Acting #1

About:

Konstantin Stanislavski was a well-known Actor, Director and Practitioner throughout the Theatre industry, with his unique take on theatre he became one of the most popular Practitioners in theatre history. Born in Moscow on the 17th of January 1863, Stanislavski always dreamed of becoming a Stage Actor, and at some point hopefully a Director also (Going against his parents wishes), because of this he found himself struggling to make his way in the acting world, usually playing below his level. Stanislavski was very critical of his own acting, usually writing pages of notes on what he believed he could improve on when acting, by doing this stanislavski tried many different methods to help himself step into the role and give a more 'accurate' portrayal of the character he was aiming to represent. One of his earliest attempts was when he used to make his own stereotyped character and go out in public and portray them the way he believes they'd be, this was unsuccesful however as he'd soon abandon this technique.

Technique:

The Magic IF:

The Magic IF is a technique that requires a lot of improvisation, in this technique an actor will play their given character in a variety of different scenes, sometimes being a polar opposite to the original source material they derive from, this is to help actors feel more like their characters and get into their mindsets. 'What If' is probably the strongest question in the acting world, especially when it comes to characterisation, I say this because when a writer is creating their characters, the constant question of 'What if this character did this?' or 'What if I put these characters here?' is vital in making a good story as it shows the writer has a great idea of the characters intentions and overall goal. The same also goes for the actors interpreting the characters they are given, while on stage an actor will often try different portrayals of the same emotion or different ways in which they communicate with other actors on stage, they would be also asking 'What if I reacted a bit more exaggerated?' or 'What if I gave more attention to this character?', it shows the actors being in touch with the person they are aiming to portray. This technique however is an even bigger 'What If', if you have a group of characters from 'A Midsummer's Night Dream', mostly normal shakespearian characters with normal shakespearian lives, and if you put them in a more modern scenario such as a road trip or a trip to a theme park, the actors playing those characters would have to interpret and ask themselves how they would be in this scenario.

Emotion Memory:

Stanislavski found a technique that requires 'emotion memory', this is where the actor pulls, and extracts a memory from their personal experiences to help show a certain emotion on stage. For example, in 'A Midsummer's Night Dream' There is a scene where the character 'Bottom', gets transformed into a donkey by the mischievous fairy called 'Puck', when Bottom returns, his fellow actors show clear panic in reaction to his new form, this leads to them running off-stage leaving Bottom confused, if Stanislavski's method is used effectively, the actors would have pulled a memory from their own lives which includes distress as their base emotion, which in-turn they integrate into this scene and therefore, their characters. This technique is still used today in all aspects of acting, the best example of this is when some actors are required to 'cry on cue', with enough practice any actor can shed tears on command if asked to by their director, one of the most commonly used techniques for this is Stanislavski's emotion memory. While useful, an actor should be careful when using this technique and shouldn't overdo it, this is to avoid any health risks caused by certain emotions.

Super-Objective:

Everyone has a goal in life, something they want to achieve before their time is up, it's what makes everyone human, this is what Stanislavski recognised, interpreted and condensed into a performance technique to get into the mindset of the character an actor was about to play. A super objective is a characters overall goal before the end of the performance, this can be vital to just a few characters or even the overall plot. Stanislavski's concept was about the actor analysing and realising their characters true intentions and using that to help them get into the mindset of the character and to get a more accurate portrayal of said character. There are hundreds of examples of super objectives in theatre ranging from obvious to the more cryptic, an example of this is in the shakespearian play of 'Macbeth', the main character of the same name's aspirations are quite clear from the beginning. Macbeth was informed that he'd be the next king which leads him to get power-hungry, killing the current monarch and taking the throne.

About:

In the 20th century, no practitioner was as well known as Bertolt Brecht (This was his performance name). Born in Augsburg, Bavaria on the 10th of February 1898, Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht always had a passion for the performing arts, his first notable impact to the performing arts industry was as a professional critic, he had his own unique vision in how to effectively produce theatre, which he'd soon implement after the First World War, when writing plays such as 'The Three Penny Opera', Brecht found his own style when it comes to acting and portraying emotion in front of an audience, this was implemented purely in physical movements, as he believed it was the most effective method of getting his intentions and opinions across to an audience. He also was the sole inventor of 'Epic Theatre', epic theatre is a form of theatre that aims further away from emotionally driven characters, and more into the political messages the writer aims to portray. Due to his political messages about the rise of Adolf Hitler, brecht's plays were banned in Germany, alongside this his plays made him an enemy to the socialists as it went against their beliefs, eventually leading to his own exile to Denmark, then shortly after Finland.

Technique:

Narrative Interruptions:

Before Brecht, breaking the fourth wall was unheard of when it comes to theatre work, this was viewed as an unprofessional method in the performing arts world. Brecht however, chose to utilise this as a way to bring his true intentions to the performances. The belief of encapsulating the audience into the world of the show wasn't Brechts intent, he broke the fourth wall to remind the audience of what he believes are the quintacential political issues in his current society. While its not necessarily utilised from its original purpose, instead, a few directors and playwrights have chosen to use this and break the fourth wall to spread awareness and show opinions, for example, me and my previous year group went to see a musical of 'Titanic', while the whole story stayed relatively close to Stanislavsky's technique, nearer the end after the climax of the story all the cast came to the front of the stage and shared messages and stories of the real life passengers that were aboard the titanic when it sank, it followed a very Brecht theme by pulling the audience out of the story and instead spreading real life awareness for what happened. Another use of fourth wall breaks are very commonly found in comedic performances, this is to either help push the comedic aspect or for an actor to interact with the audience by making them feel apart of the show. While not necessarily the same as what Brecht intended, it still follows the same principles by bringing the audience out the of the characters world temporarily to get them involved. A good example of this is when my year and I did a performance of 'A Midsummer's Night Dream', in the final performance we came up with the creative decision to implement audience interaction by giving one of them a small calendar, to co-inside with one of the character 'Bottoms' lines, this being 'A Calendar... A Calendar', the context of this line is when the crew are all trying to find the right night where the moon will brightly shine for their performance, in which Bottom will come up the idea to ask for a calendar by interacting with the audience. While this does pull the audience out of the immersion it also adds a more personal aspect in which the Actors can interact with them.

Music & Songs:

Before Brecht's theatre prime, he got to know famous composer 'Kurt Weill', together they came up with the concept of portraying messages through song instead of just through script. It was also a way put across his ideas for performances. Similar to 'Breaking the Fourth Wall', while this technique isnt necessarily used the same way today as it was in Brechts original intention, directors and screenwrites have reinvented this technique to portray their own speicific ideals, this isn't musical theatre either as that is its own different style of theatre. A few stage performances have musical segments involved to help move on a scene or as a way, like in brecht's era, portray a message. There are plenty of good examples of this, but the one I'm going to choose is in mine and my peers's company show of 'A Midsummer's Night Dream', where there are two parts that involve either singing or choreography with music, the first is when the character 'Bottom' sings to himself in the forest after witnessing his peers run away from him after being turned into a donkey, while singing this it gets the attention of the love-struck character of 'Titania', which then proceeds to have a rather physical night with each other, while this isnt the same way Brecht planned. It was a way to move forward and bring a new character to develop the story.

Parody:

The idea of parodying recent events is what Brecht thrived on in his time, especially considering the time he was alive (This being the rise of Hitler), political parodies were probably the most effective way to get one's public opinions out in the open, Brecht recognised this and took his shot at writing political pieces based on Hitlers rise to power, while this was a very popular form of theatre which still holds to this day, the specific parodies Brecht was making on the other hand ended up being the primary reason for him being exiled from germany. With the up and coming 'Socialist Party', they took offense to the majority of his performances and were one of the leading causes of him leaving his home country. In modern day theatre, parodies have become their very own art form, from direct parodies to very subtle ones, they are all out there, while not a live performance, a film me and a few peers made not long ago were exactly parodies of modern and popular films, these being 'Titanic' 'The Breakfast Club' and 'Mean Girls'

A Midsummer's Night Dream

The Character (Nick Bottom):

In the original version of 'A Midsummer's Night Dream', Nick Bottom is played off as the comic relief character by the way he talks, acts and interacts with the world and the people around him, in our shortened version this remains all the same and on top of this, the main focus of our shortened version is the group of actors he works with. To portray this character myself, I use two primary acting methods/techniques to help me succesfully portray this ambitous and cocky character. The first technique I used was 'Stanislavsky's Technique: Emotion Memory'. While this took me a while to implement, This technique involves using a previous emotion and implementing it into the scene we are about to do. While I don't have many emotions that relate to who bottom is as a character, I instead used memory of others who have been similar, I've been able to extract and emphasise the people I have gotten the emotional state from. One of the characters I took subconsciously took inspiration from was from the film 'Paddington 2', this character being 'Phoenix Buchanan', while I wasn't fully aware this is where some inspiration came from, not long after finishing the final performance it dawned on me thats where some of it came from, I have a very fond memory of watching that film with my mum, in which she loved the character and the way 'Hugh Grant' portrayed him, I remembered that and it helped me fuel the character of Bottom quite strongly, influencing some of the vocal aspects for the character.

The other technique that was used was one that I was already fairly familiar with, having previously used it in an escape room project, this being 'Laban Technique', while you can view a more in-depth description HERE!, to summarise it the technique of Laban is where you have seven levels to a character, also referred to as the seven levels of tension, with each level representing a different way to play the character, from one being a very relaxed in the body movements and seven being very stiff movements, while in rehearsals I found myself realising that the character of Bottom was number two, also reffered to as the 'Relaxed' character type. I found out that was the most common number I kept bringing to my character to bring him to life.

As I said prior, the voice I managed to get inspiration from 'Hugh Grant' and his character 'Phoenix Buchanan' from 'Paddington 2', alongside this I also wanted a very stereotypical posh english accent to throw onto the character, in a sense I wanted to do a similar thing to 'Brecht' where I parody the more stereotypical upper class archetype. Which in turn helped with the way I delivered my lines, the only struggle however, was the speed in which I pronounced my words. This in turn I managed to train out of me luckily for the final performance in front of a full audience.

What I can do to improve:

When it comes to my character portrayal, while I can safely say that I am impressed with what I had accomplished. There are a few things I believe I could've improved on before the final performance. While I believe I am pretty good at improv I found it more of a struggle to adapt to the older language that 'A Midsummer's Night Dream' has due to the time period in which it was written, while performing. To sum up what I have to improve on, I would have to say my adaptation skills to the specific time periods that projects are set in. What I will do in the future to improve this is do more behind the scenes research into the time period and period plays around the time, studying how other actors perform and adapt to the language they are using.

Another thing I could definitely improve on is maintaining physicality, while I believe I did a good job on my movements I struggled a lot more when I wasn't talking and moving around, I found myself pacing quite alot which isn't necessarily 'Bottoms' character, I believed I did it while trying to focus on when my lines are. The main area of improvement I will try to pick up on is mainly relaxing when in front of a fairly big audience, I will do this by looking up relaxation techniques which are subtle, so I can use it on stage if needed.

Script Analysis:

The Original Script

In the original play of 'A Midsummer's Night Dream' it is estimated to be around two hours, as a group for practicality and cast limitation we agreed to shorten it greatly to make it a more compressed and compact story, alongisde this we chose to make it shorter to mainly bring a light on the comedy for public to watch. This ended up being the best of both worlds purely because as the cast we could succesfully perform the show in a humid tent and have enough time to cool off, also for the audience because they didn't also have to sit in a humid tent for a two hour long performance. In the end it was the creative decision also to keep enough time in to keep public interest, which inturn ended up being a success as a few people returned for each performance, also bringing more people too. It also helped professionally too, I say this because of budget limitations, we managed to get all we needed for the scenes we did, this and costumes also, me and my peers were all very resourceful with what we had in which we managed to bring a bring of college materials, and ones from home to combine them and make an accurate portrayal of the characters we were aiming to bring to life. All of us had our own parts of the show in which everyone did a phenomenal job, with the shortened script and the time we had to make the performance, we had plenty of time to make the characters our own and make necessary changes for a professional and smooth running show. Thanks to Charlotte Rich analysing and cutting down the script, the show wouldn't have been what it was, below is the logo that was drawn by our class artist Misty Coates!

Also below is the programme for the show, including everyone and their on-stage and off-stage roles

The Rehearsals

Warm-Ups