The Persuasive Actor – Milan Dragijevich

Some training focuses on subtext especially in contemporary performance. But there are many texts
where the words are composed in such a way that the structure supports the argument and studying
that structure can help the actor express the character.

Ch 1 – Stretching the text: Balance

Antithesis – identify, practice, stretch via Pitch, pace, pause, volume, passion of delivery

Multiple antithesis

Hypohora – Series of questions and answers, or otherwise ‘two voices’

Deliberatio – conscious weighing up of different ideas to come to a conclusion

Ch 2 – Powering the text: Amplification

Accumulatio – building momentum quickly with a barrage. Drive and crescendo rather than
breakneck pace, and no pausing to find the words. Climbing the staircase. Pasionate storyteller
saying “wait for it… not yet…”

Could happen together in a scene:

- Pace
- Breath control
- Phrasing
- Inflection

Appositio – the renaming of a thing over and over, not adjectives per se. The list may well proceed
an action of some kind so the phrasing of it all is important to consider.

Boxing announcement idea

Can capture obsession

The John of Gaunt build – This sceptred isle…. Is now leased out!

Auxesis – use of an extraordinary or heightened word in place of a an ordinary one. Actor needs to
play with these words and build awareness that they even are heightened and out of place. Then
consider why. And let the audience know.

Diazeugma – single subject, multiple actions in a string

Use of polysyndeton (repetition of conjunctions) or asyndeton (omission of conjunctions)

Can capture a rushing a bowling forward, characteristics, intensity

Ch. 3 – Image and Description – close-up

Enargia – provoking visual phenomena through language. Not a particular structure but a
commitment, an energy, a context. A moment-to-moment cinema of speech.

Vivid and distinct

Zoom in on each detail and spend time there looking at it.

Action description somewhat distinct from visual description but still similar.

But how do you ‘edit’ the images together?

Image chapter could be worked on early when looking at poetry (this year on Metamorphoses)

Create storyboard of each image.

Onomatopoeia – the text may offer opportunities to use the sounds of the words to evoke their
meanings [but I’m wary of this – my point is you can deliver the same text differently to achieve
different outcomes sometimes, just as you can also take advantage of intentional onomatopoeia.]

Be the editor and create the storyboard. Be the experience.

This can be a joint activity. Like in Venus in Furs.

Ch. 4 – Metaphor

A combining of two ideas into one: the source and the vehicle.

Delight in liveliness and surprise. Brings concrete images to abstract concepts.

Three steps: Awareness, Appreciation, Delivery.

Possibility of an extended metaphor or conceit – a run of images using the same vehicle.

Stressing all operative (image) words is like practising scales; an exercise, not the desired outcome.

Vico: “a condensed fable”

Simile – possible structure is Action – setup – payoff (action – As/So)

Ch. 5 – Repetition (Mantras, Spells and Grooves)

Words and phrases:

Multiple repetitions: Epimone

Ensure there is variation!

Reinforcement – Palilogia

Epizeuxis – multiple pile-up of repetitions

Repetition of Ideas

Commoratio – sharpening of the idea.

Can indicate a mind grasping for handholds.

Exergasia – compulsive building and restating

Repetition of sounds and words

Isocolon – a repetitive rhythm sounds again and again to be toyed with – same grammatical
structure and length.

Homoioteleuton – basically, rhyme, but rhyme as a rhythmic figure and within prose in particular.