tag-tic that Works

LYNN DEBOECK

Chapter 14 Improvising Tactical Choices Based on Status

or “Who’s Driving the Dramatic Action Bus?”

JEAN DOBIE GIEBEL

Chapter 15 Transformational Tactics: Engaging Students

in the Heroic Pursuit of Their Objective

KIM SHIVELY

Chapter 16 Hunter/Hunted: Experiential Learning and the

Actor’s Craft

VALERIE CLAYMAN PYE

Chapter 17 Tactics and Action Drives: Stanislavski

Meets Laban

CONRAD ALEXANDROWICZ

Chapter 18 Stanislavski in the Voice Studio

DERIC MCNISH

Chapter 19 Stimulating Embodied Tactical Actions

LESLEY-ANN TIMLICK

Chapter 20 NRGs and the Nature of Action: The Lessac Tactic Circle

CAROLINE GOOD

Chapter 21 Relaying Action – from Breath to Text

AARON ALPERN AND REBECCA COVEY

Chapter 22 Using Improvisation to Identify Tactics

NATHAN STITH

Chapter 23 Activating the Actor with Game Theory: Using Gamification to Create Playable Tactics on Stage

JEANNE LEEP

AFTERWORD

Chapter 24 Recording Truth: The Camera in Acting Training

WELKER WHITE

CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES

CHAPTER ABSTRACTS

INDEX

Valerie Clayman Pye is an Assistant Professor of Theatre in the School of Performing Arts at LIU Post, where she teaches Acting, Voice, and Speech, and Shakespeare in Performance. She is the author of Unearthing Shakespeare: Embodied Performance and the Globe (Routledge 2017).

Hillary Haft Bucs is an actor/improviser, playwright, and director. She is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Western New England University where she teaches Acting, Improvisational Comedy, and Playwriting.