27th September - 1st October 2010 (Week 4)

Drama


Now that I have acquired my monologue material from Like Dreaming, Backwards by Kellie Powell, I have begun work in exploring the piece (below).

When I first read the material, I loved how beautifully and emotionally it was written. I really shared a connection with the piece, however, I found it quite difficult to first perform as I wasn't sure exactly how to go about it. I felt lots of empathy for the character of Nell who, from this monologue, is clearly in despair with no hope of getting over her depression. I want to make sure that this empathy is what the audience feels when I perform the monologue, as I believe that that is what Powell indented them to feel when she wrote it. Nell is a very intelligent character, but has a very negative outlook on life, and I find this very interesting.




To help with breaking the dialogue down, we looked at dynamics of language, phrasing, clarity and diction and units.
Units create a dynamic shift in the language each time an emotional or thought process changes. This can be represented by phrasing and be made clear through clarity and diction. Units are very subjective and so each person will interpret a script differently.
We used a section of the script Pump Girl by Abbie Spallon to explore these techniques.

The brackets indicate each separate unit. By breaking down the thought process of a character you can understand how they would say each line and what they are thinking and feeling during each line. 


To then break each unit down, we used stresses, bends and phrasing. Stresses and bends add texture and colour to the delivery of lines whilst phrasing helps to break up the dialogue and add appropriate breaths or pauses.

I found that using this technique with Like Dreaming, Backwards helped to lift the monologue out of a cold read and into a performance with much more emotion and complexity.


I have found it very beneficial to lay the ground work of objectives, units, character and other techniques before acting. It has made me consider my actions when performing and has helped me to understand why characters say and do certain things. I feel like I now have a deeper understanding of how to work with a script, which I can only benefit from in performance.


Through reading Like Dreaming, Backwards several times I have noticed a crucial detail that I previously did not pick up on. As the other characters in the play are figments of Nell's imagination and don't say anything that she doesn't already know, all the other characters thoughts about Nell must be what Nell thinks about herself. The more I read the play, the more this quite confusing idea makes sense. It adds an interesting complexity to the play and allows me to understand why Nell is so depressed as a character.


It is important that we set the conditions before we act. If we cannot see  or feel where we are in a scene, then the audience will not be able to see or feel it either and the performance will lack truth.


Antonin Artaud and Semiotics (the 'Sign')


Antonin Artaud was a french playwright, actor and director who believed that theatre should effect the audience emotionally as much as possible. He used heavy imagery and signs in his work to do this.


To explore semiotics and how they are used we did an exercise where a chair was placed in different positions on a stage. We saw that with each position a new sign and emotion was created and we as the audience read that emotion.


For example, when the chair was upright, facing the audience, central, we felt it to be quite a friendly and inviting setting and made us ask why the chair was there and who was going to sit in it.
When the chair changed position to down-stage but still central, turned over so that the legs stuck out at the audience, we could sense an angry emotion and the space looked a lot more violent and uninviting. It left us wanting to know why the chair was turned over and what had happened previously to leave the space in such a way.


This showed us how just the simple manoeuvring of a chair can change the way a space speaks and how it changes the audience's questions of purpose and reason.


We were then given a sheet which would help us evaluate our choice of space in the future:

Overall, the workshop made me realise how effective the use of space, body and time is on an audience. I have realised that things that I would never have previously considered make a huge impact.

20th - 24th September 2010 (Week 3)

Drama


This week we started looking for material for an assessed monologue performance. We were to find three plays which we believed would have a suitable monologue for us to use, read them over and over and choose which one we thought we could perform to the best of our ability. It was very important to read the play over and over again because there is no way that one can take in every piece of information from the work after just one read. Reading the play many times gives you a deeper knowledge and understanding of the work and allows you to pick up details which you have have missed or misunderstood in previous readings. With this excellent understanding of a play, it is made much easier to challenge a character and their monologue.
       It is important to invest money in plays, not just to expand a personal knowledge of theatre and writing, but to support the industry, discover new writers and explore different genres of theatre. By reading three plays before selecting the most suitable, you give yourself a greater choice of characters and monologues. You are also able to compare the pieces, as opposed to having just one play and not knowing whether another would have a more suitable monologue that would be a better choice to perform. Reading plays is essential to the development of an actor because the more you can read, the more experience with theatre you can give yourself.

We used the website doollee.com to look for writers and plays that we thought would be most appropriate for us. Doollee is an online database of playwrights and theatre plays which allowed us to search through thousands of different works. Some of the plays were not available to buy, but the contact details of the writer were listed on the site. As actors, it is good practise to contact writers as you can find brand new plays and pieces that nobody else has seen before, collaborate with writers to find a piece perfectly suited to you and build up a list of contacts that you enjoy working with and respect the work of.



Looking through Doollee, I found three plays which I believed would be of use to me:

That Face by Polly Stenham, Noughts & Crosses adapted from the novel by Malorie Blackman by Dominic Cooke and Disco Pigs by Enda Walsh

However, although these were enjoyable to read, none had suitable material in the form of a monologue which I could use. On further reading I found a play called Like Dreaming, Backwards by Kellie Powell. I believe that a monologue I have chosen from this play will be appropriate for me and that with work I will be able to perform this to the best of my ability for the assessment.

Dance & Vocals

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

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