John Freeman

Dramatic material has cause, action and consequence. Acting requires characters to want something from someone; we are never just talking. Along with actions, words are weapons to achieve what we want.

Open scenes are used in actor training to focus on character relationships, location, objectives, obstacles, tactics and choices. A scene objective is what a character ​wants​ to get, obstacles make this difficult, tactics are used to achieve an objective, strong, specific choices often involve vulnerability, exploring different emotions using movement, posture, pace and silence to convey meaning.

In this two-stage workshop participants are encouraged to pick clear and sometimes risky interpretations and to let actions be directly affected by a scene partner’s responses. A focus on listening, exploring Meisner’s repetition work, will form the basis of the session’s second stage.