The first thing that stood out to me in this book was the distinction between representational and presentational

acting. The example of Bernhardt making the audience cheer and Duse making the audience weep, with the same line, was really interesting. It ties in perfectly with what weve been working on in class, trying to get rid of actor voices and deliberate attempts at being entertaining. The example of the apple, and our inner and outer self-images as only a small slice of it, gave me hope. Ever since the idea of taking a theatre class crossed my mind, I was worried that I wouldnt be a good actor because Im an introverted and kinda shy person. But realizing that every shy person has moments of outgoing-ness, and every outgoing person has moments of shyness, and that everyone has moments of everything that they can draw from, makes me a lot less worried. The part about emotional memory was kind of vague and abstract in some places. It makes sense that focusing on a specific object that was there when you were sad would produce a more realistic result than just thinking about the situation where you were sad. But the stuff about questioning the logic of the internal objects just went over my head. And the list of possible reasons why an emotion or a recalled object is wearing out for you by repetition doesnt seem like an adequate answer for this very important question. I liked that the part about sensory memory kind of mirrored her advice for the emotional memory, in that focusing on something specific is better than thinking about something general. I really liked the example in the beginning of the walking and talking section because its so true. I know the feeling of my hands (or arms or legs or everything) turning into unnecessary appendages that I dont know what to do with, and everything I try to do with

them feels unnatural. So Im like yeah, what DO I do to fix that? And the answer is... to have an objective and it will all fall into place? Ok then, Ill try... Delivering the words mechanically with set, intellectualized intonations [...] in the oldfashioned manner sounds like the problem a lot of people in our class are having, while mumbling without verbal intention or action in the modern manner sounds like the problem Im having. The section about improvisation is really short and doesnt seem to really say anything. The part about reality has some nice concrete examples but also some abstract stuff that I still dont quite understand. Basically what I got from this section was, if you try to be too real onstage it can sometimes make the scene look less real.