Both of these forms of acting are usually performed for an external, presumably passive audience. Some improv troupes, such as Three Hot Chicks featured here , utilize comedy improvisation in a persistent world with continuing characters. Such enactments are more larp-like than their traditional improv counterparts, although they still feature an external audience and exaggerated physical and vocal movements. Photo by Menelaos Prokos Photography on Flickr. Role-playing is most similar to improv in that players enact spontaneous, unscripted roles, but for longer periods of time in a persistent fictional world.
Additionally, role-playing involves a first-person audience rather than external viewership, meaning that the other role-players are the only audience members and are also immersed in their roles. Daniel MacKay suggests that scholars view role-playing games as a new, unique form of performance art, offering a detailed description of their aesthetics within this framework. All adult creative activities require constraints of some sort.
While childhood pretend play is more freeform in nature with little, if any, imposed rules, adults require structure and boundaries in order to engage in creative behavior. Keith Johnstone believes that one of the goals of society — and, specifically, of education — is to impose limits on the creative impulse of human beings.
Indeed, Brian Bates explains how Western society once marginalized actors in the same way that role-players have been stigmatized in recent years. Because they enact alternate roles, actors were assumed to be untrustworthy, dangerous, and even criminal.
Describing the demoralizing process of his own educational experience as a student and a teacher, Johnstone asserts,. I lost mine in my early twenties. I began to think of children not as immature adults, but of adults as atrophied children. Indeed, many adults may think they have no creative impulse left at all when, in reality, their abilities may be simply lying dormant waiting for the opportunity to emerge.
In short, the adoption and performance of new identities and narratives is considered transgressive against society, which otherwise sorts individuals into specific roles and understandings of reality. Improv actors transgress in their expression of chaotic, impulsive creativity, which often reveals taboo material from the unconscious and even expressions of deep spirituality and vulnerability.
Role-players transgress in a way that mainstream society may find most alarming: they adopt persistent roles in a fictional reality for long periods of time.
Outsiders often view this behavior as a rejection of the normative reality to which they all adhere, whereas role-players consider their enactments relatively safe and consequence-free. In the future, like acting, filmmaking, and novel writing, role-playing may become more acceptable as an understood creative form as it gains more positive exposure in media and academia.
Performers understand and play with the notion of switching social stages, behaving in a deliberate and sometimes provocative fashion. In order for these frame switching behaviors to remain possible in our society and for our previously established roles to become reinstated, we must ritualize these experiences by providing a clear beginning, middle, and end to the liminality of the performance. Other rules of engagement are also necessary for entrance into what game studies theorists call the magic circle of play.
These limits are imposed in order to convey the character and story as effectively as possible to an external audience. These limits are so exacting that Johnstone believes that they stifle the creative impulse of the actor almost completely.
However, even improvisation improv has certain constraints. Most improv performances are short, particularly in terms of how long a person immerses into a role or scenario. Although Johnstone often advocates for a serious tone, particularly in his Mask work , most people experience improvisational theatre as comedic, especially with the popularity of groups like ComedySportz , Second City , and the television shows Whose Line is It Anyway?
The comedic elements allow for the breaking of taboos, emergence of repressed content and its joking dismissal as inconsequential or entertaining.
Role-playing games vary in terms of constraints by genre and form. Tabletop RPGs are bounded by play around a table and often include paper, dice, and other forms of abstract representation. Larps are bounded by time and space constraints. In addition to these physical boundaries, role-playing games also impose limitations on imagination and enactment through rules, norms of the play culture, and genre considerations.
These limitations are imposed by the game design, the organizers, and to a certain degree, fellow players. However, role-playing games offer a far greater degree of personal agency than either stage acting or improv. Because the constraint of an audience is no longer a factor, role-players enact their characters mainly for their own edification and in order to engage with one another.
While some role-players prefer a dramatic style of play — often called dramatism or narrativism 14 — with grand gestures and vocalizations intended to enhance immersion of other players, the audience still consists of fellow participants, not of passive viewers who expect to be entertained for their money. Therefore the expectations of performativity are different in role-playing, and the experience could be said to be more subjective and personal than grandiose and evocative. This style of acting corresponds with the immersionist school of role-playing championed by theorists such as Mike Pohjola.
Immersionists insist on resolving in-game events based solely on game-world considerations. In future work, I will compare the specific processes and techniques involved in method acting with those commonly used by immersionists to explore further connections. While some role-play theorists such as Stenros, Pohjola, and MacDonald have certainly drawn upon acting theories to illuminate the role-playing experience, fascinating patterns emerge when comparing the language used to describe the phenomenon of transforming into character, especially when considering ethnographic research from role-players who are likely unaware of acting literature.
This section looks at several concepts highlighted by Johnstone with reference to role-playing: dual consciousness, mask work, alibi, possession, and dissociation.
These cursory summaries serve as an outline for future detailed research on these concepts. Photo courtesy of Methuen and Keithjohnstone. Both role-players and actors speak of inhabiting a dual consciousness when performing a role in which the player passively observes the actions of the character to greater and lesser degrees. Some players always have a strong sense of distance and control, whereas others seek to abandon their own identity to that of the role.
Consider these two quotes from an improv actor and a role-player respectively:. There is a part of me sitting in a distant corner of my mind that watches and notices changed body sensations, etc. Ingrid Anonymized role-player This process is called possession in some of the literature for both acting and role-playing theory. It is in this moment of crisis that the Mask teacher will urge you to continue. In most social situations, you are expected to maintain a consistent personality.
In other cases, the personalities of the player and character temporarily merge rather than one superseding the other. We completely overlapped. His voice became my voice, and there were other elements of him that became me. All three actors played Star Trek captains for several years on sometimes grueling shooting schedules.
No changes were made to this image. Yet alibi is not necessarily equivalent to possession. Certain ritualized activities consciously facilitate alibi, e.
Although not termed alibi in Impro , Johnstone describes giving improv actors permission to transgress their normal identities, thereby unlocking their creativity. Mask work encourages actors to dissolve their personality and wear a mask to elicit spontaneous, improvised behaviors. By that time, they have a more truthful concept of what they are. The course provides an introduction to creative processes in theater and improvisation in various contexts, such as performing arts, drama pedagogy and applied theater practices.
The introduction includes different forms of practice traditions and acting methodology, and how these can be relevant in different contexts in today's society. The contexts can be from the field of art and culture, and from various forms of pedagogical and social work. Knowledge and competence in improvisation are considered relevant in this course beyond the theater stage and the performing arts field.
Emphasis is placed on the students' interaction and creative efforts and that they gain an increased understanding of the theatre's opportunities and role in societal context. The course is largely based on collective forms of work and demands active participation in the instruction.
The instruction is given in the form of lectures, practical seminars and student-active exercises. The syllabus will be partly covered in the instruction, but self-study and colloquium work form a significant part of the study. Students are required to update themselves with the results of exercises via Blackboard. Students are obliged to stay informed about current messages from the Department or teacher via Blackboard. The language of instruction is usually Norwegian, but English may also occur.
The final course assessment consists of a 3-day home exam, over a given topic, where the student completes a written assignment of about words.
The word count should not include front page, preface, table of content, literature list or appendix. The final assessment should be marked with the word count. It's the students own responsibility to ensure that the number of words is correct.
Admission to the Bachelor's programme or the One-year programme in Drama and Theatre, or another programme in agreement with the department.
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