In class blog post

what did you learn?
How are you applying it to the work you Re doing now

I learned quite a lot from my peers in class, especially on Konstantin Stanislavski and Uta Hagen. I have never taken an acting class, so everything I learned was very new and informative. Stanislavski taught actors to not exaggerate and to stay natural. Sometimes a character is meant to be over the top, but if you are interpreting someone who has a normal appearance, it is important to stay true to real feelings, and to know how to improv in a way that would connect your character to real life. He explained how actors must know and understand the backstory of who the yard trying to portray. I also thought his three main ideas, super-objective, stage action, and suspension of disbelief were all very important to making your character seem believable. Uta Hagen believed that actors need to learn why their character does what they do. She believes that every actor needs to completely strip down their character to portray them in the best way (even down to what clothes they are wearing.) Hagen believed that you need to take your character out of the crisis they are in, in order to know how they would really react to every situation that can come against them. She understood that actors needed to know the world of the play they are in, so they can see the big and small picture, like how I need think of Verona, Italy as a whole, but also the building and specific place my character is in at an exact moment. I believe that in order for me to really embrace Juliet as a character, I need to understand her thought process and reasoning for how she reacts. I believe that the two acting teachers gave insight that will allow me to go into greater depth of my character that I would not have before I learned about all the different techniques. I would have exaggerated much more if I did not know that it looks more fake than putting in my own ideas for how I think my character would react.