13th - 17th September 2010 (Week 2)

Drama

Lee Strasberg: The private moment, sense memory and affective memory, the method (method acting)

Lee Strasberg was an actor, director and teacher and used Constantin Stanislavski's system to create his own methods and ways of acting. Strasberg demanded complete discipline from his students as well as "great depths of psychological truthfulness". He believed that an actor should try to become a character so that they can truly believe in their role and, in turn, the audience would not question their character and the performance would be as effective as possible.

Lee Strasberg

"The human being who acts is the human being who lives. That is a terrifying circumstance. Essentially the actor acts a fiction, a dream; in life the stimuli to which we respond are always real. The actor must constantly respond to stimuli that are imaginary. And yet this must happen not only just as it happens in life, but actually more fully and more expressively. Although the actor can do things in life quite easily, when he has to do the same thing on the stage under fictitious conditions he has difficulty because he is not equipped as a human being merely to playact at imitating life. He must somehow believe. He must somehow be able to convince himself of the rightness of what he is doing in order to do things fully on the stage."

Mind Map on Lee Strasberg (Click for High Res)

Homework Notes on Lee Strasberg

As discussed in the notes above, The Private Moment was one of Lee Strasberg's methods used to train actors. As he believed that acting should merely be "being private in public", he understood that he needed to create a method that would rid actors of their inhibition and allow them to fully commit on stage. To participate in a private moment exercise, we were set the task of writing a personal letter to someone who would never actually get to read it. I decided to write my letter to a stranger on a train station platform:

To evaluate this task, we then wrote notes to self, which included comments from other people in the class.

I then made further notes on the class discussion:

As part of our exploration of Lee Strasberg we also concentrated on another one of his methods; sense/affective memory. This is the act of calling upon past memories, concentrating especially on the five senses and the detail within these, and using these to portray a character much more truthfully and justly.

The five senses are SOUND, SMELL, TOUCH, TASTE and SIGHT

To explore this, we were asked to describe how eating a sweet felt. We looked in extremely close detail at everything about the sweet and this helped us to look past the object as a plain and simple object and see it as  more complex and detailed. For example, I looked at the sound of the wrapper, the smell of the paper and the feeling of the sweet on the roof of my mouth; things I would never thought previously to explore. It allowed me to understand how sense memory works and how it can be used to trigger memories and engage emotion in performance.

Strasberg believed that concentration as well as relaxation were key to effective performance and so affective memory was a fantastic way of using both of these to realistically create an emotion or state of mind.


Affective memory is all about DETAIL IN ASSOCIATION and UNDERSTANDING HOW THE SENSES WORK.


An actor should NEVER IMITATE. As actors we should try to OPEN OUR MINDS and take each experience and use it to make our performances PERSONAL. A performance should always have a PROCESS and be thought through.

Constantin Stanislavski and The System


Constantin Stanislavki is a famous practitioner who created his own method of acting which he called 'The System'. This was a series of points which he believed would thoroughly prepare an actor for a role and truly emerce them in character.


1. Units and Objectives
A script can be split up into units and objectives.
A unit is considered as one objective for the character or a single thought process. Every time the character changes their train of thought or objective, a new unit is made.
An objective is shown through a transitive verb, directed towards another person to ensure interaction. E.G. To ignore, to seduce, to kill.
If an objective is not directed towards another person, there is no communication with others on stage, and so this becomes self indulgent acting, removing emotional bonds between characters.
By knowing the characters objectives, one can then use corresponding physical actions to achieve them.
2. Through line of Actions and the Superobjective

The superobjective is the overall objective of the work. The objectives of each character throughout the play should string together through a line of action and arrive at the superobjective or the 'final goal of every performance'.


3. Analysis of Text through Action
As an actor, this is where you analyse the action by asking your character three questions:

• What do I do?
• Why do I do it?
• How do I do it?

This helps you as an actor understand the main aims and objectives of your character and the work.

4. Truth, Belief and the ‘Magic If’
To create the illusion of reality for the end user, the actor should ask themselves "IF I were this character..." and thus be able to make strong theatrical dicisions that would appear to the audience as true, believable and real.

5. Imagination
Stanislavski wrote:

"There is no such thing as actuality on the stage. Art is a product of the imagination, as the work of a dramatist should be. The aim of the actor should be to use his technique to turn the play into a theatrical reality. In this process imagination plays by far the greatest part."

He believed that as a character is a product of a writers imagination, an actor must then use their imagination to bring that character to life. This would make the actors choice of units, objectives and physical action more interesting and creative.


6. Subtext
The subtext of any work is the unsaid meaning lying underneath the diologue, action or text. This subtext would not be spoken, but shown through body language, gesture, intonation etc. Subtext adds depth to action and lifts a work out of a one dimensional state. It involves the end user in a work more, as they find that they want to find cause for a characters behavior, thought or emotion. Subtext doesn't have to be consistent with the diologue of a work, but must always be consistent with the objective.
 

“Spectators come to the theatre to hear the subtext. They can read the text at home” - Stanislavski

7. Motivation

Motivation is the background of the character which gives an actor 'will' to perform action. Motivation is different from objectives because it looks into the past of the character, whereas objectives look forward into the action and work.

8. Concentration & Relaxation

Stanislavski believed that a good actor must have excellent concentration whilst also remaining relaxed.

9. Communion

This was the unbroken relationship between characters which would hold the focus of the end user.

10. Tempo-Rhythm

Tempo is the speed of an action or emotion and rhythm is the intensity of it. Considering these makes the action more organic and creates truthful acting.

11. The Physical Apparatus

The use of body and voice to communicate action. Stanislavski believed that an actor needed excellent clarity and posture to truly perform a work.

As part of work in class on the Stanislavski system, we discussed how relaxation was extremely important as it helps with focus and ensures a steady breathing pattern when reading heavy dialogue. We also talked about action versus emotion, which is outlined below.


We then used this system with a play that we had read. I chose to study That Face by Polly Stenham:

TEXT/WRITER: That Face by Polly Stenham

CHARACTER: Mia

OBJECTIVES: Life Objectives: To be free from her family.
                                  Play Objectives: To end her families situation.


ACTION: To belittle Izzy


STRATAGIES: To ridicule, to shock, to humiliate, to patronise


TACTICS FOR OBSTACLES: Inner Obstacles: Mia is Izzy's friend
                                                                  Outer Obstaces: Izzy is older, Izzy has a higher status


By completing this system, you find yourself becoming more and more familiar with the character. You can understand where they are trying to arrive at and thus find reason for why they say and do certain things. If you were to play the character, it would bring more truth to your role as you would truly understand why and what they were doing and saying in the scene.

Another technique we used to study character was a three column chart with the titles "What the character says about themselves", "What the character says about others" and "What other characters say about them". We also added a fourth column under the title "Fiction"; this was to list any lines where a character was lying and perhaps a subtext was being used.

Completing this gave a visual and clear look at how that character interacts with others. It was interesting to see how much dialogue was in each column as it showed a truthful view of what the character was really like, which may not have been obvious through merely reading the work. This allows you to play a more truthful role, especially concerning how the character behaves with others through their body language, vocalisation etc.




In lesson, we discussed an actors perception of the audience.
We discussed that the 'audience' should be thought as an 'end-user' as the term 'audience' is a convention which we should remove ourselves from and start to view theatre as more than just actors and audience. 
The word 'audience' denotes barier.


The end-users should experience the work with you: they read the performance.

We discussed what the audience take away from a performance. We concluded that   the factors that communicate the most information during a performance are those that are not directly spoken. Body language and vocal (how dialogue is delivered: tone, pitch, intonation, rhythm, beat, inflection etc.) are what people read when watching a performance as these can tell people a lot more about a character or story than any script can.

Drama & Vocals

We continued our progress learning Nicest Kids In Town, our ballet and jazz pieces and our various techniques. 

We learnt a lot of new vocabulary and techniques in ballet, listed below.

Barre

Ront de jambe: Round of the leg

Can be performed:

A terre: On the floor

En l’air: In the air

Fondu: To sink/melt

Battement: Is a kicking movement of the working leg

Battement tendu: A battement where the extended foot never leaves the floor

Battement glissé: A rapid battement normally taken to 2 -3 cm off the floor

Centre

Adage: A centre exercise where a series of movement are performed in a slow and graceful manner

Developpé: The working leg is pointed at the ankle (which can travel up to the knee). This leg then unfolds and is extended on the floor or in the air.

Can be performed:

Devant: To the front

Á la seconde: To second