Filling The Choice

In this episode, Milton Justice explores why actors struggle to make choices substantial enough to serve their material. He contextualizes modern acting within theater history, explaining how realistic theater emerged in the late 1800s with playwrights like Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov. Milton discusses why Stanislavski's approach of having actors use their own lives fails - people don't relate to their experiences in theatrically useful ways, simply living without recognizing dramatic potential.

Milton emphasizes that an actor's talent lies in making appropriate choices substantial enough to warrant emotional investment. Using student Grace's work as an example, he highlights how actors must understand the magnitude of their choices and earn them fully rather than throwing them away. Milton challenges students to see the extraordinary within ordinary things, to see that actors must become educators, philosophers, motivators, whose job it is to transform ideas meaningfully in order to remind us of our humanity.

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