SEVEN SECTIONS OF THE BOOK MOSAIC ACTING SYSTEM

 

THE PLACEMENT & PURPOSE OF EACH

IS

FOLLOWED BY A COMPLTE & THROUGH TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Mosaic Acting System (MAS) is designed to make the transition from old ideas to new, better ideas, as easy as possible. For that reason, it is in many ways a simple manual, do this now, then do that, type of presentation. To give you an overview of MAS, I’ve broken the book down to seven sections. Each section will get a short description as to what each covers, and what it expects to achieve. If the descriptions of the seven sections of MAS excites your curiosity, a very detailed breakdown follows. This breakdown is presented in the form of an extended TABLE OF CONTENTS. This TOC contains a short paragraph for every class and every rehearsal plan listed containing a truncated explanation of what is covered in each,

 

49 LESSON PLANS FOR TEACHERS

19 REHEARSAL PLANS FOR DIRECTORS

The book, Mosaic Acting System, walks readers, step by step, through the techniques, theories, & exercises it employs. in a straight forward, using an easy to follow advanced learning program. While teachers are often addressed directly in the lesson plans, it is established in the Preface that these plans can be used by actors/directors, teachers/students on any level. The system is truly that advanced. Any who wish to improve themselves, and who are willing to do the necessary homework, can make it fly.  

Mosaic Acting breaks down the traditional walls between actors, directors, and teachers. So all must they read the whole book in order to gain the benefits it offers. Using the Tale of Contents as a guide, an outline of the steps the book takes to achieve its goals will be presented in short instructive paragraphs. The Objective for each of its forty-nine lesson plans, and each of the directors 19 REHEARSAL procedures, are established. Some of the tools MAS uses to solve acting/directing problems are also offered. This type of presentation should allow a basic understanding of the flow of the book and how each step is a building block to an evolutionary new form of theatrical expression.

SECTION      

                                                                                                    
This covers a wide range of material, everything from basic theory, Learning Styles, how and why they apply to acting.  There are notes to the various segments of the audience for this book.  How to use the book, and the changing role of people involved in the acting experience, are also presented here.   

   SECTION II

                                          This section is the early lesson plans, those that deal with setting up structures and exercises that will be used throughout the book.

 The 1^st series of Lesson Plans are designed to introduce and to familiarize students with one of the two major cornerstones of Mosaic Acting. The Whelan Recording Technique hits the creative heart of all who try it. Most often it hits actors in the manner of a metaphysically /artistically speaking, runaway train. Many actors are so stunned by the intensity of the experience, they can’t even talk. Imagine that, an actor who can’t talk. The Whelan Recording Technique maximizes all the elements of the basic Learning Styles paradigm, and is a major breakthrough in actor training and rehearsal technique. I call it low tech-high impact, it requires a recording device, tape, digital, whatever you got, that’s it.

The WRT, as it is usually referred to, is a basic set up that has 16 other variations, such as WRT-TRADING PARTS. Each WRT variation is designed to solve a specific acting problem, and some do infinitely more.
The Whelan Recording Technique gets a real work out in Section II

 

Section III

Section Three presents many of those additional WRT variations, but you had a good run at WRT in Section II.  It’s time to meet and get a good look at the other major pillar of Mosaic Acting, Emotionology.

Emotionology is, like the WRT, an enormous breakthrough in both theory and technique, in the training of actors, and rehearsal procedure. It is, as its name suggests, the study of emotions. As shocking as it may seem, perhaps even to an outsider, actors have never studied emotions.

Emotionology fills this gaping hole in actor education

in a unique and highly advanced manner.

The effect that Emotionology has on performance is one of giving the actor and EMOTIONAL CLARITY impossible to achieve using older techniques. In a nutshell and to be explained more fully later, old school acting was cognitive. Freud, and others in the field of Psychoanalysis, were as hot as it gets then (circa 1870’s). The way psychoanalysis fit into the actor’s craft at the time, and fit it did, it took the art and gave it life again. How it fit is a story that will come up enough in training, no need to go into it here.

Stanislavski’s method has the actor go to their brain to get emotional stimulus, from remembering an emotional experience in their own life that produced roughly the characters emotion at that moment in the performance. Mosaic Acting is Empathy/Emotions based. Empathy goes out from one character to another. Emotionology allows actors to come out of that intellectual Freudian fog, and leap into the EMOTIONAL CLARITY that understanding emotions on a pure, universal, abstract, level allows.

If you want to verify what I’m saying about the importance of emotions in contemporary society, do a web search for emotions studies and you will get a clue from the tons of money that academic and private research organizations are investing into that area of study.

 

SECTION  IV                                                                                  DIRECTORS SECTION

Not all teachers are directors, but all directors are teachers, it goes with the territory. In this section, approached from the standpoint of solving directorial problems using MA, we focus on performance.

Ensemble is generally agreed to be the highest level of theatrical presentation, and it is built into the very mechanics of Mosaic Acting. All performances guided by MA techniques are by their very nature, Ensemble. In the past, limited groups, consisting of only gifted actors could pull this off.  Creating that excellence known as ensemble, to their personal delight, and the joy of any audience that had the opportunity to see it, was very special indeed. Using MA, every performance everywhere, will be delivered at this exalted level. MA is the mother of the greatest creative leap in acting in over one hundred years and its impact is making history as I write this Emotionology is a golden key to that prize and Mosaic Acting puts that key in the hands of everyone connected to the acting experience. Emotionology goes far beyond the simple idea of emotions studies, it takes it to a higher and broader level far beyond any previously established parameter.  It takes a book to explain how, this book, but it doesn’t take long to see the elevating effect it has on the emotional honesty as reveled in an actor’s performance.

SECTION V

APPPENDIX & INDEX

The appendix contains essays and some additional MA exercises. I felt describing the set up for these exercises in the main body of the book would slow the flow. The are fairly simple in structure and may only need to be referenced once, I saw no reason for teachers or students to have to skip through those extra pages each time the book was used.                

SECTION VI

DICTIONARY OF THE EMOTIONS

900 EMOTIONS DEFINED

This is a primary tool of Emotionology and reference that those studying Mosaic Acting will use on an almost daily basis. It is the reference that will be absolutely necessary if the goals of Mosaic Acting are to be realized. Those goals being to broadly expand the actors Emotional Vocabulary, thereby increasing their Emotional Mobility and Emotional Clarity.

 

SECTION VII

THE THESAURUS OF EMOTIONS

86 PAGE WORK BOOK

This is a physical technique/tool that will greatly aid the actor in understanding the emotions on the pure, universal, abstract level, necessary to giving Emotional Clarity to every new character the actor portrays.

This ends the formal presentation establishing the various elements necessary to producing and properly marketing the book, Mosaic Acting System, as well as the historical and creative context of the book. This next section may not be of great concern to investors.  It is information that publishers will request of authors.  A co-publisher would also want to take a look at the Table

of Contents and then the extended breakdown of the book by each Lesson Plan, using the objective stated at the beginning of each lesson, including the tools MA uses to achieve that objective. The Directors Section breaks down each rehearsal and some tools used to achieve the desired growth in each those rehearsals.

This is the short form of the contents of the book to give you a quick overview, for those caring for a more detailed account an

EXTENDED TABLE OF CONTENT

 

 

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