Alfreds Notes

Mike Alfreds:

. Mike Alfreds is primarily know for his techniques on directing.

. When directing he wanted to allow actors to express themselves creatively and he wanted actors to have freedom from directing to manifest their artistic nature.

. He used auctioning, one of the things he would often start with as an actor is to go through every line and know what action he was playing on that.

. He thought that improvisation was a good way to start building a character and to explore and establish relationships portrayed in the text.

. He did an exercise whilst directing called TNT or Text, No Text, Text. This is when an actor is first presented with a script and they perform it once on book and then subsequently without book to allow them to establish the motives behind each line and to be freed from the text. Then to go on to perform it again with those texts, bringing the motive and intention that was discovered in the No Text section of the exercise.

. When improvising he believed every actor had the right to express themselves and so one of his rehearsal room rules was, no blocking or no saying no. This is particularly important in devising.

. He was famous for writing the book Different Every Night, something Jack used a lot of in Common ground, its aim is to free the actor.