Text Analysis
Living and Breathing Script and Text for Actors
Fridays 10am-12pm EST via Zoom, $190 per month.
Polina’s integrative approach to dramatic text has developed over the decades from classic studies and training in Stanislavsky’s well-known action text analysis. After leaving Russia and Polina’s approach to text analysis derives from working with actors and students for over half a century.
From Chekhov’s short stories and plays to modern film scripts and audition sides, we will learn how to get to the core of a script that an actor, writer, or director will encounter.
We will uncover for each individual a unique specific approach to text. The principle lies in engaging the imagination, intuition, and organic sensibility with the structure and miniscule elements of the text. We must understand the script rationally, but we also must get those rational ideas to work with us creatively, thus tangibly grasping and reacting to each element and building block of the text.
Our job is to be historian-ethnographers: to see how historical time is conditioning us and the timeless essence of our being – to see the essence and to see specifics.
This class is for anyone regardless of formal acting training. All curious brains are welcome. As with all of Polina’s classes, it’s a collaborative process of continual learning for all, as the students are equal partners in the research and exploration with Polina, who will guide the process.
All students joining from are required to read the class material the week ahead of class.
(If 10am-12pm not work for you, but you are curious about this class, get in touch! We will try to find a time that works best for all)