Jason Byrd

Chapter 10 Summary/Reflection

Alexandra Silber

Chapter 10 Summary:

Reality is incredible, reality is a whirlwind. What we call reality is a false god, the dull

eye of custom. We have to open up all our senses and innermost feelings to the

extraordinary realities of existence. We must receive these realities with innocence and

freshness, as though we had just been born. To create, we must take known elements and

make something new of them and since we only have a few hours on stage, our creation

must count. We must take from life and what we take must have pertinence. A mere

imitation of nature in its familiar, daily aspects is the antithesis of art. There is however a

difference between truth in your life, and truth on stage. For example: a scene it needed to

rain and there was a lot of worry about how to make that happen on stage, but the actor

said, “When I come on stage, it rains!” and everything in his behavior convinced you that

it did! There is a definite line on stage that shouldn’t be crossed. Really hurting someone

is like the boiling milk: the audience concerns itself with the wounded actor instead of

with the character he is portraying. To bring about a real fight requires the detailed and

controlled definition of each movement. The intruding realities which spring from our

private lives must be out asiade so that our stage realities will be allowed to evolve

spontaneously. You must see what you have to see in order to tell the story, or see it so

that it doesn’t distort the story. In our search for genuine emotion and sensation and

truthful behavior and action, we should never forget that selection is our goal. And we

cannot forget the obligation to the playwright. Something is added to nature which wasn’t

there before, the difference between reality in life and reality in art. That “something” is

the artist’s point of view and power of selection, which comes from life and makes for

new life.

Chapter 10 Reflection

This chapter got me thinking of what reality even is in life and on the stage. Reality can

truly not seem like reality at times in life. Crazy things happen in life and we cant even

comprehend them but they are reality. On stage when we are trying to recreate the

realities of the character, we must realize there is a line that we cannot cross. We wish to

create a sense of reality, but we can’t go too far. We can’t actually hurt someone on stage,

or have it rain on stage. It is up to the actor to make that the reality while staying with in

the line.