Expecting Victory - Expectation is the leading edge
of an actor’s performance; the character must not only try to achieve a
victory, he or she must expect to achieve it. This expectation may be
irrational but that is
the character’s irrationality, not the
actor’s. You have read the script beforehand, but the character has not;
therefore your character can expect victory even if victory is not going to be
the end result.
-This expectation creates energy of the performance
(Interactive Dynamics).
- Expectation is best described by four “E” words.
1. Energy
2. Excitement.
3. Electricity
4. Enthusiasm. * All of these
stimulate the audience.
- Audience empathy comes from the audience’s identification with character
expectations.
(We tend to think that audiences identify with a
character’s suffering, and beginning actors often play self-pity in the
mistaken notion that this will stimulate a sympathetic audience reaction. But
the audience can identify only with a character’s expectations and enthusiasms.
- A character who is unenthusiastic - who has no
expectation of success -
is relegated to a purely functional role
in the drama & will appear to be “uninvolved”. Audiences cannot - or will not -identify with a predetermined loser or find such
people as believable. The fact is, virtually everybody sets out on a difficult
with at least some expectation of success. This expectation makes the character
interesting.
Exercise 20
Expectations (0pts)
Take a group of
students from the audience and have them do the following on stage.
1. Raise hands & expect that you’ll call on them.
2. Expect the others on the stage to follow you.
3. Expect to jump twenty feet in the air even though it sounds
irrational.
4. Expect the audience will laugh when you make funny faces.
5. Expect
the audience to be afraid of you when you make mean faces.
6. Expect that by waving and smiling at judges in a beauty contest
that they will pick you.
7. Expect that by looking said, someone will ask you what’s wrong.
8. Expect the others on the stage will buy your pencil/shoes etc.
9. Expect to split the air molecules.
10.Expect that you are the
best dance and that you’ll win first place.
In pre-selected groups of three,
have students write a 3- page bizarre expectation scene.
Memorize/Rehearse/Perform.