Screen Acting and Performance Choices

Abstract

This paper starts from the premise that screen acting has taken a dominant place in the working life of the professional actor at the beginning of the 21st century. With the implications for the training of professional actors for the commercial sector in mind, I want to use close analysis of two scenes from one television drama series, "Burn Up" (Global Television/BBC 2008), to examine actors’ performance choices and the ways in which some key concepts of Stanislavskian actor training operate specifically in screen performance. In doing so I will make comparison between British and American styles and traditions of acting, again with reference to the work of Stanislavsky, the dominant theorist underpinning much British and American actor training.