Why Actors Need to Study Theatre History | Elliot B. Quick
http://www.maggieflaniganstudio.com/meisner-acting/why-actors-need-to-study-theatre-history/ In this video Elliot Quick discusses why actors need to study theatre history. Elliot teaches theatre history classes for actors at the Maggie Flanigan studio in NYC. I think it is very hard to read a play. I think it can seem very easy, but it is very hard because when we read a play we are looking at the grammatical text which is one small piece of the original experience that may have revolutionized our understanding of the theatre or at least has contributed to some very important way to the theatre that we do today. Theatre is not like the novel. You can not just pick up the text and have the experience that the original artists intended you to have. There is the language on the page and the words that people say to each other, but there is also bodies and space, there is set, there are lights and there is theatre space. Theatre is a live event and it is ephemeral. It happens and then it disappears and the process of studying theatre history for me is all about trying to imagine what these events that we will never be able to actually witness, that we will never be able to experience to their full power and their full beauty or full greatness, try to imagine what they might have been like and then start to ask why they were like that and what was happening outside of the doors of the theatre that made them like that and from there start to ask what they can be like when we do those same plays again today. For more information about the Meisner technique and acting classes at the studio, visit our website or call the studio directly at (917) 789-1599.
via YouTube http://youtu.be/fcf1wbd51Ig
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