ACTING 1

Stanislavsky Techniques

Stanislavski’s acting methods are widely known and popularised throughout acting studies and training, many of these works included different techniques which l will be describing down below:

The Magic 'If'

Possibly one of the most commonly known Stanislavsky techniques is the Magic ‘If’. This technique involves putting yourself in another one’s shoes in order to acknowledge and understand more clearly how the character you’re portraying would react in various situations, this enables you to delve deeper into how your character behaves and your emotional portrayal whether that may be even as simple as going on a road trip, travelling to another country or someone dying. The Magic ‘If’ revolves around improvising a small scene with other actors and asking yourself ‘If’ questions like - What if someone had betrayed me? What if my character had their past brought up and how would they react? What if I portrayed my character in a more serious or unserious way? These questions can lead you to further develop your characterisation or even initiate initial ideas you may have upon reading about the character. As you progress further with more improvisation, you may even recognise your character’s motivation overall in the story, for example, what is the true purpose of their story and what do they gain from this? 

More questions include: 

• Who am I?

• Where am I?

• When is it?

• What do I want?

• Why do I want it?

• How will I get it?

• What do I need to overcome?

I used this technique more often when doing the warm-up of hot-seating and blocking through the scenes; doing this by asking myself the question ‘What if I reacted to this scene more seriously?’ but then asking myself when rehearsing the scene once again, ‘What if I reacted more comedically?’. By doing this, I was able to analyse the scene and how my character’s reaction affected the audience.

Chekhov Techniques - Connecting feeling with movements

• Improvisation: Truthfully, this next technique is one that my group has done without even realising, which is the power of improvisation. The Chekhov technique is when a group of actors improv a scene whether that may be with verbal or nonverbal - a scene we did similarly to this technique was our small scene where all our characters went to the dentist (Sam Gwilliam/Bottom) voiced the Dentist and (Jay Greening/ Oberon) played the receptionist, this helped us with our quick thinking and how we would react in these random situations which is shown alongside the subtext details. 

• Expression: By maintaining a clear head and concentrating, Chekhov’s technique was introduced to actor in order for them to believe that a technique like Stanislavsky’s of ‘Emotion Memory’ could enable them to perform an act which could be discerned by the audience, and evoke an emotion/feeling in the person watching. Simply put, Chekhov's technique is to believe in what you say, saying it so often that it starts to come from your mind. 

• Radiating: Chekhov’s technique mainly involved the connection between emotions and the way you move, this radiation technique is allowing your feelings to come across through your physical actions and provoke the audience in an emotional aspect through energetic waves. 

• Incorporation: Since in Chekhov’s technique, emotion is tied to our physical movement, we have to ‘incorporate’ our vision and past experiences  into the emotions and feelings we are trying to portray through movement. 

Annotations of A Midsummers Nights Dream - breakdown, context

Rehearsals and Personal Notes (Application of Techniques)

Character Details and Techniques Used

To more accurately portray my character, Robin Starveling as The Wall, I ultimately used Jacques Lecoq’s method of his seven levels of tension. I mainly focused on the seventh level (tragic), where the body is tense and the body doesn’t move or speak especially when Pyramus (Sam Gwilliam) and Thisbe (Ryan Thornton) are talking and overall interacting in between my legs. However, before that while everyone leaves and it’s only me left on stage, I turn to the sixth level of tension (passionate), which is where a lot of tension is built up inside the body and the character displays a difficulty in moving. I decided to introduce this technique due to the comedic effect of The Wall and what it represents in the play Peter Quince wrote. Whilst rehearsing scene 5, where The Wall is introduced, I initially maintained a stuck position where my arms were stuck to my side, however the overall tension on my body was focused on arms whereas the rest of my body was relaxed. During the later stages of our rehearsals, I decided to research the character of Robin Starveling and his overall behaviour during the play - context and behavioural aspects. In conclusion, I realised that my character was rather shy on stage and struggled with stage fright. With this evolution in my character development, I decided to implement Jacques Lecoq’s technique of his seven levels of tension and create tension through the body which maintains a stiffness. 

Similarly, another aspect of my research was Snout's delivery. I found it to be overly serious and nervous on stage, even causing him to be nervous with his lines. This character tackled one of the things that I struggle with mostly, which is comedic effect and timing, and the ability to create a highlight to the audience which evokes laughter. To improve my character, I also focused on a vocal aspect, to do this I created a sense of tension in my voice. I did this by forcing my voice to be rather monotone and allow awkward yet small pauses between the phrases in my lines. Comparatively, I said my lines with a tone of seriousness and nervousness at the same time which seemed to work since the audience laughed which I was rather proud of.

Script Context and Changes - Advantages included

Our small and modernised version of the ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, was a comedic play written by Shakespeare. A quick summary of the entire play involves the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta, a dispute between Athenian lovers and a play performed by inexperienced actors just before the wedding. As a class, we decided to cut it to our own version of it - ‘A Mini-Summer Night’s Dream’, which mainly focused on the rehearsal and performance of the six actors and the difficulties behind the fairies' troubles. Our main reason for cutting down the performance was simply because we wanted to entertain the audience with the main funny plot points of the play while also maintaining a sense of order and story to follow on. Similarly, our play was set to be performed inside a tent outside in the summer which meant that the weather conditions would be stuffy and we would understand if the audience didn’t feel willing to sit in the hot weather for the estimated two and a half hours. Another point we also had to keep in mind was our audience and who most likely would be attending and watching our play. We concluded that it would most likely be other students which we felt may not appreciate and even have difficulty understanding the Olden English language and even Shakespeare’s made up words, same as members of staff that may come and support. 

In other regards, we have to keep in mind the amount of cast needed for the entire play, in comparison to our simplified version of thirty minutes. Similarly, we also had to keep in mind the overall budget of the play, while looking for our own clothes and the college’s, we had to keep in mind that we would have a lot of difficulty gathering so many props and designing the set needed for the entire play as well as managing it, in the tent with the audience surrounding us as we decided to do the play in the round - limited space would be our biggest concern. Another advantage of shortening the play to thirty minutes was the fact that, we would be able to perform it more often and overall attract a larger number of audience. 

In the long-term, I was more than satisfied with changes to the script, since we also had more time to learn lines while equally focusing on the comedic moments of the play like scene five (the play within a play), and really milk out the parts which would evoke laughter. In addition, we would have more time to perfect our character by analysing the behaviour and relationship between the characters, the vocal aspect and the possibilities we had for the physical movements. On another aspect, in the second scene during the transformation of Bottom (into a donkey), we felt we had more creative freedom due to the more time we had to perfect it and ensure that the timing was correct, and even another aspect we had to work on the working this play ‘in the round’, ensuring that we were consistently facing the audience while making it look natural. 

The final and equally important benefit we gained was our freedom and not rushed ability to do backstage work. For example, the list of people and their jobs includes: Charlotte with marketing (she created an Instagram page to promote the play), Misty drew the logo (looks more professional), Sam created the program (audience knows whose character is whose), Basia and Hollyann did the poster (makes it obvious where the play is being held), Jay and Charlotte managed the costumes and props (ensuring everyone had they needed), Josh did the pyrotechnic and lights (making sure it looks effective but in a same manner) and finally I created the final dance and bows which will be shown below the rehearsals and final-ish performance:

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