The Audition Series With Michael Shurtleff

Release 1988

Complete 4 DVD Set.

Michael Shurtleff teaches an approach to acting that helps students learn to locate their own inner strengths and bring these strengths to bear with maximum energy and force in each role and each moment on the stage. In the four programs of "Audition: The Video Series," Michael explores the 12 guideposts with a group of workshop students. Each guidepost is articulated by Michael, then illustrated by the presentation and analysis of brief scenes. Michael probes relentlessly to help his students find the core of each scene and to take emotional risks along the way.

Relationship: Michael Shurtleff demonstrates that actors must always ask "Where is the love in the scene?" even in a scene of conflict, to get to the deepest emotional content.Conflict: "What are you fighting for" Michael shows how actors must search out the conflict in every scene. Without conflict, there is no drama.

The Moment Before: Michael and his students explore how to start a scene with full energy. Something must propel you onto the stage and it must be an action, not simply an idea or a mood. Humor: Humor is not jokes; humor arises from pain and enables us to carry on in spite of it. Discover how to search out the humor in even the most tragic scene.

Opposites: Whatever your motivation in as scene, your performance should also include its opposites; the tension in the scene will arise from sudden alteration between the opposites.

Discoveries: A scene, even an audition scene, can quickly become rote. Michael shows how to keep "making things happen for the first time" through a constant process of discovery. Communication and Competition: Getting beyond self-expression to true communication: a continuous cycle of messages and responses , energized by competition.

Importance: Locating the dramatic core. Even a minor character must approach each scene as if their life will be destroyed if they dont win. Finding The Events: "Whats really happening in the play?" Its always a change in a relationship and the actor must locate that change and find a way to physicalize it.

Length: 122 minutes