Teaching Acting Technique and Building a Character Through Cinema

Curriculum Unit 95.02.09 1 of 21

Curriculum Units by Fellows of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute

1995 Volume II: Film and Literature

Teaching Acting Technique and Building a Character Through

Cinema

Curriculum Unit 95.02.09

by Carol Penney

I. INTRODUCTION

This curriculum unit will be directed toward second and third year acting students at The Cooperative Arts and

Humanities High School. Two prerequisites for this course are: (1) possession of basic acting skills and

experience, and (2) strong commitment both to the individual study of acting and to the concept of theatre as

a collaborative art form. Prior formal classwork will have included Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov, Edward Albee,

and August Wilson. My students will have a strong background in improvisation, story-telling, and play and

character analysis. My main focus will be an emphasis on acting technique and building a character based on

what has come to be known as the Stanislavski system.

The acting style of most American actors is based on this system (known as American Method Acting).

Students of acting need a thorough knowledge of this style of acting since they see it every day on American

television and in American movies. The students especially enjoy acting scenes from ﬁlms. Just this spring,

they produced a student-acted, student-directed production that included scenes from COMING TO AMERICA,

FRIED GREEN TOMATOES, and THE BREAKFAST CLUB.

I plan to teach acting technique and building a character through the practical application of some of the

tenets of American Method Acting. This course of study will revolve around the ﬁlms of Marlon Brando, who is

considered to be the quintessential American movie actor. Three of Brando's ﬁlms will be viewed and studied

intensively in regard to building a character. These ﬁlms are: ON THE WATERFRONT, A STREETCAR NAMED

DESIRE, and VIVA ZAPATA! . All three ﬁlms are directed by Elia Kazan, one of the founders of The Actors

Studio, where Brando studied "the Method." ON THE WATERFRONT will be studied in conjunction with the ﬁnal

shooting script, which is the last draft of the screenplay submitted before ﬁlming begins. A STREETCAR

NAMED DESIRE: ACTING EDITION, the playbook for performers published by Dramatists Play Service will be

studied. This acting edition is a reprint of the 1947 Broadway production's ﬁnal, oﬃcial promptbook. It

contains detailed accounts of movement, behavior, and inﬂection. Kazan's famous set of notes on his concepts

and planning of the production contained in DIRECTORS ON DIRECTING will be of value to our work. These

notes also describe his approach to helping the actors develop their characters. The ﬁlm of VIVA ZAPATA! will

be studied along with selected material on the life and times of Emiliano Zapata and a novelette of VIVA

ZAPATA!

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Through the study of the tenets of American Method Acting, the students will learn to critique the acting in the

ﬁlms, as well as their own acting, perform scenes from the ﬁlms, videotape their work, and develop acting

technique through Method acting exercises.

American Method Acting originated in Russia with Konstantin Stanislavski, who opened the Moscow Art

Theatre in 1898. The Moscow Art Theatre is primarily associated with the productions of the plays of Anton

Chekhov and the beginning of Russian dramatic realism.

By observing himself as an actor as well as the other actors with whom he worked, and more especially by

studying the great dramatic artists in Russia and abroad, Stanislavski developed an approach to the teaching

of acting that became known as the "Stanislavski system." The eﬀects of his teaching were felt in America in

the 1920 s when Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya, both alumni of the Moscow Art Theatre school,

emigrated to America and established The American Laboratory Theatre.

Stanislavski didn't invent his system; he investigated and charted the acting process that good actors used

intuitively. He systematized that process so that it could be studied and developed consciously. He was

interested in how to maintain a consistent performance and how to be a conscious human being on stage. The

Method is a pragmatic way of working to create both the interior life and the logical behavior of a character, a

way that can be taught, practiced, monitored, and corrected.

Using method tenets, the students will learn to analyze the work of the actors in the ﬁlms. They will also look

at how the actors play the subtext. According to Stanislavski, an important aspect of building a character

pertains to the subtext. The subtext is the meaning behind the words of the text. For Stanislavski, the subtext

is the inward "life of a human spirit. . ." that constantly ﬂows under the words of a role. Words are only a part

of a given moment on stage, and are related to thoughts, bodily expressions, and images. Actors need to see

images and transmit those images to the acting partner. Images need to grow in detail and become richer.

Questions are asked by the actor. Why did the playwright write these words at this time in the play? To make

the playwright's words his own the actor needs to know why the author gave these lines to the character:

what is my purpose in saying these lines? How do I make that purpose known? Under what conditions would I

think, behave, do, and perceive as this character does? As the actor I must be willing to submerge myself in

the life of the character.

Some of the tenets of Method Acting are: verisimilitude, seeking logical character behavior, justiﬁcation and

super-objective, expression of true emotion, drawing on the self, ensemble acting, improvisation, and use of

objects.

Students will use these tenets as the basis for discussing the acting in the ﬁlms and ﬁlm clips that we will be

viewing. Through acting exercises based on these tenets, the students will learn speciﬁc acting technique in

order to portray character. We will also explore some of the fundamental diﬀerences between acting for the

stage and acting for ﬁlm.

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II. PROCEDURES

In order to begin my work with the students, I plan to open up a discussion on the tenets of Method Acting and

have the students work on acting exercises used by professional acting teachers.

A great deal has been said and written about what has come to be known as "the Method." It is the

preeminent acting style of American actors. It would be very diﬃcult to improve on the following deﬁnition of

the tenets of Method acting.

1. The actor's essential task is to reproduce a credible reality-verisimilitude-on stage or screen,

founded on acute observations of the world. Method teachers do not hold that this restricts actors

to any one style of production, but this task does closely link the Method with American

naturalism, which has the same aim.

2. The Method justiﬁes all stage behavior by establishing its psychological soundness. To provide

a unifying motivation for this behavior, the actor determines a single overall purpose for the

character. This is commonly known as a "super-objective," or "throughline," or "spine." This larger

purpose is divided into smaller, actable units called "objectives" or "actions."

3. Great value is placed on the expression of genuine emotion, which may be evoked through a

technique called "aﬀective memory."

(Aﬀective memory has become an extremely controversial

device that has, in its most popular version, "emotional recall," split the community of Method

teachers.)

3(a) The central purpose of the creative actor's work is the cultivation of "life of our inner

feelings." According to Boleslavsky, this involves the development and use of the actor's

"aﬀective memory": the recalling and re-experiencing of previously felt emotions.

Stanislavski developed exercises with which the actor, by recalling the sensory details

that accompanied an emotional experience, could entice the emotion from his subconscious and

re-experience it. Madame Ouspenskaya used to call the actor's aﬀective memories "golden keys,"

which unlocked some of the greatest moments in acting.

In the last four pages of the "Overture, section of SWANN'S WAY, Marcel Proust

describes a perfect example of the aﬀective-memory phenomenon and how it is linked to

particular sensory keys that can unlock long-forgotten feelings.

The novel's narrator recalls how

his mother served him some tea with "those short, plump little cakes called ‘petites madeleines.'"

He takes a sip of the tea into which he has dipped a piece of Madeleine and suddenly experiences

an exquisite sense of joy. He tries another sip of the tea and cake and then another, but the

sensation seems to diminish. He considers for a moment, then concentrates on the sense

memory of the taste of "the crumb of Madeleine soaked in a decoction of lime-ﬂowers," and

immediately a ﬂood of reminiscences is released: he remembers the Sunday mornings at

Combray, when as a child, his aunt Leonie gave him a piece of the Madeleine she had dipped in

her own cup of lime-ﬂower tea, the re-experiencing of which unfolds in the complex of

recollections that becomes REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST.

There are many examples in theatre history of performers making unconscious use of

their aﬀective memories. For example, Edmund Kean was truly emotionally moved when he

picked up the skull of Yorick in the gravediggers, scene in HAMLET. It seems each time he held

Yorick's skull he would be reminded of a beloved uncle who had given him his ﬁrst lessons in

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acting and who had introduced him to Shakespeare. By this example we see that the actor had a

real emotional response that came from his connection with the play and the character.

Speciﬁc acting exercises are used only as a last resort . The given circumstances of the

play, character, and action are of primary importance. After the performer analyzes his part to

see what feeling or emotion is necessary at a given moment in a scene, he searches his own life

for a remembered feeling or emotion that parallels the former. Using sensory exercises the actor

retrieves the parallel emotion from his aﬀective memory. The actor is not to be concerned with

how the emotion will manifest itself, only with ﬁnding it and creating the sensory realities that will

unlock the memory. When the aﬀective memory is tapped, the mental processes set in motion do

cause psycho physical responses. They stimulate the player's physical and mental being with

remembered sensations and emotions that color his or her behavior and vocal expression in ways

that both the actor and the audience experience as real and exciting. This is what gives ﬁne

acting its "aliveness" and verisimilitude.

The Method teacher Robert Lewis has this deﬁnition of aﬀective memory:

The theory is that if, quietly relaxed, you think back over a certain incident in your life

which moved you strongly at the time, and if you can remember and recreate in your mind the

physical circumstances of that moment (where you were, who was there, what happened, the

time of day, the place, surroundings) and start reliving it . . . it is possible that a feeling similar to

what you felt at that time will recur.

4. Each actor's own personality is not only the model for the creation of character, but the source

from which all psychological truth must be distilled. Here's what Brando has to say about "use of

self".

People often say that an actor "plays" a character well but that's an amateurish notion.

Developing a characterization is not merely a matter of putting on makeup and a costume and

stuﬃng Kleenex in your mouth. That's what actors used to do, and then called it characterization.

In acting everything comes out of what you are or some aspect of who you are. Everything is a

part of your experience. We all have a spectrum of emotions in us. It is a broad one, and it is the

actor's job to reach into this assortment of emotions and experience for the ones that are

appropriate for his character and the story. Through practice and experience, I learned how to put

myself into diﬀerent moods and states of mind by thinking about things that made me laugh or

be angry, sad, or outraged; I developed a mental technique that allowed me to address certain

parts of myself, select an emotion, and send something akin to an electrical impulse from my

brain to my body that enabled me to experience the emotion. If I had to feel worried, I'd think

about something that worried me; if I was supposed to laugh, I thought about something that was

hilarious.

5. Improvisation is encouraged as a rehearsal aid, and even in some cases as part of

performance, in an eﬀort to keep the acting spontaneous, and thus lifelike.

6. The Method promotes intimate communication between actors in a scene, thus striving toward

the performance ideal of true, uniﬁed ensemble acting. Some acting exercises developed for this

purpose are: the mirror, group use of imaginary objects, group movement exercises, and

improvisations.

Ensemble acting does mean more than just consistently good acting by all cast

members. It generally implies that everyone on stage is acting in exactly the same style, and it

requires concentrated group scenes. Unfortunately, the history of American drama and ﬁlm

contains few examples of it. It may be the sad case that for American actors, who strive to create

theater in a highly commercial context that supports the star system, moments of intimate

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connection between individuals are often the closest they come to ensemble acting.

7. The use of objects is stressed both for their symbolic value and as reminders of the solid,

material world.

III. OBJECTIVES:

My overall objectives for this unit are:

-To increase the student's critical thinking skills in analyzing the theme of the ﬁlms and the

actor's characterization.

-To develop the student's acting skills through exercises designed to encourage the actor's

continual search for logical character behavior.

-To develop the student's acting skills through speciﬁc exercises and scene study that focuses on

the tenets of Method acting and the understanding of subtext in character development.

-To develop the student's writing skills through the writing of character analysis and by keeping a

journal of notes and ideas pertaining to ﬁlm characterization.

-To develop the student's awareness of fundamental diﬀerences between acting for ﬁlm and

acting on stage.

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IV. CASE STUDIES of FILMS

A. ON THE WATERFRONT

(1.)Background:

Credits

Screenplay by Budd Schulberg; based on an original story by Mr. Schulberg and suggested by the series of

Pulitzer Prize-winning articles by Malcolm Johnson; directed by Elia Kazan; produced by Sam Spiegel;

cinematography by Boris Kaufman; a Horizon picture presented by Columbia. The ﬁlm also features Leonard

Bernstein's ﬁrst ﬁlm score. Filmed: 1954.

Terry Malloy-Marlon Brando

Edie Doyle-Eva Marie Saint

Father Barry-Karl Malden

Johnny Friendly-Lee J. Cobb

Charley Malloy-Rod Steiger

Pop Doyle-John Hamilton

Kayo Dugan-Pat Henning

Glover-Leif Erickson

Big Mac-James Westerﬁeld

Truck-Tony Galento

Trillio-Tami Mauriello

Barney-Abe Simon

Mott-John Heldabrand

Moose-Rudy Bond

Luke-Don Blackman

Jimmy-Arthur Keegan

J-P-Barry Macollum

Specs-Mike O'Dowd

Gillette-Marty Balsam

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Slim-Fred Gwynne

Tommy-Thomas Handley

Mrs. Collins-Anne Hegira

ON THE WATERFRONT won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor (Brando), Best Supporting Actress

(Saint), Directing, Writing, Cinematography, Art Direction, and Film Editing.

Included here are excerpts of reviews of Brando's work.

Mr. Brando has a number of astonishing tour de force to his credit but this must surely be his subtlest

performance-the slow awakening, the groping for the truth is brilliantly done.

-Fred Majdalany, TIME and TIDE

His basically decent, inarticulate dumb-ox is high art-meticulous, subtle character acting. To take an eye oﬀ him for a

second is to miss something vital and telling.

-Stephen Watts, SUNDAY CHRONICLE

The movie has its roots in Malcolm Johnson's Pulitzer Prize winning series of investigative newspaper articles

about organized crime on the New York docks in 1949. The ﬁlm is in the tradition of the 1930s gangster movie

with a social message. Bud Schulberg's screenplay is a powerful indictment of the way the mob corrupted the

union, controlling all employment, extorting crippling dues, and murdering anyone who stood up to the mob

bosses. ON THE WATERFRONT remains a powerful ﬁlm because, even though it-has pretensions to social

commentary, its subtext is the revelation of character through psychological motivation.

Marlon Brando plays Terry Malloy, an ex-prize ﬁghter who is the mob's errand boy and hanger-on. He realizes

the depth of union corruption only after he unwittingly sets up the killing of a young longshoreman who is

about to "sing" to the Waterfront Crime Commission. The murder and his own involvement in it ﬁnally begin to

awaken his conscience.

The enduring qualities of ON THE WATERFRONT derive from its inexhaustible stores of psychological material

more than any pretension to social commentary. The confrontation between the mob and the longshoremen is

no more than a moving and motivating background for the profound inner conﬂicts that beset each

character's conscience. These conﬂicts remain alive and memorable for us in part because they are our own,

and because the ﬁlm leaves them deliberately unresolved. Father Barry cannot reconcile personal principles

with church protocol. Edie cannot choose between honoring the memory of her murdered brother and loving

the man who betrayed him. Terry Malloy believes until the last moments of the ﬁlm that he can remain

simultaneously loyal to his brother, his employer, and himself.

Kazan emphasizes the hopelessness of Terry's case by consistently focusing the camera's attention on

Brando's face. The halting progress of the ethical debate is marked when Brando's eyes narrow, when his face

falls slack, or when he withdraws a hesitant smile.

Kazan had been very much inﬂuenced by Stella Adler, and what she brought back from meeting with

Stanislavski. Stella Adler was a noted actor of the stage in the 1940s. She studied at The American Laboratory

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Theatre with Boleslavski and was a member of The Group Theatre, along with Kazan and Lee Strasberg. She

was Marlon Brando's acting teacher.

Kazan was considered to be an actor's director (he was an actor with The Group Theatre) and always tried to

create spontaneity and the illusion of reality. Most of the ﬁlm was shot on location on the docks in Hoboken,

New Jersey, where longshoremen were hired as extras. The weather during the shooting was very cold and

Kazan was happy with the fact that the actor's breath showed on ﬁlm.

In Marlon Brando's autobiography

, Brando: SONGS MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME, he illustrated how Kazan

worked by citing one of the most famous two-character scenes in ﬁlm history, the taxi-cab scene. In this

scene, Brando, as Terry Malloy, and Rod Steiger, who plays his brother, Charlie, a corrupt union leader, is

trying to improve Terry's position with the mob. As Brando describes the rehearsal of the scene, Charlie has

been told to set Terry up for a hit because he is going to testify before the Waterfront Commission about mob

corruption of the union.

The script called for Steiger to pull a gun and threaten Terry. If Terry didn't change his mind about testifying at

the hearings, he would be killed. Brando complained to Kazan that it was totally unbelievable that his brother,

who had looked after him for thirty years, would suddenly stick a gun in his ribs and threaten to kill him. He

and Kazan argued about this until ﬁnally Kazan said, "All right, wing one." Brando and Steiger improvised the

scene, changing it completely.

Kazan was convinced and printed the scene. Brando, describing the improvisation says,

When my brother ﬂashed the gun in the cab, I looked at it, then up at him in disbelief. I didn't believe for a

second that he would ever pull the trigger. I felt sorry for him. Then Rod started talking about my boxing

career. If I'd had a better manager, he said, things would have gone better for me in the ring. "He brought you

along too fast." "That wasn't him , Charlie," I said, "it was you . Remember that night at the Garden you came

down to my dressing room and said, ‘Kid, this isn't your night.' MY NIGHT! I could have taken Wilson apart. So

what happened? He gets the shot at the title outdoors at a ballpark and what do I get? A one-way ticket to

Palookaville. You was my brother, Charlie, you should have looked out for me a little bit. You should have

taken care of me better so I didn't have to take the dives for the short-end money . . . . I could have had class.

I could have been a contender. I could have been somebody instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it.

It was you, Charlie. . ."

Brando goes on to say that when the movie came out he was credited with a marvelous job of acting. But he

believes that the scene was "actor-proof," and that it demonstrated how audiences often do much of the

acting themselves in an eﬀectively told story.

It couldn't miss because almost everyone believes he could have been a contender, that he could have been

somebody if held been dealt diﬀerent cards by fate, so when people say this in the ﬁlm, they identiﬁed with it.

That's the magic of theater; everybody in the audience became Terry Malloy, a man who'd had the guts not

only to stand up to the Mob, but to say, "I'm a bum. Let's face it; that's what I am. . ."

(2.) STRATEGIES:

I have chosen four lessons that focus on the practical use of Method acting exercises utilizing the ﬁlm ON THE

WATERFRONT. The ﬁlm and The ﬁnal shooting script will be our text.

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LESSON ONE: To encourage ensemble acting, the students will begin their acting exercises on the ﬁlm by

doing sensory exercises (with imaginary and real objects) and by doing ﬁrst reading exercises. These lessons

will combine ensemble exercises, sensory exercises, and improvisations. Lesson One will be outlined in

Sample Lesson Plan One.

LESSON TWO: Improvisation, as we've seen, was the basis for the taxi-cab scene. In Lesson Two, the students

will discuss the immediate given circumstances for the characters of Terry and Charlie: they will improvise

what each character is doing before the written scene begins. Students will also improvise the taxi-cab scene

by studying the scene in the ﬁlm and in the ﬁnal shooting script.

LESSON THREE: Lesson Three will include the scene of Terry walking Edie home. This scene also has

improvisational elements. Apparently, Eva Marie Saint accidentally dropped her glove in this scene. Therefore,

all of Brando's business with the glove was improvised. Students will view the scene, discuss each character's

behavior, and look at the use of objects (the glove in particular). Working through tenet number seven,

students will discuss the value of objects in the scene, both as behavioral tools and symbolic tools. Students

will act the scene.

LESSON FOUR: Lesson Four will include a larger group improvisation. Johnny Friendly's Bar and poolroom

oﬃce will be explored in a "place exercise." After reviewing the ﬁrst scene inside the Bar, students will set up

the place. Each student will enter the place as a character from the movie or as an imaginary character who

might have been in this scene. Each character will come in with an objective.

SAMPLE LESSON PLAN ONE

LESSON ONE:

Ensemble and Object Exercises

The exercises and improvisations we make use of will primarily be designed to encourage communication

between the actors, work with imaginary and real objects, and explore group improvisations.

Materials

The class will work from the ﬁlm and the ﬁnal shooting script of ON THE WATERFRONT. In this lesson plan we

will work on scene 12 & 13. We will use facsimile props and objects that would be true to the scene (i.e. beer

mugs, beer bottles, etc.)

Description:

Scene 12: Terry and Tommy are on the rooftop with Terry's pigeons. Edie is hurrying across the rooftops

toward Terry. The actors will work through the dialogue and actions of the scene with special attention on

handling imaginary pigeons and pigeon eggs. After one work-through with the dialogue, they will improvise

the scene.

1. Actors will memorize scene 12 and continue rehearsing paying special attention to the use of

the imaginary objects in the scene.

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2. After work on the above scene, the actors will improvise Edie and Terry walking to the

neighborhood bar. This scene is not in the ﬁlm or script. The actors are ﬁnding the life of the

characters from their own imaginations. This improvised scene is the "immediate previous

circumstance" for scene 13.

Scene 13: In this scene Terry and Edie are having their ﬁrst date. The place is a neighborhood bar. They are

sitting at a table and Edie is having her ﬁrst drink. After reading the script, the actors will watch the scene in

the ﬁlm.

The actors playing Terry and Edie and the bartender will begin the scene with scripts on the bar table. The

place will be set up as close to the scene in the ﬁlm as is possible with real objects and facsimile props.

2. The two actors will begin their work on the scene as a "ﬁrst reading" exercise. Since they have

not memorized the scene, their scripts will be beside them. The actors (not concerned about

picking up cues at this point) will look at their scripts, "pick up their lines" and say their lines to

their partner with continuous eye contact. In this exercise the actors are beginning their work by

REALLY looking and listening to each other; they will pick up nuances of thought and feeling from

each other that will color their physical and vocal expressions.

3. Students will improvise the wedding reception in a banquet room in the bar. They will each

develop a speciﬁc character with objectives.

B. A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

(1.) Background:

A Streetcar Named Desire is a record of the 1947 Broadway stage performance, directed by Elia Kazan and

featuring most of the actors from the original production, except for Vivien Leigh as Blanche. Jessica Tandy

played Blanche in the Broadway production, but was not considered enough of a "name" to play the lead in

the ﬁlm. Most of the ﬁlm was shot on a soundstage and it is a harsh and powerful translation of Tennessee

Williams's poetic drama.

Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh), a faded Southern belle, comes to New Orleans to stay with her sister, Stella

(Kim Hunter) and Stella's husband, Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando). She is horriﬁed by the squalor of the

French Quarter where they live.

She is revolted by Stanley, yet attracted to him. She overstays her welcome by ﬁve months, during which she

constantly attempts to break up his marriage. She tells her sister that he is common and animal like, pleading

with her "not to hang back with the brutes". Stanley takes revenge by dragging up her sordid past and

stripping her suitor, Mitch (Karl Malden), of his illusions about her. He eventually rapes her, driving her over

the edge into madness.

A Streetcar Named Desire is an extremely and peculiarly moral play, in the deepest and truest sense of the

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term. The rape of Blanche by Stanley is a pivotal integral truth in the play without which the play loses its

meaning, which is the ravishment of the tender, the sensitive, the delicate by the savage and brutish forces of

modern society. It is a poetic plea for comprehension.

The above is a portion of a letter to the censor Joseph Breen written by Tennessee Williams in 1951 before the

ﬁlming of his play A Streetcar Named Desire . The Breen oﬃce was the censoring arm of Warner Brothers

Studio and they wanted to cut the rape scene from the screenplay.

My primary interest in our study of this ﬁlm will be to look carefully at Kazan's Notebook on Streetcar . His

character outlines will be our guide to the student actor's work on building a character.

Kazan organized his notebook by descriptions of the four major characters, beginning with a statement of the

"spine" of each part. He used this familiar Method term because his mentors in the Group theatre had learned

it from their mentor in the late 1920s, Richard Boleslavsky of the American Laboratory Theatre, who learned it

from his teacher, Stanislavski. "Spine" is used as a handy metaphor to describe two things: (1) the play's main

action and (2) a character's main action.

Kazan describes the "spine" of the four major characters in Streetcar as follows:

Blanche wants to "ﬁnd protection."

Stanley wants to "keep things his way."

Stella wants to "hold onto Stanley."

Mitch wants to "get away from his mother."

Compounded, these desires account for much of the conﬂict. These characters are each other's given

circumstance.

In his notebook Kazan refers only to the character's "spine," which means the character's "throughline" (tenet

2). The "throughline" is the dominant action of a character's soul that uniﬁes his varied activities and lends

structure and coherence to the actor's work on and in the part. In orthodox Stanislavskian practice, the key to

deﬁning a character's spine is to use an inﬁnitive verb or phrase, usually with an object at the end ("to get to

Moscow," "to avenge my father's death," "to wait for Godot"). The verb phrase pictures a spine as "the

movement of the psyche, not a passive state, like a mood," In a dramatic role, the best kind of spine is a line

that turns into an arrow--it is a DESIRE. Directors in a rehearsal frequently call to the confused actor, "But

what do you want?"

Kazan has said; "I put terriﬁc stress on what the person wants and why he wants it. What makes it meaningful

for him. I don't start on how he goes about getting it until I get him wanting it."

The next step in this process is to introduce the actor to "the circumstances under which he behaves; what

happen before the scene begins". This is what Stanislavski calls "the given circumstances." (How do I as the

character behave in this situation?) Kazan says, "I will say nothing to an actor that cannot be translated

directly into actions. The life of a play is in behavior."

Credits:

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (the play) was produced by Irene Selznick at the Barrymore Theatre in New York

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City on December 3, 1947 (Movie 1951). It was directed by Elia Kazan, and the setting and lighting were by

Joe Mielziner.

The cast was as follows:

Negro Woman-Gee Gee James

Eunice Hubbell-Peg Hillias

Stanley Kowalski-Marlon Brando

Stella Kowalski-Kim Hunter

Steve Hubbell-Rudy Bond

Harold Mitchell (Mitch)-Karl Malden

Mexican Woman-Edna Thomas

Blanche DuBois-Jessica Tandy

Pablo Gonzales-Nick Dennis

A Young Collector-Vito Christi

Nurse-Ann Dere

Docter-Richard Garrick

A few nonspeaking parts, a sailor, supernumeraries.

The scene is the two rooms of the Kowalski apartment in the French quarter of New Orleans. The action of the

play takes place in the spring, summer and early fall.

The production won a Pulitzer Prize for drama and a New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best original

American play (Williams's second such award). Jessica Tandy won a Tony for the 1947/48 season as Best

Actress for her Blanche.

Academy Awards for this ﬁlm were: Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Art

Direction/Set Decoration (Black-and-White)

(2.) STRATEGIES:

I have chosen four lessons that will focus on aspects of the objectives of this curriculum unit. These lessons

relate both to the ﬁlm and play of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. Before beginning the speciﬁc lessons, the

students will have viewed the ﬁlm, discussed it, read the play and viewed the ﬁlm again. (This procedure will

be true of all the ﬁlms and texts in this curriculum unit).

LESSON ONE: The objective is to increase the students' critical thinking skills in analyzing the themes of the

ﬁlm. The students will read and discuss the handouts of Kazan's Notes on Streetcar . They will already possess

knowledge of Kazan's working methods with actors.

Curriculum Unit 95.02.09 13 of 21

LESSON TWO: To develop the students writing skills, each student will select any character from the play and

write an in-depth character study. The actors will ask themselves these questions: What do the other

characters say about my character? How do I relate to each character in the play? What do I say about the

other characters? In my study of the text, why do I say each line? What do I want in each scene? When I break

the scene down into beats what do I want in each beat? (A beat is the smallest unit of action in a scene).

LESSON THREE: Students will rehearse the "trunk scene" (Act I, ii) and " the poker night" (Act I, iii), having as

their objective the exploration of each character's "throughline" or "spine". They will also explore their

objectives in three ways.

(a) They will break the scene down into beats.

(b) They will improvise each characters "immediate previous circumstance" before the scene

begins.

LESSON FOUR: Students will rehearse each scene in the play beginning the scene with an improvisation on the

"immediate previous circumstance" for each character. Students will also work on sensory exercises for the

scenes, especially on heat, drunken behavior, and any other sensory exercises that they feel are pertinent to

the scene.

REVIEW OF BRANDO/KOWALSKI IN STREETCAR:

Brando received rave notices for his Stanley Kowalski. In one of his most favorable notices, Irwin Shaw

described how Kazan and Brando manipulated the audience's sympathies throughout the play:

Marlon Brando arrives as the best young actor on the American stage. Most young men in our theater seem

hardly violent enough to complain to a waiter who has brought them cream instead of lemon. Brando seems

always on the verge of tearing down the proscenium with his bare hands. Representing the healthy, driving

forces of the ﬂesh, Brando plays a useful trick on us. He is so amusing in a direct, almost childlike way in the

beginning, and we have been so conditioned by the modern doctrine that what is natural is good, that we

admire him and sympathize with him. Then, bit by bit, with a full account of what his good points really are,

we come dimly to see that he is one of the villains of the piece, brutish, destructive in his healthy egotism,

dangerous, immoral, surviving. By a slouching and apelike posture, by a curious submerged and almost

inarticulate manner of speech, by an explosive quickness of movement, Brando documents completely a

terrifying characterization.

Curriculum Unit 95.02.09 14 of 21

SAMPLE LESSON PLAN

LESSON THREE:

The emphasis in this lesson plan is on building a character, focusing on the "throughline" or "spine" of the

character. Students will explore character through exploring place and object exercises.

MATERIALS:

Film: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. Script: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE: ACTING EDITION. The class will work

on Act I, ii & iii. Video equipment will be used. The props are speciﬁed in the following descriptions.

DESCRIPTION:

1. Act I, ii (the trunk scene) is a confrontation between Blanche and Stanley. The actors will deﬁne

for themselves their character's action in this scene, based on their knowledge of their

character's "throughline" of action in the play. After rehearsing the scene, actors will discuss with

the class their intentions and what they felt they accomplished in the scene.

2. Act I, ii will be worked on using real objects. The class will borrow a period trunk from the props

department of the Alliance Theatre. Students and teacher will bring in as many objects as

possible to fulﬁll this scene (i.e. Blanche's wardrobe, box of letters from young husband, legal

papers, etc.). Special attention will be paid to the creation of the place. A believable place and the

use of real objects ground actors in the play's reality and help actors build characters organically.

3. Act I, iii (the poker night) will be worked on to develop character behavior. This scene

especially lends itself to the development of logical behavior because the scene opens with the

characters playing poker and drinking. The actors will set up the scene with all the objects they

feel they will use in the scene. They will work out the poker game so that it truly corresponds to

the script. In my experience of working on this scene, I have always found that the actors enjoyed

the poker game and the building of the action into the physical conﬂict at the end of the scene.

C. VIVA ZAPATA!

(1.) Background:

Credits:

The screenplay by John Steinbeck; directed by Elia Kazan; produced by Darryl F. Zanuck; photographed by Joe

MacDonald; presented by Twentieth Century-Fox. Filmed: 1952.

Emiliano Zapata-Marlon Brando

Soldadera-Margo

Josefa-Jean Peters

Curriculum Unit 95.02.09 15 of 21

Eufemio Zapata-Anthony Quinn

Madero-Harold Gordon

Pablo-Lou Gilbert

Huerta-Frank Silvera

Fernando-Joseph Wiseman

Lazaro-Will Kuluva

Don Nacio-Arnold Moss

Senor Espejo-Florenz Ames

Colonel Guajardo-Frank De Kova

Pancho Villa-Alan Reed

VIVA ZAPATA! won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (Quinn).

VIVA ZAPATA!, based on the life of the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, is a mixture of truth and legend

with scenes of the Mexican revolution. It is a political statement on the corruption of power. In the ﬁrst scene,

we see a group of peasants who have come to Mexico City in 1909 for an audience with President Porﬁrio

Diaz. The camera moves from one man to the next until it picks out Brando's Zapata. The peasants are asking

for their land rights. Zapata stands up to Diaz and rejects his oﬀer.

Diaz and Zapata never meet again, but Zapata's life becomes dedicated to overthrowing Diaz. Zapata decides

to join his peasant revolt with Madero, who in Texas, is plotting revolution against Diaz. Diaz is forced into

exile, but Zapata ﬁnds that Madero is a weak leader. Madero is killed by another would be dictator. Finally,

Pancho Villa leaves the burden of power to Zapata, who accepts it reluctantly.

Next comes Brando's Zapata awakening to the corruption of power. His brother Eufemio (Anthony Quinn) is

denounced by the peasants for taking graft and for being a petty tyrant. In a scene constructed to look like the

ﬁrst scene of the ﬁlm-his confrontation with Diaz-Zapata sees that he is being corrupted by power; he rejects

the presidency and goes back to his home.

Finally, only Death and Transﬁguration remain for Zapata. Weary, stoic, he walks into the trap set for him. The

problem is that the murderers do their job too well. His body is so riddled with bullets that the people wonder

whether it is really Zapata. The peasants choose to believe that the bullet-riddled corpse in the square is not

that of their warrior hero. The movie fades out with Zapata's beautiful white horse galloping through the

mountains.

(2.)STRATEGIES:

I have chosen four lessons that focus on acting exercises, building a character, and a variety of rehearsal

methods based on the tenets of Method acting. The ﬁlm, VIVA ZAPATA!, and the novelette of the ﬁlm printed

in Argosy Magazine, will be our text.

Curriculum Unit 95.02.09 16 of 21

LESSON ONE: I will provide bound handouts of the novelette from Argosy Magazine. This text, in novelette

form, has dialogue like a screen play. The students will study the text and divide it into scenes. By studying

the ﬁlm and the novelette they will be able to ﬁnd the natural scene breaks.

LESSON TWO: At least one third of my students are Hispanic; these student will translate scenes of their

choosing into Spanish. They will perform these scenes in Spanish. The class will research and discuss their

research into Mexico of the early twentieth century and the Mexican revolution.

LESSON THREE: This lesson will combine study of visual arts and acting. From our library of visual arts books

and prints that I will bring to class, the students will choose paintings to recreate. By physically recreating the

painting, they will create a living picture or tableau vivant. This exercise will stimulate their imaginations, and

they will enjoy the ensemble eﬀort of creating this tableau vivant. Paintings and murals of Diego Rivera and

Frida Kahlo will be studied for this purpose.

LESSON FOUR: This lesson will focus on four memorable scenes: the ﬁrst scene of the peasant delegation to

President Diaz; the scene of the arrest and rescue of Zapata by the peasants; the scene of the assassination

of Modera; and the ﬁnal ambush and murder of Zapata. See Sample Lesson Plan Number Four.

SAMPLE LESSON PLAN

LESSON FOUR:

The focus of this lesson plan will be on building a character through improvisation, writing character studies,

and using exercises from the pervious lesson plans to create verisimilitude.

MATERIALS:

Film: VIVA ZAPATA!; bound copy of the novelette of VIVA ZAPATA!, video equipment, costume pieces such as

ponchos, sombreros, mantillas, serapes, etc. The class will need a theatrical makeup kit, books with pictures

of the period, and historical information about Zapata, Pancho Villa, and other historical ﬁgures of that time.

DESCRIPTION:

1. After writing character studies, the actors will recreate Zapata's ﬁrst appearance with the

peasant delegation in Mexico City in 1909 for an audience with President Diaz. The students are

especially interested in stage and ﬁlm makeup. Each student will experiment with character

makeup for this scene. (In the ﬁlm Brando has a two-way stretch inside his mouth, his eyelids

glued together at the edges, and plastic rings in his nose.

)

2. Students will improvise the arrest and rescue of Zapata by the peasants. This scene, as with

most scenes in the ﬁlm, especially lends itself to improvisation. Prints of Diego Rivera will be used

as a starting point for improvisations. Students will physically recreate the painting, forming a

living picture or tableau vivant. One of their objectives will be to continue to use the physical

characteristics found during the recreation of the painting

3. The students will learn the dialogue from the novelette and the given circumstances to work on

the assassination of Modera. The contrast between the characters of President Modera and his

Curriculum Unit 95.02.09 17 of 21

assassin, General Huerta will be explored. In the ﬁlm, the President is portrayed as a rather quiet,

scholarly man, while General Huerta is a large, frightening, cigar smoking villain. The students will

decide what exercises they will use to explore character and situation.

4. The scene of the ambush and murder of Zapata is another scene that will be worked out

through improvisation. Each actor will do an individual exercise based on their decision as to

where and what their character is doing before the beginning of the scene. This is an imaginative

"day in the life" of the character leading up to "the immediate previous circumstances" before

Zapata is murdered.

V. Fundamental Differences Between Stage Acting and Film Acting

A. Stage Acting:

In theatre, once the curtain goes up, the actor tends to dominate. A stage actor has more control over his or

her performance than an actor in ﬁlm. The requirements are diﬀerent for stage acting and ﬁlm acting.

1. It is essential that the stage actor be seen and heard clearly. The actor should have a ﬂexible,

trained voice and must be trained in vocal projection.

2. The playwright's language is a major source of meaning in the theatre. To convey nuances of

dialogue the stage actor must have variety and vocal expressiveness. Proper stress, phrasing,

and breathing are necessary. The stage actor must be believable , even when reciting lines of

dialogue that may be stylized.

3. A theatrical performance depends on the acting and the actors receive most of the credit for a

production. This means that they are also assigned most of the blame when the production is

boring.

4. On the stage good actors can play roles very diﬀerent from their own ages-younger or older.

5. Since the stage actor's entire body is always in view, the actor must be able to control it.

Activities that one does every day (sitting, standing, walking, moving one's hands) are performed

diﬀerently on stage. Actors must know how to move in period costume and how to adjust their

bodies to diﬀerent characters. The actor must convey the inner life of the character through his or

her body.

6. Acting in theatre is in real time; therefore the actor must pace performances and build scene

by scene. Stage actors must create the "illusion of the ﬁrst time" for every performance,

sometimes for a long running play.

7. Actors must maintain an energy level from scene to scene and for the whole performance. The

actor must correct mistakes because a scene cannot be replayed or cut. The actor needs stage

technique.

Curriculum Unit 95.02.09 18 of 21

B. Film Acting

1. The ﬁlm actor needs very little stage technique. Essentially what a performer in movies needs

is "expressiveness." The actor must have a photogenic face. Too much technique can make a

performer seem to be overacting.

2. Acting in ﬁlm is almost totally dependent on the director's approach to the screen play.

The realistic director relies more on the abilities of the actors, ﬁlming more long shots .

This technique keeps the actor's entire body in the frame, and this camera distance corresponds

to the proscenium arch of the theatre. The realist tends towards lengthy takes , in order to help

the actors sustain performances without interruption.

The formalistic director prefers to convey ideas and emotions through edited

juxtapositions .

3. The ﬁlm actor is not dependent on vocal ﬂexibility. Many actors have succeeded with relatively

inexpressive voices. Marilyn Monroe, Clint Eastwood, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, come to mind.

Even the quality of a ﬁlm actor's voice can be controlled mechanically.

4. Most ﬁlms are shot out of sequence, due to economic considerations. The actor may be

required to perform a climactic scene before an earlier low-keyed scene. The ﬁlm actor must have

a high degree of concentration to be able to turn emotions on and oﬀ.

5. Film has Close-Up shots. Michael Caine in his book, ACTING IN FILM: AN ACTORS' TAKE ON

MOVIE MAKING, says:

It (the close-up) can give an actor tremendous power, but that potential energy requires

enormous concentration to be realized. The close-up camera won't mysteriously transform a drab

moment into something spectacular unless the actor has found something spectacular in the

moment. In fact it will do just the opposite: the close-up camera will seek out the tiniest

uncertainty and magnify it. "Drying" (forgetting your lines) can be covered up on stage. . . .. But

the camera will betray the smallest unscheduled hesitation. If a member of the crew walks across

my eye-line, oﬀ camera, when I'm doing a close-up, I immediately ask for a retake. I may not

have thought my concentration lapsed-the director may assure me everything is ﬁne-but the

camera will have caught that minute ﬂicker at the back of my eyes.

6. Michael Caine gives this advice to theatre actors entering the world of ﬁlm for the ﬁrst time:

Not only have you got to know your lines on day one, you will also have directed yourself to play them in a

certain way, and all this accomplished without necessarily discussing the role with the director, without

meeting the other people in the cast, without rehearsal on the set. The stage actor is used to slowly wading

Curriculum Unit 95.02.09 19 of 21

into the play's reality. First a read-through with the assembled cast to acquaint him with the broad outline of

the author's intentions. Then the director's view. Then maybe a free-for-all discussion. Gradually, book in

hand, stage actors splash themselves with gentle doses of the play, scene by scene, starting with Act One,

Scene One. Pity the poor stage actor who is about to be immersed, Baptist style, in the movies. Plays are

performed. Movies are made.

NOTES

1. Steve Vineberg, METHOD ACTORS, 6-7.

2. David Garﬁeld, THE ACTOR'S STUDIO, 15.

3. Marcel Proust, SWANN'S WAY, Translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieﬀ. New York: Random House, 1970. 62-66.

4. Steve Vineberg, METHOD ACTORS,13.

5. Marlon Brando, BRANDO, 416.

6. Steve Vineberg, METHOD ACTORS, 17.

7. Bud Schulberg, ON THE WATERFRONT,2.

8. Robert Tanitch, Brando, 40.

9. Marlon Brando, BRANDO,197.

10. Ibid,198-199.

11. Robert Tanitch, BRANDO, 35.

12. David Richard Jones, GREAT DIRECTORS AT WORK, 140-41

13. Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire: Acting Edition, 3.

14. David Richard Jones, GREAT DIRECTORS AT WORK, 151.

15. Merle Miller, VIVA ZAPATA!, 82.

16. Robert Tanitch, BRANDO, 43.

17. Louis Giannetti, UNDERSTANDING MOVIES, 223-225.

18. Ibid, 228.

19. Ibid, 232.

20. Michael Caine, ACTING IN FILM, 8-9

21. Ibid, 14-15

Curriculum Unit 95.02.09 20 of 21

TEACHER'S BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brando, Marlon, & Lindsey, Robert, Brando, Songs My Mother Taught Me . New York: Random House, 1994. Marlon Brando's

autobiography. He writes about acting, his experiences making movies, his private life (excluding his marriages and children),

and his political views. It includes never before published photographs.

Caine, Michael, Acting in Film, An Actor's Take on Movie Making , New York: Applause Theatre Books, 1990. ‘The talented actor's

words of wisdom about acting in ﬁlm.

Ciment, Michael, Kazan on Kazan . London: Secker & Wargurg, 1973. Kazan talks about his career.

Chinoy, Helen K., & Cole, Toby, Directors on Directing: A Source Book of the Modern Theatre . Indianapolis & New York: Bobbs-Merrill,

1963. A source book on directors, views and techniques.

Garﬁeld David, The Actors Studio: A Players Place . New York: Macmillan Publishing-Co., 1984. This book is a history of the

organization (The Actors Studio), an overview of the entire record of the workshop's ideas, inﬂuences, accomplishments, and failures.

At the same time it gives the reader a ﬂavor of the times, events, and personalities.

Giannetti, Louis, Understanding Movies , Sixth Edition, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1993. This text book details how television and

movies communicate. Each chapter isolates the techniques used by ﬁlm makers to convey meaning.

Jones, David Richard, Great Directors at Work , Stanislavsky, Brecht, Kazan, Brook. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. The

subject is theatre directing in four internationally famous instances. They are: Stanislavsky's direction of The Seagull, Brecht's

direction of Mother Courage, Kazan's direction of A Streetcar Named Desire, and Brook's direction of Marat Sade.

Kazan, Elia, Elia Kazan: A Life , New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. Kazan's autobiography is the revealing story of his life, with details

about his testimony before HUAC, his Group Theatre years, his founding The Actor's Studio, and all about each ﬁlm and play he

directed. His assessment of actors that he has directed. It also contains very personal revelations about his marriages and aﬀairs. It's

825 pages!

Lumet, Sidney, Making Movies . New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1995. The acclaimed ﬁlm director gives the reader his encyclopedic

knowledge of the art and craft of directing, and discusses with great candor and clarity every aspect of ﬁlm making.

Manso, Peter, Brando: The Biography . New York: Hyperion, 1994. This is an unauthorized biography of Marlon Brando.

Mekler, Eva, The New Generation of Acting Teachers . New York: Penguin Books, 1987. This book is made up of interviews with the

top professional acting teachers on the East and West coasts. Most of them studied with the early proponents and interpreters of

Stanislavsky. The teachers describe their teaching methods.

Miller, Merle, Viva Zapata: Novelette in Words and Pictures . New York: Argosy Magazine, February, 1952. This is the story of the ﬁlm

in novelette form.

Stanislavski, Konstantin, AN ACTOR PREPARES Translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1936.

---. BUILDING A CHARACTER. Translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1947.

---. CREATING A ROLE. Translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1961.

Vineberg, Steve, METHOD ACTORS; THREE GENERATIONS OF AN AMERICAN ACTING STYLE, New York: Schirmerbooks, 1991. A

Curriculum Unit 95.02.09 21 of 21

deﬁnition of the Method based on what we actually see when we watch actors who are committed to psychological truth and

emotional candor.

STUDENT'S READING LIST

Chinoy, Helen K. & Cole, Toby, DIRECTORS ON DIRECTING; A SOURCE BOOK OF THE MODERN THEATRE, Indianapolis & New

York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963.

Giannetti, Louis, UNDERSTANDING MOVIES, SIXTH EDITION, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall,1993.

Lumet, Sidney, MAKING MOVIES, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

Stanislavski, Konstantin, AN ACTOR PREPARES, Translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1936.

---. BUILDING A CHARACTER, Translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1949.

---. CREATING A ROLE, Translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1961.

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