May Newsletter

Posted May 6 2010 by Peter Sardi in Newsletters with 0 Comments

QUOTE OF THE MONTH: "The important thing is to use the role as a trampoline, a chance to study and play with what is behind our masks. Creativity, especially where acting is concerned, Is boundless sincerity, yet disciplined." … Jerzy Grotowski – SCROLL TO BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.

All vacancies have now been filled for Term Two. See pics of all our "current" students below.

Current Term Two Acting Class Students_2010

<-Advanced Acting Class students.
The Character. The actor will progress from Acting_2/ Creating a Scene via Improvisation and move toward Acting_2/The Character. Work in this class is ‘advanced work’. Students will only be permitted to participate in this class at the invitation of Peter Sardi.

Intermediate Acting Class students –>

Creating a Scene via Improvisation. The focus of this Acting Class is utilizing the skills, acquired in Acting 1 The Instrument, to produce a dialogue between two people via Improvisation.

<–Beginners Acting Class students.

Acting 1 The Instrument. In the same way that a pianist has his instrument – “The Piano” – an actor also has his instrument. The Actor’s instrument is his BODY. Within the BODY lie the actor’s ‘tools’ which he /she utilizes in the effort to create the life of a human being – a Character.

Through a methodical practice of specific exercises these tools are developed and strengthened as they eventually lead to the awakening of the creative capacities within the actor.

Quotations help to inspire, illuminate & motivate. I have selected here – below – several quotes from one of my favorite exponents of acting – Jerzy Grotowski. I hope they inspire you as much as they have inspired me. Enjoy …

JERZY GROTOWSKI

Jerzy Grotowski (August 11, 1933 – January 14, 1999) was a Polish theatre director and a leading figure of theatrical avant garde of the 20th century. Jerzy Grotowski always maintained that theatre could never compete with cinema and that cinema offered a different experience to theatre. He wanted to bring a theatre to an audience that was confronting, challenging and experiential. It was a theatre not based so much on image (as in cinema or television) but on the presence of the actor.

“To eliminate the blockages towards spontaneous creativity. We must find what it is that hinders the actor in the way of respiration, movement and most important of all HUMAN CONTACT. What resistances are there? How can they be eliminated? I Want to take away, steal from the actor all that disturbs him. That which is creative will remain within him/her. It is a liberation.”

"The core of the theatre is an encounter. The man who makes an act of self-revelation is, so to speak, one who establishes contact with himself – not merely a confrontation with his thoughts, but one involving his whole being from his instincts and his unconscious right up to his most lucid state."

"The theatre is also an encounter between creative people. It is, as director, who I am confronted with the actor, and the self-revelation of the actor gives me a revelation of myself. The actors and myself are confronted with the text. Now, we cannot express what is objective in the text. My encounter with the text resembles my encounter with the actor and his with me."

"For both the director and the actor, the author’s text is a sort of scalpel enabling us to open ourselves, to transcend ourselves, to find what is hidden within us and to make the act of encountering the others; in other words, to transcend our solitude."

"For me , a creator of theatre , the important thing is not the words but what we do with these words, what gives life to the inanimate words of the text, what transforms them into “the Word”. I will go further: the theatre is an act engendered by “human reactions and impulses” by contacts between people. This is both a biological and a spiritual act!"

Inside Peter Sardi's Melbourne Acting studio.