preview

Article Summary: The Back And Forth By Jon Jory

Decent Essays

In his article, “The Back and Forth” Jon Jory asks the question “Why is it so hard for actors to react?” As a theatre educator this article helps answer some much needed personal questions about acting and the theatre education I am imparting onto my students. Teaching Theatre class at University of Houston has been about how to open up our students to good healthy acting habits, and this article distills some of the beginning acting ideas I have learned over the last month. In this article, Jory concentrates on objectives and reacting to others reactions of the scene. Equating acting to ping pong and the give and take needed in any scene; as described by Shurtleff (1978) in guidepost seven, “Communication and Competition”: There is an obligation for the sender to ensure his message was clear and understood by the receiver (pg. 63) and “drama feeds on conflict and dies on …show more content…

Reading the article Jory suggests one of the reasons actors feel the need of control is fear, the fear of the unknown happening on stage, which happens to work well with his thesis on fear itself; fear can be overcome through preparation, as deMontmollin pointed out in class the best way to combat stage fright is with preparation. Jory feels fear is a natural feeling on stage everyone has, it can be overcome to the point it is manageable, it just takes time. One of the items I found most interesting was Jory’s statement about ignorance, maybe no one has ever told the student actors reactions was the “Gold Standard” of acting. I will spread the word as well, ensuring my students know to have objectives, tactics and actions in every scene, with or without lines. The last I will address is Jory’s contention there are people that just don’t react in life, I am not sure I believe his assessment but for now I will defer to his greater

Get Access