Stanislavski's techniques

Examples of Stanislavski's techniques

Given Circumstances
The given circumstances are the information about the character that you start off with and the play as a whole. For example, a key way to get in to character is to question yourself, questions such as: How old is the character? What’s their situation in the play and in relation to the other characters? Are there any notes provided about the play and its characters? In addition actors must be able to have the ability to think about the life of the character off stage and what other character's say about them is a key part of character development; relationships between characters is also considered.

Emotional Memory
Emotional memory is when the actor finds a real past experience where they felt a similar emotion to that demanded by the role they are playing. They then ‘borrow’ those feelings to bring the role to life. This gives the actor a more convincing part to their role and in addition helps them have a clearer understanding of what the character is going through. This can also be related to the fact that the actor has a relationship with the character or that part of the actor lives inside the character.

Subtexts
The script of a play is called the text. The subtext is the actual meaning and motivation behind the lines that are spoken and the actions taken. For example, saying “I love you” is just a text however, it can have many different meanings. In addition, if an actor were to be angry, that could be expressed through kicking a chair for one instant or throwing an object.

Magic if
The magic if is a technique where the actor puts themselves into the character’s situation. The actor should ask themselves a question such as 'What would I do if I was in this situation?' and the character would answer it.

Objectives
An objective is the reason for our actions. The character should ask themselves ‘What are we trying to achieve?’ in the play or a scene; there can be more than one objective for a character. In addition objectives can change throughout two pieces of dialogues in one scene depending on the event and so on.

Rehearsals

As we have made our own interpretations so far in our groups we had to put the whole thing together, in result we decided to read the whole piece section by section. 

After reading the whole piece a couple of times, we had to get used to stage directions and balancing the stage. We played a game to get to stage directions as quick as we could in order to strengthen our knowledge on where to go. As Medea had two main characters from our interpretations, which were Medea and the Chorus.

The whole class was split in two, one for each character and we had to come up with an abstract form to portray our sections; my group was Medea. For example, my group had picked out key terms from each section of our part. In addition we had also come up with the idea that the protagonist had to always balance the stage from the rest of our group which acted as a small chorus. As one person was speaking at a time, that was the protagonist of that section.

After both of our groups had taken the time to come up with ideas, both groups combined and we had edited parts that needed tweaking, for example transitions and positions on stage.

Medea

We have been introduced to a new type of text that is quite flexible to what we normally in a script. The first time we had been introduced to Medea, we had to read sections we had been given in groups and split those sections in our own form. From my group's understanding, we were speaking in Medea's perspective.

After this we had read through the whole script and painted a picture that Medea sounded quite vile and evil as everyone around her saw her as a monster. She had the confidence to kill others if they got close which in turn gave us our interpretations on how we could represent her character through our sections. We had then decided to try to act the scene from our initial interpretations and to help us understand the text more.

Lion King

On the 18^th of November, the Musical theatre classes, Year 1, 2 and the Year 1 drama class went to see the Lion King Performance at the Lyceum Theatre. The Lion King is based on the Disney movie which is famous for its ability to connect all ages and that you are never too old to forget this movie.

Having seen the Lion King once before, I had expected the musical to be electrifying and extravagant. However, at the very beginning of the performance, Rafiki – the baboon – was not as powerful as I had remembered. In addition to this, although I had enjoyed re-living my childhood memories, especially with the music; the performance overall was not as good as I had seen in Year 4. In other words, it was not able to top the first time I had experienced the musical. I personally thought that the characters Timon and Pumba kept the connection with the audience alive as they had related with the generation. Furthermore Zazu had used the song ‘Let it Go’, which is known by many due to the movie ‘Frozen’, which suggests that the play is always changing and can always adapt to current events.

The use of the props was absolutely incredible and was as good as I remember. The use of the Mufasa face was quite creative as in the after show interview with the actors and puppet designer, it was said that there were magnets on the 9-piece face. This prop had impressed me due to the fact that it was very creative and very abstract.

After the show, we were lucky enough to have a talk with the characters Nala and Zazu which revealed the reality of musicals is. The fact that they had to perform 8 times a week is let alone amazing itself as it portrayed that they were very passionate about their career and were willing to keep going for years on end. In addition, it was said that the audition process is tougher than you think and no matter how many rejections you have the industry, according to the actor of Zazu is always take a chance or opportunity.

In the Heights

In the heights is a new play that has hit the Kings Cross Theatre in London and in October, the musical theatre and drama classes were lucky enough to see it. Based in Washington, In the Heights is based on Usnavi, a guy with a dream and a girl who he likes but does not have the confidence to talk to. With extravagent dance moves and cultural fever, this musical will certainly leave you amazed.

I have never heard of the musical before but by far this musical is at the top of the others I have seen before. The energy in the actors is outstanding as their ability to stay consistent with their singing, dancing and acting merged in to one is absolutely incredible. Personally I love musicals but this one certainly takes the cake. I particular enjoyed the fact that culture was a part of this performance as no matter who you are culture creates a community which links everyone together no matter who you are.

My favourite part of the whole musical was the blackout as during this section, there were many conflicts between the characters. However when disaster strikes, everyone comes together to help find one another as you could almost say that they lost their loved ones in the conflict amongst themselves.

After this experience, I would definately recommend this musical to anyone who has not been introduced to a one before as seeing this will define the what beauty musicals hold.

Constantin Stanislavski

Konstantin Sergeievich Stanislavski was a Russian actor and theatre director and was born on the 17 January 1863 and died on the 7 August 1938. The eponymous Stanislavski method, or simply "method acting", has had a pervasive influence, especially in the period after World War II. Stanislavski treated theatre-making as a serious endeavour requiring dedication, discipline and integrity. Throughout his life, he subjected his own acting to a process of rigorous artistic self-analysis and reflection. His development of a theorized praxis—in which practice is used as a mode of inquiry and theory as a catalyst for creative development—identifies him as one of the great modern theatre practitioners.

Stanislavski's work was as important to the development of socialist realism in the Soviet Union as it was to that of psychological realism in the United States. It draws on a wide range of influences and ideas, including his study of the modernist and avant-garde developments of his time (naturalism, symbolism and Meyerhold's constructivism), Russian formalism, Yoga, Pavlovian behavioural psychology, James-Lange (via Ribot) psychophysiology and the aesthetics of Pushkin, Gogol, and Tolstoy. He described his approach as 'spiritual Realism'. Stanislavski wrote several works, including An Actor Prepares, An Actor's Work on a Role, and his autobiography, My Life in Art.

Stanislavski grew up in one of the richest families in Russia, the Alekseyevs.  He was born Constantin Sergeyevich Alexeyev—"Stanislavski" was a stage name that he adopted in 1884 in order to keep his performance activities secret from his parents. The prospect of becoming an actor was taboo fro someone of his social class; actors had an even lower social status in Russia that un the rest of Europe, having only recently been serfs and the property of the nobility. The Alexeyevs were a prosperous, bourgeois family, whose factories manufactured gold and silver braiding for military decorations and uniforms. Until the Russian revolution in 1917, Stanislavski often used his inherited wealth to fund his theatrical experiments in acting and directing. His family’s discouragement meant that he appeared only as an amateur onstage and as a director until he was thirty-three.

Increasingly interested in "living the part," Stanislavski experimented with the ability to maintain a characterization in real life, disguising himself as a tramp or drunk and visiting the railway station, or disguising himself as a fortune-telling gypsy; he extended the experiment to the rest of the cast of a short comedy in which he performed in 1883, and as late as 1900 he amused holiday-makers in Yalta by taking a walk each morning "in character". 

In 1884, he began vocal training under Fyodor Petrovich Komissarzhevsky, a professor at the Moscow Conservatory and leading tenor of the Bolshoi (and father of the famous actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya), with whom he also explored the co-ordination of voice and body.

Together they devised exercises in moving and sitting stationary "rhythmically", which anticipated Stanislavski's later use of physical rhythm when teaching his 'system' to opera singers.

Komissarzhevski provided one of the models (the other was Stanislavski himself) for the character of Tortsov in his actor's manual An Actor's Work (1938). A year later, in 1885, Stanislavski briefly studied at the Moscow Theatre School, where students were encouraged to mimic the theatrical tricks and conventions of their tutors. Disappointed by this approach, he left after little more than two weeks.

Instead, Stanislavski devoted particular attention to the performances of the Maly Theatre, the home of psychological realism in Russia. Psychological realism had been developed here by Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Shchepkin. In 1823, Pushkin had concluded that what united the diverse classical authors—Shakespeare, Racine, Corneille and Calderón—was their common concern for truth of character and situation, understood as credible behaviour in believable circumstances.

By the age of twenty-five, Stanislavski was well known as an amateur actor. He made a proposal to Fyodor Sollogub and Alexander Fedotov (a theatre director and estranged husband of Glikeriya Fedotova) to establish a society that would unite amateur and professional actors and artists. The profits from his family's factory were particularly high in 1887–1888; Stanislavski decided to use the surplus 25,000–30,000 roubles to form the Society of Art and Literature, for which he had the Ginzburg House on Tverskaya Street converted into a luxurious clubhouse with its own large stage and exhibition rooms.

Fedotov became head of the dramatic section, Komissarzhevski was the head of the operatic and musical section, while Sollogub was appointed head of the graphic arts section; the drama and opera sections each had a school. To research the curriculum of the society's drama school, Stanislavski spent the summer of 1888 studying the classes and performances of the Comédie-Française in Paris. The society's school was to offer classes in dramatic art, the history of costume, make-up, drama, Russian literature, aesthetics, fencing and dancing. The school opened on 8 October 1888 while the society itself was officially inaugurated on 3 November with a ceremony attended by Anton Chekhov. Under the auspices of the society, Stanislavski performed in plays by Molière, Schiller, Pushkin, and Ostrovsky, as well as gaining his first experiences as a director. With the guidance of Fedotov and Sollogub, Stanislavski finally abandoned the operatic conventions and theatrical clichés in his acting that he had mimicked from other actors' performances.

He also became interested in the aesthetic theories of Vissarion Belinsky. From Belinsky he took his conception of the role of the artist, on which he based a moral justification for his desire to perform that accorded with his family's sense of social responsibility and ethics. At this time Stanislavski warned in his diary.

Rehearsals

We had been introduced to a new script part of the play 'Our Country's Good' which shows the different classes between people back in the 1780's. It also arises various themes such as sexuality and punishment. My part was Captain Arthur Phillip who is considered to be intellectual, understanding and authoritative who has an obvious patience and understanding towards the convicts, especially Liz Morden.


With my group, we had been asked to discuss the objectives of our character with a brief read through of the scene. So far I had understood that Ralph, who in this scene wants to stop the play, however my character wants to convince him to go ahead. Ralph's objective is to discuss reasons why he wants to go ahead with stopping the play. We had then been asked to label every line with a particular action or emotion that would make that line unique to every other line. For example, when I say 'Are you afraid?', we had made the interpretation of the line is imitating the joker.

Induction Performance

Evaluation

After all the rehearsals and practicing, it finally came down to this final performance. Personally, I found the strengths of my particular performance with my group is that we had tried to make it our own. From the advice given from Rob and Sharon, to make the performance unique was to add originality, especially with my monologue. I decided to make my monologue in a rap style to allow the audience to relate as we were the last group to perform and at this point of the entire induction, as a group we wanted to make our performance the best we could. 

However, the weakness of our performance is that at some point we had lost the diction in our words as we rushed the scene. As a whole drama group we had done very well as we had given it our all. Furthermore, enjoying what we do is the key aspect of getting tasks done to the best of our ability. As we are all passionate about drama, it to allowed us to flow freely throughout every performance we had done and leading up to the induction we had always gave each other feedback on how to improve one another's scenes. For example, early on, one group (Tarkan, Isaiah and Zulaiha) were very good considering they had learnt their lines early on had now began to develop their scene on one hand. On the other hand, they had to work on their projection and their use of the stage due to the fact that Tarkan's character is blind. In result of this factor, as a group for feedback, we had suggested to take the scene to centre stage rather than to the far right as they may be heard better and could use the stage more rather than confining it in one place.

The Musical Theatre class were strong in the moves they were portraying in their singing piece as this got the audience excited as particular moves are ones we can all relate too. In addition, the piece was very unique in its own way. On the other hand a weakness that their piece had was that at some points the whole group were not in sync and some fell out of time with one another resulting in the piece looking dis-organised.

The Level 2  drama performances were very good as the use of sound and props were very effective due to the fact that it was clearer to the audience what the scenes were about. In addition, their projection was brilliant and in my opinion i could really feel the emotion of the characters reach the back of the theatre. They had used the space really well and had portrayed their main theme of love physically making it clear to the audience how strong it is to the characters. However, the weakness of some performances such as the opening was that some of the actors came out of character and decreased the power of the scene that was intended at the start. For example, one was talking about legalising weed but when the audience reacted, they had come out of character and this can deeply affect the moral that was originally intended to be exposed about the piece.

The music performance were outstanding in engaging the audience which links to their strengths. Furthermore, the Level 3 music group, as they were the last to perform, were giving it their all due to the fact that they were adding originality by adding raps to their songs and playing around with the piece as they went along. In addition, one singer engaged the audience by exclaiming 'clap your hands' which in result is a very good way to engage everyone in one community, even if some people did not know the type of music that was being performed. However, one weakness of some of their performances is that they kept the well known track to the way it was produced and there was no seen originality or personality seen within these performers.

Overall, all the performances were outstanding. However a key factor of the audience reaction depends on the type of performance that is taking place. For example, for a drama performance, the audience are required to be quiet so that the actors may be heard, whereas a music gig, the audience are more likely to get involved due to the fact that music closely relates to everybody and a community is built within this. However, it also depends on the type of drama and music is performed. For example, if drama performed a modern piece, due to the generation we live in, a higher percentage of the audience may have been able to relate compared to the current induction piece which was Greek Theatre. Furthermore, if the music group had performed a different style of music which the audience may not closely relate to, it may result in less engagement.