System of Wants

 
I

Warm Up

II
 
Rehearsal of Movement, Voice and text 
 
 
III 
 
Conflict
 
 
 Question 1
 
What is the main conflict in your piece? Is it external or internal? Explain
 
 
 
IV
 
 
System of Wants 
 
 
What is it that I want when I say ..... 


Actors never say anything on stage unless they want something.  That is a general rule that allows for what they say to be organic and believable. This is why play-wright-ing is such an important part of drama. A writer who does not know how to write for theater may write too much without a clear sense of how the system of wants works. This will cause extra amount of text that will be impossible for actors to find justification what they say on stage.
 
 This is the reason why plays written by writers of other genres of both fiction and non-fiction are not very engaging plays. They tend to write plays that are wordy, long and therefore alienating.  

An even more interesting aspect of playing/acting is physical theater. After the emergence of film and TV, naturalistic theater became obsolete in the sense that it could not compete with the other two genres. Thus, abstract theater began to be the alternative option  away from naturalistic/realistic stories. Opera, in its "over the top" approach to telling a story, remains also an abstract alternative only when well acted, well danced, which means when the work of justifying why things are said on stage has been done successfully.

Question 2

Why is the system of wants important for the actor/singer/performer?
 

IV


Activity 2

Rehearsal of solo applying new awareness of the conflict and the "wants" applicable to the text. Those who are making up, please do this exercise on you own and reflect on it by writing your reflection on Discussion Board.

 

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