Hello everyone out there in the Do Art Nation!
Fall is in full swing and that means workshops at park districts all over the greater Chicagoland area. One of my favorite workshops you do is our acting workshop!
In this Workshop we explore the basics of acting and performance. Acting, like many art forms, can be difficult to define in words, even though we all seem to know and understand what it is. I explained acting at our most recent Workshop in Tinley Park, Illinois, as pretending in front of an audience. Sometimes this audience is in front of us, in a theater or a classroom. Sometimes this audience is miles away watching from a TV or movie screen. Sometimes, the audience is purely in our imagination.
Because we do an acting workshop in front of a group of our classmates, we begin acting by talking about how to be a good audience: sitting in our chairs, listening when someone is talking, and clapping when someone says “And Scene” and takes a bow! Ultimately, enacting the behavior of a good audience is a great way to get into the mindset of a good audience– listening, paying attention, and learning from the actors on stage. And just like with actual acting, enacting the behaviors is a great way to unlock the mindset and emotions within us.
After we talk about being a good audience, we get into some of the basics of acting: writing, monologues and dialogues, and making our acting more expressive with facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice. I’m looking forward to seeing all the amazing and hilarious scenes that the kids create over the next few weeks, and I’m excited to share some of it with you.
Do you like to act? Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to keep creating!
