A Quote by Debbie Allen

You have to examine a scene on the page first. Then you get into the basics of acting: Who are you? Who are you talking to? How do you feel about that person?

Debbie Allen

Quote Topics

About Acting Basics Examine Feel First Get How Page Person Scene Talking Then

Quote Author

Debbie Allen
American - Actress
Born: January 16, 1950

The acting background helped a lot when I started writing. I was training for it. In acting class they teach you about the stakes in a scene (and) what motivates characters. When you bring a scene to class - as an actor with your scene partner - you have to do everything. There's no producer, set decorator or anything like that. You and you partner have to do everything and that's kind of like facing the blank page as a writer.

Carol Higgins Clark

And when I first started writing, it was literally in acting classes. And what would happen is now it's really easy to get scripts and stuff but back then, you know, oftentimes you'd buy the novelization to a movie if you wanted to get an idea of what the scene, you know what happened in the scene.

Quentin Tarantino

Growing up, I did a lot of work that was technically based. So, I sort of feel that, no matter where you're playing, the basics are still the basics. Then it's just about adjusting on the day.

Ellyse Perry

If you examine the history of any playwright of the past twenty - five or thirty years - I'm not talking about the comedy boys, I'm talking about the more serious writers - it seems inevitable that almost every one has been encouraged until the critics feel that they have built them up beyond the point where they can control them; then it's time to knock them down again.

Edward Albee

Examine our every action through the lens of how we would feel if it were to become front page news.

John Mackey

I like acting for myself as a director. I act and I know that I'll have a chance to have some say in what gets used and that I'll be able to give myself enough takes and be on the same page as myself about how the scene should play.

Ben Affleck

Whatever the press is talking about, they want to keep talking about it. So instead of asking yourself, 'How can I get them to start talking about me?', figure out a way to get yourself involved in what they're already talking about.

Brian Chesky

The great thing about making an ensemble show is it becomes modular. It might work on the page to cut from one scene to another, but on the screen, it's more powerful to take that second scene and move it first or move it later.

Noah Hawley

I personally like to talk to people when I'm not doing a scene, still acting as if I'm in Gotham when I'm on set because I don't really like to break character, since I sometimes get distracted. I may get distracted when I'm talking to people and having fun; then I have to check myself.

Camren Bicondova

I feel like my first conversation with someone, I really get a good feeling about who that person is and mainly about how open they are.

Elisabeth Shue

When I first started training to be a wrestler I was also trying my hand at acting. I was trying to get into the Chicago theater scene. It was tougher to get into the theater scene than I thought and I almost gave wrestling a try as an afterthought.

Christopher Daniels

The truth is we all get tired, we all get weary. In fact, if you never feel like giving up, then your dreams are too small. If you never feel like quitting, then you need to set some larger goals. When that pressure comes to get discouraged and to think about how you can’t take it anymore, that is completely normal. Every person feels that way at times.

Joel Osteen

I usually cast myself in things because acting is how I best relate to artistic impulses. It's what I've wanted to do since I was a child, so a scene usually plays itself out in my head with me performing it. And if I cast myself that's one less person I have to pay, one less person I have to explain my vision to, one less person I have to worry about.

Amber Sealey

Any story has a beginning, middle, and end, of course, but the question is, where do you start it exactly? It's about a guy who is murdered in a fistfight, but how does it evolve and what does it mean? That's what I discovered scene by scene, and this innovation of coming in as a first-person narrator was a complete surprise to me. It just happened.

T.C. Boyle

We're not teaching our students the importance of relationships with other people: how you work with them, what the relational pathology consists of, how you examine your own conscience, how you examine the inner world, how you examine your dreams.