Thursday, January 20, 2011

More on Stanislavski

Stanislavski believed that theatre was more that just portrayal of the visual world, which is what acting, was in the beginning of his time. At the time, an actor was simply supposed to be familiar so that people knew what type of character he or she was portraying, but Stanislavski did not believe in this. He thought that believability was the key. To do this, he devised a system or “the method”.
The main part of the system was “emotion memory”, recalling a time when you, the actor, felt the same emotion, be it fear, anger, sadness, happiness, excitement, and to try and bring that behaviour into the character. This is what Stanislavski began to work on later: how to integrate actions and movements from your own experiences into the acting.
Stanislavski allowed actors more freedom in the role, but it demanded more awareness of things like the subtext: the real meaning or emotion behind the text spoken by the actor.
"Constantin Stanislavsky." PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. PBS. Web. 20 Jan.
2011.<http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/stanislavsky_c.html>.


   

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Stanislavski

Konstantin Stanislavski was born in 1863 in Moscow. Already at the age of seven he started acting. Stanislavski was to become the creator of naturalism. He created his own theatre, Moscow Art Theatre when he was twenty-five. He put on plays mainly by Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorki, two Russian writers. 
Stanislavski did not like contemporary theatre. He believed that it was chaotic, with no structure. He believed that actors were not trained properly and rehearsals were not good enough. He disliked the “farce comedies” that were theatre at the time. He also believed that, unlike theatre of the time, costumes and props needed to planned and suited to the play.
Stanislavski believed that the key to portraying a character properly was for the actor to imagine a situation where they had felt the emotion that the character was feeling and to portray that.  This is called emotion memory.
Stanislavski created a three-part system. Firstly, the actor must get used to the role they are given, and explore what the character would do through thinking about the actor themselves would do. The second part is about using body and voice to portray a character. The third part is about applying the concepts to specific roles.
Stanislavski, especially later in his career, believed greatly physical movements. He wanted actors to be in character most of rehearsal as well as while acting. He wanted the actors to develop a believable character.
Stanislavski came up with a concept “Magic If”, in which an actor must think about what they would do in a situation if they were their character, considering the context of the play or the “given truth” of where when ect the character is. To create the character, actors also had to come up the biography of the character to make the character seem more real and to better understand what the character would do. The aim was to believable, because otherwise the audience would not believe it.
To help actors be more relaxed on stage, Stanislavski developed what is know as circles of attention. The actor first focuses on one other actor or prop as well as himself. Then they would focus on a larger circle, then a larger until their the whole stage is covered. The actors, while practicing must create a communion between the other characters to be able to convey the relationship between the two characters. Dialogues were always practiced with the other character.
Each actor had to develop the right way and speed that a line is to be delivered and practice it. Stanislavski also told the actors to dived the play into units, each unit having a specific purpose, and once achieved, it ended. Through this the actors knew what they wanted to happen- whether they wanted to achieve the aim or to prevent it. The super objective was the main goal of the whole play. Each actor had to know their character’s feelings towards the super-objective.
"Konstantin Stanislavski and Method Acting." BBC - H2g2. BBC, 1 Dec. 2005. Web.
15 Jan. 2011. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A5133151>.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Reflection of Performance

Today in class we each performed our One Hander’s. I believe that my performance was about as good as I could have hoped for. I was rather relaxed, which allowed me to think clearly of what I was doing, so I was able to everything, as I had planned. This is important, as I had to remember to at times freeze and show my expressions and gestures. Therefore, overall I think that it went well.
    Through my body language I showed first the anger, by being tense and purposeful but then the frustration and anguish, by being lose and unclear in some of my movements, as well as almost crying. This fits in with Grotowski’s philosophy of the actor being the centre of a piece- they one who brings the scene alive. This is also reinforced by the fact that I had no props or special costumes, make-up or sets.
    My voice use was rather articulated I think. However, I might have used volume a little more, as I feel that I didn’t speak extremely loudly. However, on the other hand, this suits with the woman’s depressed and anguished feeling. However, I was able to use my voice in conveying anger in the beginning by using enunciation, and a slower tempo, and the anguish in the end talking with a slow pace and using a lot of breath as well.
    Overall, I believe that this unit went well and that I became more conscious about how I can use myself- by body and voice- to enhance a performance, to build a character and to bring out emotion. This is something that I was not fully aware of at the beginning and the concept of physical theatre, using only your body to convey messages, like DV8 seemed a little strange and was not something I was used to. 
I also learned a lot about how to apply techniques into a performance. It was quite a challenge with Grotowski as he did not have too many definite techniques that could be used, however I did get better at it. By looking at a philosophy of a practitioner and seeing what their most important messages are, you know what to focus on. If the practitioner uses specific techniques then you can try to incorporate it into the performance. However, it mainly is about looking at what is key and important to the practitioner, and applying those same ideas into your performance. For instance Grotowski believed in “Poor theatre,” which means simple theatre, with the actor as the centre of the performance. So, then if you were to use his ideas, you would not use special costumes, lighting, make-up and such but would create a performance explains even props. 

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Final research for Dramaturgical paper

When practicing for a play, Grotowski liked actors to be in simple clothed, and little attention was put into lighting, props and such. For the audience, he did pay little attention to them, but they did not occupy primary importance.
"Biography of Jerzy Grotowski." The Jason Bennett Actor's Workshop. JBActors, 2010. Web. 16 Nov. 2010. <http://www.jbactors.com/actingreading/actingteacherbiographies/jerzygrotowski.html>.

Grotowski thought that only what was on stage in the start of the show should be used during for the performance.
The plastiques: movement of heads, elbows, wrists, hips, chest, torso and other parts of the body
Facial masks: Grotowski worked with the actors to create a “mask “ that reflected the sentiments of the character
     
corporels: exercises for the spine and the flexibility of body to liberate the actor in the acting space.
Grotowski urged actors to utilize air when speaking. Voice was extremely important in bringing out the physical and mentall capabilities, according to Grotowski.
Grotowski encouraged the actors to breathe when they required it: not to save breaths. He believed that it helped their voice come out better, as well as breathing.
Grotowski’s main aim was to test the connection between the actors and the audience with each play.
There are not many specific practices of the Laboratory theatre that are specific to them, as Grotowski did not believe in specifying to the outer world what sort of practices he did, as he did not want to say that a specific training was the right one to train actors.
Grotowski handout.