Acting, direction and stagecraft: performance, mise-en-scène and production
This domain tests how performance is made: actor training, the director's shaping role, and the stagecraft that turns intention into visible action. Questions often ask you to identify a rehearsal problem and solve it with staging, or to distinguish acting from directing.
Acting
Training lineages matter. Stanislavski works through given circumstances, objectives, through-line and emotion memory. Brecht uses gestus, historicisation and the alienation effect. Grotowski's poor theatre strips the actor to presence. Lecoq trains physical comedy, masks and movement. Meisner emphasises listening and repetition. Viewpoints organises time and space. The exam may ask you to turn an emotion into a playable action: not 'be sad' but 'hide the letter', 'avoid the mirror', 'make him stay'.
Direction
The director shapes concept, casting, staging, rhythm and focus. Blocking is movement with meaning: crosses, levels, cheating out, upstaging and stage picture. Composition must respect sightlines and balance. The rehearsal process usually moves from table work to blocking, stumble-through, runs, technical rehearsal and dress rehearsal. The director does not rewrite the play; the director interprets it.
Stagecraft
Performance skills include projection, diction, pace, pause, listening and presence. Ensemble work depends on giving and taking focus. Technical stagecraft includes cue calling, the prompt book, stage management and safety.
Worked example
A two-person scene is static: both sit at a table. The director wants tension. Reason: status is spatial. Solution: move one actor upstage and the other downstage; have one stand on a key line; place a letter between them; create a cross on 'I decide'. This is not decoration: proxemics and level encode power. If the standing actor moves away after the line, the action becomes withdrawal. A strong answer names the spatial choice, the line it supports, and the effect on the audience.
Traps
Equating good acting with 'not acting'; confusing the director's job with the playwright's; ignoring sightlines and upstaging; using emotion memory as the only tool; treating blocking as filling space rather than as action.
Exam strategy
For a staging problem, state the obstacle, the spatial or rhythmic solution, and the meaning it produces. Do not describe a scene you would like to direct; solve the scene you are given.