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Get ready for the release of "Where the Wild Things Are" by reading the book! Reading Rockets has a great site with resources including an interview with author Maurice Sendak. Did you know he originally wrote it as a story about horses?
And here's a short animated version of the book:
There's a great essay in today's Washington Post by a high school teacher named Nancy Schnog who found inspiration in a book written by another high school teacher, Bel Kaufman, in 1964. It is Up the Down Staircase
an English teacher's struggles with school bureaucracy, with students up and down the axis of caring to couldn't-care-less, and with her inner self as she strives to do a job that asks everything -- oversee, organize, proctor, chaperone, coach -- except the thing she's there to do: teach.
The book was an enormous hit in the 1960's, translated into 16 languages and made into an award-winning film starring Sandy Dennis.
Schnog writes:
The novel poses the question that still haunts many an English teacher: Should I stay and fight on behalf of literature, or go earn money at a job with intellectual challenges, edible food, bathroom breaks and a blissful absence of school bells?
This was the dilemma ruining my sleep. Even though as a private-school teacher I benefited from small class sizes, the multitasking high school grind was dragging me down. My daily rounds included five literature classes with roughly 10 minutes to review assigned books before class. That was all the time I had to prepare lessons and grade papers too. In between 250 minutes of instruction each day, the "free periods" were a mind-numbing dash from students' questions to parents' e-mails to administrative duties. Throw in, too, the daily troubleshooting: investigating a case of plagiarism, fixing the Xerox machine (again), explaining to the girl texting during class why she is going to the discipline committee.
All this, plus the biggest problem of all: how, while on the run, to instill passion for serious literature in a generation of students with a shrinking interest in reading, as iPods, Facebook and YouTube consume their mental universe.
Schnog was able to speak with Kaufman, now 98 years old and glad to explain "that the human encounter between teacher and student is often a more powerful teaching tool than the academic content on a paper or test." Now that is a good lesson.
The wonderful Amy Dickenson of Ask Amy was kind enough to recommend my blog as her favorite resource for checking out movies.
Minow smartly distills plots and rates films with kids and families in mind. In two minutes I learned that "Brüno" uses "very strong, vulgar language" along with "extremely graphic and explicit nudity (male and female)."
Let me take this opportunity to recommend Amy Dickenson's heartwarming memoir of three generations of strong, wise women in her family, The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them
D.W. Brown has trained, directed, and coached hundreds of actors and is co-artistic head of the distinguished and successful Joanne Baron/D.W. Brown Studio. His new book, You Can Act!: A Complete Guide for Actors
On "Inside the Actor's Studio," I heard Alec Baldwin talk about the difference between an actor and a movie star. What do you think the difference is? Can you be both?
You certainly can be both because the ability to act is actually one of the traits that results in success for an actor. Imagine that. But there truly are other factors involved in being a star. Those would include the type you are, your basic physical attributes and your essential nature and how this present society responds to that type. There have always been femme fatale types like Angelina Jolie (Lauren Bacall), and the decent man like Tom Hanks (Henry Fonda); but we don't seem to have much use for John Wayne types right now. There's also the buzz factor. The industry feels a trend for certain people and their fame, a fame not necessarily related to their acting, and then it builds on itself.
I was surprised to see you say that "as long as you're committing to the truth of your Action, you can pretty much be oblivious to whatever you're saying and it will come off just fine." How do you suggest an actor treat the words in the script?
Yes, I know it is heretical in some quarters to discount the text, but I'm only saying that an actor should do their job, trusting the writer has done theirs. It's Shakespeare's advice to actors when he said (through Hamlet's mouth): "Suit the action to the word and the word to the action." You use the words only as a blueprint to determine what you should be doing and, once that's decided, you make the words total slaves to the thrust of your Action. Our society makes such a big deal out of the use of language and how you present yourself intelligently, an obligation to the words and their ideas is a curse. All these reasonable minds talking to reasonable minds. An actor needs to aim for gut.
Many actors are fine when they are speaking but get lost when another character is speaking. How do you teach them to maintain concentration?
We train the concentration of an actor so that they put their attention on what's really going on, not just the words and how they themselves are coming across. The Meisner technique we teach at our school (The Joanne Baron/D.W. Brown Studio) is a brilliant method for getting an actor to habituate playing moments and working off their environment, mainly the subtextual interaction with other human beings.
What is the best way to prepare for a role set in another era?
Whatever the environment your character inhabits you have to examined the culture and its values, and then bring that to your performance; it may be by relating to events through the use of particularizations, which is saying to yourself: "This thing is to this character as blank would be if it happened to me." By this I mean, if your character is discovered to be pregnant out of wedlock in the 60s, it might be for you as if you'd been discovered prostituting yourself. To play something set in a different era you might also have to alter how you carry yourself physically.
What is the best way to think about a character's past? About the character's goals?
The past may be hugely influential or barely at all. Although it's often an interesting plot point, I think well-meaning actors tend to get too hung up on back story, whereas your character might simply have been born a shark or a saint. I do think connecting to a past can be very powerful if you think of the character as motivated for a larger purpose because of it. This might be the case with someone who, because of the sacrifices made by others to get them through college, strives passionately to succeed so as to honor them, or a person having been bullied taking revenge for all who have been bullied. I think a great way to think of a character's goals is to imagine how it is that they want to be praised. Everyone wants to be praised. If not by the entire population, at least by that certain like-minded soul. Even a self-hater loves themselves as a self-hater.
The average American child watches two to three hours of TV a day, according to the American Association of Pediatrics. And that doesn't include the time they spend playing video games, sitting in front of the computer, and watching movies. Yet, few children are taught how to decode the messages that come wrapped in visual media. Ellen Besen, an acclaimed animator, author, and teacher who's worked with students from pre-school to college level says that visual literacy is a skill that every child should be taught. "Because of technology our kids have near-constant access to visual media, yet we've done very little to teach them how to really understand what they're seeing," says Besen. She is the author of Animation Unleashed: 100 Principles Every Animator, Comic Book Writers, Filmmakers, Video Artist, and Game Developer Should Know
How do you define visual literacy?
It's the ability to watch visual media with awareness of exactly what is being communicated (including less obvious messages and intents) and how that communication is being achieved.
How do you turn children from passive viewers to active, engaged viewers of television and film?
The first step involves introducing the idea that media can be questioned instead of just being accepted carte blanche. By its very nature, media seems authoritative -- if something is on TV, for example, it must not only be true but also important. Left unquestioned, media can become established in a child's mind as the ultimate authority. So you need to sit down with your children and watch things with them and discuss what you are watching. This way you maintain (or re-establish) the role as the main authority in your child's life. Media may then raise interesting questions but the final answers to those questions come from you.
What can preschoolers learn about visual media? Elementary school kids? Middle and high schoolers?
Recognition that everything we see in media was put there by choice is key to developing visual and media literacy. This recognition leads to three big questions which can be adapted for children of different ages:
What choices did the creators make? Why did they make those choices? What else could they have chosen to do?
Again I must emphasis here that for kids of all ages, you need to watch the shows and movies they watch, preferably with them -- you can't be a credible authority (especially with older kids)unless you know the material! This allows you to see how your children react to specific elements -- both positively and negatively -- which will open doors for conversation with them. It also helps you observe your children's overall reaction to media. What kind of watchers are they? Some kids get taken right in and once there, are hard to peel away. Other kids treat TV as a background element to which they give some of their attention while also carrying on with other activities. These different styles of watching offer clues to what your child might need to understand about media.
Since preschool programming is already quite regulated, efforts with very young children can mostly be focused on laying the foundation for visual literacy. Watch a favorite show with them and ask what they like best about it and what they like least. What would they change, if they could -- show more of a favorite character, perhaps, or add a new character? Put the stories in a new setting or have more stories in a favorite one? This encourages active watching and helps create the groundwork for critical thinking by stimulating the child's ability to form an opinion. Older preschoolers can also begin to consider the difference between real and not real -- at this age, it might only be the broadest of distinctions: live action actors -- real, animated characters -- not real, for example.
With elementary school kids and preteens, you can try a more sophisticated version of the same exercises. Here along with encouraging active watching towards forming an opinion about the content, you can also begin to foster an awareness of the various elements through which different media communicate. Have them watch for changes in camera angles or the use of camera moves. Once they've identified that the angles often change, you can have them think about why they change: has the camera just cut closer to showcase a tiny detail which would otherwise be hard to see, such as something a character is taking out of her pocket? Has the camera started to move way back from the scene because the show is over and we are now saying good bye?
At this age, the "real/not real" discussion can also become more sophisticated. And it definitely becomes more important. Kids can watch TV ads aimed at them and look for false information -- camera angles which make a toy look bigger than it really is; favorite cereals which look more brightly colored and more appetizing on TV than the real thing because the food has been doctored. They can also watch action sequences or fight sequences and begin to understand that the actors are not actually fighting.
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