Abstract
In the summer of 2023, we participated in an online training course with the Stella Adler Studio of Acting titled Awareness Without Judgement: A Teacher Training Intensive. Over the weeks, we studied with three main teachers at the Studio on Character, Technique, and Script Interpretation with ‘master classes’ led by actors and scholars scattered over the weeks. The course is designed for theatre practitioners who want more in-depth experience and exposure to the more pedagogical side of acting and performance; in other words, for acting teachers who want to use the techniques of Stella Adler within their teaching. Given this gap in our training and a shared desire to better our ability to teach budding actors and performers, we participated. However, we also knew that we would need a lot of repositioning, from how they teach the material to their students to how we would have to teach the material to our students. This pedagogical translation is the impetus of our Great Ideas of Teaching. We want to create a method for bringing Adler’s ideas to our educational institutions. Our G.I.F.T allows students to create their character, starting from an impulse of a single emotion for both in-person and online settings. It is part written exercise and part physicalization exercise. The resulting approach to character creation is a sense of individualized ownership in the students in the characters they create and interpret.
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Recommended Citation
Dillard, A.,
&
Skjaret, L.
(2024).
Gemstoning: Character Creation Exercise for the Classroom & Production.
Communication and Theater Association of Minnesota Journal, 47(1).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.56816/2471-0032.1174
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