Performance: Acting and Directing
Domain 2 tests how actors build truthful behavior and how directors shape a script into a staged event: action, objectives, rehearsal methods, blocking, composition, and note-giving.
The actor's toolkit
- Given circumstances: time, place, relationships, prior events, and social conditions.
- Objective: what the character wants in a scene; superobjective: the through-line for the play.
- Obstacle and tactic: the resistance and the action verb used to overcome it ('to charm,' 'to threaten').
- Beats: units of action that change when the objective or tactic shifts.
- Methods: Stanislavski's magic if and psychophysical action; Strasberg's affective memory; Adler's circumstances and imagination; Meisner's repetition and truth under imaginary circumstances; Hagen's object exercises; Chekhov's psychological gesture.
- Practical Aesthetics: script analysis into literal action, 'as if,' and destination.
The director's work
Script analysis identifies spine, theme, genre, and units. The concept is an interpretive through-line, not a license to ignore the text. Blocking is movement and stage picture; composition uses levels, distance, focus, and triangles to guide the eye. Directors pace transitions, run rehearsals, give playable notes, and protect safety and collaboration. A typical sequence moves from read-through and table work to blocking, scene work, runs, and technical rehearsals; notes should be specific, actionable, and tied to the play's events.
Worked example
A scene: A enters, sees a letter, hides it as B enters. Beat 1 objective: 'to discover the truth'; tactic: 'to scan.' The letter is found; beat change. Beat 2 objective: 'to conceal guilt'; tactic: 'to deflect.' When B asks about the letter, A's tactic shifts to 'to accuse.' Reasoning: beats are named by action, not emotion; 'to feel nervous' is not playable, while 'to hide the letter' is.
Traps that cost marks
- Confusing objective (want) with tactic (how).
- Playing 'emotion' instead of pursuing an action.
- Calling all movement 'blocking' while ignoring composition and focus.
- Upstaging or closing an actor to the audience.
- Treating a directorial concept as a rewrite.