Actor's Studio
Three tools real actors and directors use: play an objective with a strong tactic, hear the subtext under a line, and compose a tableau that tells a story in one frozen frame.
Where the words come from
Upstage and downstage. Many old stages sloped up, away from the audience (a “raked” stage), so the back really was up. An actor who walks upstage of a partner makes the partner turn their back to the audience to talk — that is why “upstaging” someone is rude.
Objectives. In the early 1900s the Russian director Konstantin Stanislavski taught actors to ask what they want the other person to do — an action to play, not a feeling to show.
Tableau. A tableau vivant (“living picture”) is a story told by people standing still. Families and theatres made them for fun in the 1700s and 1800s.