ABSTRACT

Of all the techniques in your Actor’s Palette, psychophysical action is your primary tool for analyzing a script and building a character. It is the key that will later enable you to experience and share the life of the human spirit on stage or screen, the goal of Stanislavsky’s System. Stanislavsky defined an action as a purposeful act of human behavior. In other words, action is motivated behavior, and action is also the basis of the art of acting. In this chapter we will explore a progressive series of steps designed to experience simple-to-more-complex nonverbal action. Gradually, you will learn to combine more and more Elements of Action throughout this chapter.