Blog Post

For the past week, my class had to create a presentation about a famous director in the past.   The name of my director is Lee Strasberg.  Strasberg is a very famous director who first directed "Men in White" in 1933.  He soon moved to New York to become a director with the Actors Studio.  Constantin Stanislavski is the most famous out of them all.  Stanislavski changed many directors lives who wanted to be the best and Strasberg was one of these directors.  Stanislavski created this "system" which was soon learned by Strasberg.  Lee Strasberg turned this system into his own method carrying out the directing information.  This  method helps actors train their minds, senses, and feelings.  This method was used to create the character's uniqueness and behavior.  LSTFI is the only school for directing that teaches Lee's method.  Anyways, Lee directed many famous actors in todays world.  He finally retired in 1929.  I learned some important information that I could use when I present.  I really liked the videos and games we played during the class presentations.  Especially Graces, which was when u tell her the category (teachers, classes, superheroes) and then she goes outside and we pick one of the following.  For example, we picked hulk and Mrs. Guarino said "You look angry" and she could easily tell that she was hulk.  She also had this other game when you have two people and one person repeats each other.  Then when you "switch" the other persons mocks the person creating the lines.  Most of these games are interesting but the most important information that I learned was from Lee Strasberg.  He used this term "GOTE" which means goal, obstacles, tactics, and expectations.  You must know your goal, what hard things are your way, and how you must progress through these obstacles.  They want us actors to focus more on this term "Gote" than to memorize all of your lines in the play.  I also like the phone call expressions when you are talking to someone.  In this, you show emotion by your tone to the character and the people listening have to guess your feeling towards the call.  For the next two to three weeks my partner and I will be performing an act from the Glass Menagerie.  Both of us have already picked which scenes we are going to act out.  In these scenes memorizing is not the key, its more about the imagination and how the play plays out.  Of course you want to get word for word but in these types of scenes with long paragraphs it is extremely hard to prepare for.  As of right now we have to get used to our part by knowing whats happening in the scene.  In one of our scenes we have Amanda and Tom talking about getting a gentlemen caller for Laura.  Laura needs a man who will support her since she has no future and no degree.  Looks like Grace and I are going to have to prepare with our techniques!