Changing Direction: A Practical Approach to Directing Actors in Film and Theatre

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The Actors’ Vocabulary

As children we learn to speak and read, and as we grow we develop a language with which to communicate with one another and share our ideas and thoughts verbally and in various forms of writing. By the time we reach adulthood we are secure in the knowledge that we are masters of a functional language. However, I am about to undermine that security.

You see, the language we’ve learned is based on a prose structure derived from books and filled with sentences, paragraphs, adjectives, adverbs, and a whole slew of descriptive verbiage, which is of little value to the needs of the actor. While it has served us so well in most circumstances, it often, unfortunately, results in clutter and confusion ...