Photo: Anne Frütel

Role Study Group 23/24

Joshua, Ines and Maria were my small role study group as part of their acting education at Schauspielschule Wien in two semesters 2023 till 2024, with around thirty weekly sessions of two and a half hours. We had already worked together the year before for a performance of Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters”, so we knew each other and had an easy start with all topics already layed out on the table and some communicational standards already established.

A role study group is always something special, for a teacher it means the honour of being asked to accompany individuals on their very individual learning paths for a while. These three were a serious study group, bringing in a lot of personal artistic material, deep questions,  fear and courage and a wonderful dedication towards improvement, including all the necessary self doubt that is necessary to pursue that path. 

My classes are basically teacher-student dialogues around very practical building processes of doing-by-learning. If things work well, we have two results in the end: A product that we have built and a student that has built himself in that process (actually it’s three results, because the teacher hopefully will also have learnt something). Things come up and they come up again at some other point, which can then refer to the point where they came up before. Additionally, a teacher can only claim to have taught something if it becomes visible that the student has learned to do it. And it is actually the students who decide on what they are ready to learn. Very often small changes might become visible, and they might already have the power to change the overall image, but big shifts don’t necessarily have to occur. Doing real miracles might largely be impossible, except when the miracle seeker becomes able to see the small shift, and might understand that even such a small shift is not only built by the miraculous interplay of many many even smaller shifts, but that this small shift, once it has occurred, might prepare the grounds for some other shifts. All this is why it is not so easy to describe the successes. And that is why it is good to build scenes, because a scene is something real, something you can show to an audience and something a audience might like or dislike, find interesting or boring. The quality of the scene is the monitor for the development of the student.

“Cyrano’s nose isn’t just big, it’s abysmally ugly. He’s clever, but just because he’s clever doesn’t mean people listen to him. Cyrano struggles with his appearance, the play is almost a tragedy. It has to be much more personal. In many stories, the smart ones are the outsiders, Cyrano is just like that.”
“Mrs Christine Linde is a kind of antagonist and she should actually be the main character: she is single, has no husband, no children, needs a job and asks Nora for help. Nora, on the other hand, is young, well married, no money problems, children, husband loves her (too ‘perfect’). So why is she the main character? If you read carefully, you realise that she does weird things. First she does everything to defend her family and love with Torvald, then all of a sudden she lets it all go, leaves her husband and kids, leaves her security (financial) and decides she has to find her way on her own. What the fuck?”
“Leonce. Looking out of the window and using people as fodder for the text. All people who only do pointless things. Analysing the text: If studying, reproducing, is pointless, what else is meaningful? Leonce as a character thus more clearly defined. Almost nihilism. And yet he would like to be like the others. Who nevertheless have a fulfilled life through pointless work (Sunday maxi schnitzel conversations).”

In spring 2024 Ines, Joshua and Maria  took part in “Paritätische Kontrollprüfung” an external practical acting exam. In this exam, aspiring actors are evaluated by a jury of theatre professionals. They have to show a variety of roles there, including a “classical” role, a dialogue, a song. The control exam is the second of three exams that are offered to be passed along the way of a non-academic acting education. If aspiring actors pass the third one, they get official “stage maturity”, which is, at least in parts, acknowledged as a certificate of a professional education equivalent to an academic education. All three passed the exam.

Scenes

“Feedback: The plot is clear, but very importantly, what is missing in all the monologues is the character’s inner struggle to find the courage for such situations. Next time: Characters do something difficult for the first time. So they can’t be completely prepared. Look for that feeling. Be decisive, but not totally self-confident (that would be boring and unrealistic).”

Students

Maria Anvindalfarei, Ines Reibnegger, Joshua Schleinzer


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