Michael Chekhov figured that acting is all about the power of imagination. Facts on the be all and all all, realising that acting is not an academic process because 'we don't sit and talk about characters, instead we're on our feet, being the character.
He wanted actors to be fully imaginative and sensitive to emotions and impulses, being a human being in the situation rather than acting it out. He also believed that actors are creative artists and that you should never use your own experiences as an individual to bring out truth in a character although I disagree. I feel that doing this will bring more belief and relation into your character, making it clear to the audience that you've felt similar pain before.
In order to create a perfect performance he wanted his actors to be hard workers, knowing the play inside out, not knowing too much about general things so when it comes to rehearsing you'd be able to try things out and seeing if something works or doesn't work. Also by doing this he knew that the more you understood the play and the more you got the experiences of the play inside your body the realer your performance will be.
It's not about nature but about the art and part of this is understanding the composition of a whole play. (as an actor is an artist so you need to know the character as well as you know yourself, bringing the character to life, then seeing how they fit into the play. Ask yourself this question: Why has the writer put your character in the play?)
Saturday, 23 November 2013
Thursday, 7 November 2013
Are the stakes high or are they low?
Another one of Declan's quotes: "the stakes open to offer the best escape from the block" - this means all the things you have blocking you from becoming a specific character can be erased by you making sure the stakes while acting are high.
Every living moment has an element of quest - something to be lost and something needs to be won. The thing to be won is the same size as the thing to be lost.
Every living moment has an element of quest - something to be lost and something needs to be won. The thing to be won is the same size as the thing to be lost.
Tuesday, 22 October 2013
Clear indications of transformations
When watching a piece of theatre, the audience usually take pleasure with transformation between takes. One target can transform into another so that you as an actor or audience member can see the target for what it truly is. It's called Dramatic Irony when the audience knows more about a joke than the actor themselves.
Rule #1 - The target already exists and it's at a measurable distance (given circumstances)
Rule #2 - The target exists before you need it
Rule #3 - specific - What surrounds me? What is my relationship with the things that surround me?
Rule #4 - The target is always transforming - being on an emotional journey. An example being your target is to pee, then the next target is to see his penis. Target is always active, never dead.
Rule #5 - Every target is active - Every living moment has an element of quest. Every living creature has to deal with a situation. Situation may be easy or hard maybe harder to deal with or easier to deal with than others. Always getting better or always getting worse. We can be certain that there will be change.
Rule #1 - The target already exists and it's at a measurable distance (given circumstances)
Rule #2 - The target exists before you need it
Rule #3 - specific - What surrounds me? What is my relationship with the things that surround me?
Rule #4 - The target is always transforming - being on an emotional journey. An example being your target is to pee, then the next target is to see his penis. Target is always active, never dead.
Rule #5 - Every target is active - Every living moment has an element of quest. Every living creature has to deal with a situation. Situation may be easy or hard maybe harder to deal with or easier to deal with than others. Always getting better or always getting worse. We can be certain that there will be change.
More acting techniques..
Mike Alfred's line ties in with the 'Different Every Night' theory that he created, saying "The actor is not just the director's puppet.They are the artists." This meaning that the actor doesn't have to always take aboard what the director tells them, they can instead be their own person and make decisions themselves making different movements on stage at the appropriate time.
Exercises we did came from another improvisation game in order to teach us to always say yes on stage, not literally saying yes but as in yes to what's happening on stage. Making offers is one of the crucial things while acting on stage, in order to keep a scene alive you need to always make offers, not only for yourself but for other actors on stage. I found that these exercises were quite mundane, repetitive but in a way it gave me an idea of my character in The Frontline. In order for that to be a successful exercise I didn't use any props and more point of concentration was getting smaller and smaller until it was concentrated on one person and one thing they did to affect me.
Declan Donnellan another practitioner founded a company called 'Cheek by Jowl' in 1981. The title was a line from Midsummer's Night Dream by William Shakespeare. Declan has been an associate director for the National Theatre as well as:
ENO - Opera
RSC - Theatre
Bolshoy - Theatre
The company usually do Classical plays but push the boundaries to make most of it contemporary to try and show the difference of Shakespeare then and how Shakespeare would've been now.
He believed that the things that are in anyone's way for acting is:
Finding out the character's lifestyle
Lines
Character's physical attributes
Vocal attributes - accent, pitch, etc
What they would wear on a day to day basis
He also wants actors to ask themselves these questions:
I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what I want, I don't know who I am, I don't know what I am, I don't know where I am, I don't know I should move, I don't know how I should feel, I don't know what I'm saying, I don't know what I'm playing.
The clearest common theme in all of those statements is they all begin with 'I don't' indicating that the actor is somewhat lost before they can decide anything.
Exercises we did came from another improvisation game in order to teach us to always say yes on stage, not literally saying yes but as in yes to what's happening on stage. Making offers is one of the crucial things while acting on stage, in order to keep a scene alive you need to always make offers, not only for yourself but for other actors on stage. I found that these exercises were quite mundane, repetitive but in a way it gave me an idea of my character in The Frontline. In order for that to be a successful exercise I didn't use any props and more point of concentration was getting smaller and smaller until it was concentrated on one person and one thing they did to affect me.
Declan Donnellan another practitioner founded a company called 'Cheek by Jowl' in 1981. The title was a line from Midsummer's Night Dream by William Shakespeare. Declan has been an associate director for the National Theatre as well as:
ENO - Opera
RSC - Theatre
Bolshoy - Theatre
The company usually do Classical plays but push the boundaries to make most of it contemporary to try and show the difference of Shakespeare then and how Shakespeare would've been now.
He believed that the things that are in anyone's way for acting is:
Finding out the character's lifestyle
Lines
Character's physical attributes
Vocal attributes - accent, pitch, etc
What they would wear on a day to day basis
He also wants actors to ask themselves these questions:
I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what I want, I don't know who I am, I don't know what I am, I don't know where I am, I don't know I should move, I don't know how I should feel, I don't know what I'm saying, I don't know what I'm playing.
The clearest common theme in all of those statements is they all begin with 'I don't' indicating that the actor is somewhat lost before they can decide anything.
Sunday, 20 October 2013
Action, Reaction, Decision
We had a lesson to find out the difference between actions, reactions and decisions. One way doing this, we looked at practitioner, Mike Alfred's theories and found his way of finding these specific things. "Words are just vehicles for emotion" was what he believed in. He believed that in order to find the truth with the emotion you need to find the truth in the words and let them drive you to a truthful scenario. He also felt that being in the moment; listening, reacting and being truthful was the key essence to a positive performance.
In order for us to get an understanding of this theory we had to do a couple of activities that would get us in this kind of moment.
Clap Tag - a game where you would start with two people in the middle and everyone around them in a circle. The aim was to make the scene as truthful as possible, making it clear that you were listening, reacting and deciding when it was our time to be involved. If it wasn't clear that you were being truthful someone who believed they could bring the scene back to truth would clap and someone would have to leave the scene.
What I learnt was that you shouldn't do improvisations for laughs, be truthful and slowly formulate your relationship, character and location within a scene.
In order for us to get an understanding of this theory we had to do a couple of activities that would get us in this kind of moment.
Clap Tag - a game where you would start with two people in the middle and everyone around them in a circle. The aim was to make the scene as truthful as possible, making it clear that you were listening, reacting and deciding when it was our time to be involved. If it wasn't clear that you were being truthful someone who believed they could bring the scene back to truth would clap and someone would have to leave the scene.
What I learnt was that you shouldn't do improvisations for laughs, be truthful and slowly formulate your relationship, character and location within a scene.
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