quarta-feira, 13 de junho de 2012

Technique

The worst enemy of progress is prejudice: it holds back progress, blocks the way to it. In our art, one such example of prejudice is the opinion which defends an amateurish attitude of an actor towards his work.

There can be no art without virtuosity, 
without practice, without technique 
and the greater the talent, the more they are needed.

Amateurs reject technique, not because of conscious conviction but out of unbridled laziness… Indeed, among professional actors, there are many who have never changed their amateurish attitude towards acting.

Stanislavski

Dedaulus (the symbol of techne) by Rubens


sexta-feira, 8 de junho de 2012

Borges on reading and writing

Jorge Luis Borges (1963) by Alicia D'Amico
What I have read is far more important than 
what I have written. 
For one reads what one likes - 
yet one writes not what one would like to write 
but what one is able to write. (p. 98)

When I write, I do not think of the reader 
(because the reader is an imaginary character), 
and I do not think of myself 
(perhaps I am an imaginary character also), 
but I think of what I am trying to convey 
and I do my best not to spoil it. (p. 116-117)

Quote from Borges' when he gave the Norton Lectures (from This Craft of Verse).