Topic:Acting (Film and Stage)

From Wikiversity

Welcome to the Department of Acting (Film and Stage).

Acting as we know it today is an approximately 2,500-year-old tradition with origins in ancient Greece. This started with the festival of dionysis, a week long ritual which included several performances of plays written by the classic greek playwrights. These first plays were perfomed outdoor lit merely by the sun as apposed to the lights we used today in theatre and film. These actors were not heavily engaged in character as we mostly see today, but they had emphasis on story. While there was theatre throughout the world it was nothing like the acting we see today. The Actor disappeared for a while after Romans conquered Greece and it did not resurface again until the Middle Ages and even then actors were not given any respect for the art and were merely tools for the Church of the day to use in morality plays. Acting did not become the art we see today until the 16th century. Notably the most famous playwright of the time Shakespeare was penning plays regularly. In England the first acting companies emerged; the Lord Chamberlains Men and the Lord Admirals Men. The two initial acting companies led to the first dispute of how acting should be done. The two styles were realistic vs theatrical. These two styles would compete with one another constantly and even today they clash in the minds of actors.

Approaches to acting differ depending on the medium the actor performs in. Acting for theatre differs widely from acting for film and television. There are numerious actor training programs that vary how the art is taught. Every country and culture has its version of the actor, and each has made its own contribution to the art of theatre. Notable are the ancient Greek theatre dating back to 2000 B.C., the Russian theatre of the late 19th to early 20th century, and the Japanese Noh theatre. However, the father of all modern theatre training is Konstantine Stanislavsky of Russia. Almost all acting today as we know it derives from his approach to the art. Film acting has been around for approximately a hundred years, but in that short time has established it self as one of the worlds most popular mediums.