Research on Stanislavski's Method

All three of these videos focus on imagining yourself in the given circumstances, which is a major part of Stanislavski's method.

Video 1

For this exercise, you have to spend a minute or two examining a coffee mug from every possible angle - the shape of the cup, its weight, the heat coming from the coffee, etc. You then have to apply this same critical thinking while drinking the coffee, analyzing its taste, texture, etc. After this, you must attempt to pick up an identical imaginary cup and experience the same sensations drinking from it.

When looking at the comments for this video, I was surprised to see how negative many of them were. Many people seemed to see it as a waste of time, since at first glance it has nothing to do with developing a character; however, that is missing the point. The idea of this exercise is to develop your ability to imagine. Personally, my takeaway from this is that it gets much easier to imagine and truthfully portray abstract concepts like a character's germ when you are able to imagine more concrete, physical objects as accurately as if they were real. This also makes getting immersed in the scene easier, and if you end up having physical props, it will feel even more natural since you have practiced just as effectively without them.

Video 2

This video provides instructions for imagining yourself in a set environment - specifically, being outside in the snow. I noticed that this exercise specifically involved all five emotions, and although it served as a blueprint for the progression of the scene, it also provides multiple options (is it sunny, the sun reflecting brightly off the snow, or dark and cloudy?) and thus encouraged the participants to do their own thing. In everyday life, I feel there are certain senses that seem to overshadow others in terms of importance, so this was a good reminder that when acting out a scene, it helps to take all five basic emotions into account, covering all your bases.

Video 3

This video contains two exercises. In the first, the actors had to imagine themselves as being in a kitchen with imaginary props, very similar to an exercise from our textbook. In the second exercise, the actors had to hold a pen and some sting with their eyes closed and try to figure out what the objects where, then imagine that the pen is priceless and see how their relationship with the object changed.

These two exercises tie back to the two previous videos. The kitchen exercise is an expansion of the snowfall exercise, not just standing still and imagining the location in your mind but acting as though you are in that location. If you were to take the snowfall exercise to this level, I figure that you would have to start by walking as though you were trudging through snow or trying not to slip and fall on ice. The pen and string exercise is similar to the coffee mug in how it has the actor examine a physical object, and then use that to further their ability to relate to such objects in a scene.

TIP Notes: Chapter 1, p. 25-35

Exercise 6: The Six Ws
1. Who am I?
2. When am I?
3. Where am I?
4. Why am I here?
5. What do I want?
6. What will I do to achieve my want?

Subconscious = the part of the mind that influences our thoughts and actions without us being aware of it
There is a conscious objective (what you want to do in the moment) and a hidden objective (the inner motivation)

Exercise 7: be able to imagine the set and objects around you, even when they are present, and interact with them as if they are real

Be able to derive from a brief character description and the setup of a scene what the character’s objective will be

Exercise 8: Actions and desires can be broken down into short first-person phrases (“I want help” or “I leave”) to give your acting direction 

Balance of physical and psychological impulses when improving = psychophysical (thinking and doing working together in harmony)
Active analysis: Actors decide on the main event of the scene and an action for each character, then flesh out the scene with improvisation

The character’s ultimate goal in the piece is their super objective; in a greater sense, the super objective is the theme of the play, building off of all the characters’ individual super objectives

Germ = the essence/core of the character; single word or short phrase

Acting Tip: write your character’s germ and super objective at the top of your script 

Tempo-rhythm = the character’s psychophysical pace; or, the pace of the setting

Exercise 11: Knowing the character or object’s tempo-rhythm makes it easier to step into their body and think the way they do

Have the germ, super objective, current objective, and tempo-rhythm of the character in mind as you act; don’t focus on one aspect of the character so much that you forget the others, as they are all equally important

TIP Notes: Chapter 1, p. 11-25

Truthful acting is when you are fully in character

Stanislavski: “the actor must not only experience the role inwardly, he must embody that inner experience physically. Outer experience relies very strongly on inner experience”
“Every one of our movements onstage, every word must be the result of a truthful imagination.”

Imagination is immersing yourself in the moment with the given circumstances; active imagination requires the use of the five basic senses
Exercise 1: By imagining yourself in different locations, you can get across a lot even when just standing still

The magic if serves as the question that stirs your imagination

Objective = the character’s goal in the given circumstances; action is how they try to fulfill their objective

Exercise 2: To develop your character naturally, allow your imagination to run freely (without getting off topic); go into detail to discover the truth of the character
This will further develop your ability to imagine

Free body: you need to be fully relaxed and unoccupied with your own self before you can step into a character and give a truthful performance

Three kinds of communication:
1. Movement
2. Voice
3. Rays (a kind of psychic link between people)

Exercise 5: You work most efficiently as a group when you are open and committed to what you are doing, and fully trust your partners

Group Project 1 Reflection (“Frenemies Close, Friends Closest”)

I was honestly somewhat nervous going into our final performance of this project. Due to a lack of a fully detailed script, every performance that we have done of this scene has been slightly different. In particular, as I noted in the end of my last blog, it took me a while to decide which of my initially ad-libbed lines I wanted to stick with, and the wording was never exactly the same. Also, as the paper-ripping incident yesterday showed, you can never really be sure that everything will go exactly as you envisioned, and while some times this can result in something positive, it can also be for the worse. I like to have everything under control, to set everything up to be the absolute best it can be, but I obviously can’t direct my peers in the middle of a scene, and I have to accept that they know their characters far better than I do. Thus, each practice run has had good and bad moments that I had to keep in mind going into this final performance, which I wanted to be as close to perfect as possible.

Fortunately, by the time I was the only one left on stage, all of those fears had been alleviated. There were no major mistakes or tangents, only a few brief moments of awkwardness on my end, and I could see the improvements my peers had made, especially in projecting their voices while staying true to the emotions of the scene. We were all confident enough to edit and upload the clip immediately, even though we still had time at that point to do a second run through if we wanted. If I had total control, there are one or two things that I would have gone back and changed, but when I step back and look at the finished project, those little details become relatively unimportant.

I have a strong sense that by doing more collaborative works such as this, I will loose that fear of not being in control of what we’re working on. If I worry less about “doing well” on the projects  and focus more on having fun, not only will it be less stressful, but all of us will be more free to get into character and express ourselves through our acting. I hope that Helen and Youngchen had similarly positive feelings about this experience, and that we will continue to improve our collaborative skills in the future.

Group Project 1 Progress Report ("Frenemies Closer, Friends Closest")

    I am very proud of all of the work we’ve put into our group scene so far, and what it has resulted in. It took us a little while to settle on a basic premise we all agreed to, and even after we had a skeleton of a plot, there was stuff that we ended up adding in the process to flesh it out more, including the whole ending with Allie trying to get the others to sign her petition. At this point, I feel that we are near total completion of the scene, once we smooth out a few bugs.
    When looking back on how our scene evolved, a part of me feels that I may have done too much in shaping it compared to my classmates. I had come up with a very basic idea for the scene in advance after looking ahead on the portal: since all our characters happened to be children, I thought it would make sense to set our scene in a school cafeteria after the events of Helen and Yongche’s monologues. When it came time to discuss our ideas, though Helen and Yongche had some different ideas for settings, we ended up back at my original plan in a roundabout way. In earlier drafts of the script, I also feared that I was somewhat dominating the scene, and so attempted to write myself out of the middle entirely. However, in the end, I was very happy to see Helen and Yongche add to the scene through how they prorated their characters. Nicole is less open to people who she doesn't know but is more willing to go along with people she considers friends, while Austin shows eager honesty, a strong sense of justice, and fierce loyalty for his friend. I feel that the resulting scene is not only far more balanced than it was at the start of this development, but also more interesting in terms of themes presented, like loneliness and friendship.
    As we rapidly approach our final performance of the scene, I feel there are a few smaller things that we could still work on. For my part, I think that I should work on solidifying my lines more over the weekend. Most of my dialogue started off as bullet points that I filled out with ad libs and then continued to reuse if they stuck with me. However, I do not want to waste too much time with filler when performing, so I need to decide for certain which lines I will be using. In terms of my classmates, I personally feel that they could both work on increasing their volume while still staying true to the emotions of the scene. In addition, Helen could work on keeping a straight face, and I think Yongche could show more levels of anger when arguing with me at the end. Other than that, I am very confident that we are ready to give a great final performance of this scene.
 

Monologue 1 Reflection ("It's That Time Again")

When choosing which of the monologues offered to perform, I chose the monologue "It's That Time Again" because I felt confident playing a character who can be cute, snarky and threatening. I decided to play the character, named Allie in the script, as a girl around age ten due to the reference to Disney World in the script, and because of that I used a high-pitched, somewhat squeaky voice that dips more towards my regular voice when Allie enters her creepy mode. I quickly decided at what points it was important to have my mood shift from bubbly and innocent to frustrated and cruel. The more I practiced the monologue, the smoother these transitions became, pinpointing more moments that could serve as smaller transition moments. 

This monologue specifically is meant to be spoken to another unseen character, Mrs. Seibert. As I was developing the monologue, the main feedback I received from others was to leave more pauses for places where Mrs. Seibert would likely interrupt, as well as leaving room for the audience to breathe and fully absorb what just happened. So, I took notes on where it would make sense to have long and short pauses, and imagined what might fill those pauses if this were a two-person performance where someone else was playing Mrs. Seibert. From there, I practiced my reactions to these unspoken lines, so that I would not just be standing there with a blank face during the pauses when performing the monologue. I also got suggestions to add more of a physical aspect to my monologue, which I did my best to incorporate through small things like rapidly tapping my foot when impatiently waiting for Mrs. Seibert to answer the door.

From doing this monologue, I have learned to consider the context of the scene I am performing, such as with the unseen presence of Mrs. Seibert. I have also learned to try to keep the audience invested for every second of the performance, through facial reactions and physical movements, even when I am not saying a line. In addition, from seeing the progress of my peers, I was reminded of the importance of memorizing your monologue as early on in the progress as possible, as it is difficult to develop the emotions of the scene when you are struggling to remember your lines. Seeing my peers' monologues also showed me how having high contrast between beats in a scene makes it much more complex and interesting. For example, Helen initially performed her monologue in a sad tone for the whole thing, but in her final performance, she shifted into being angry in the middle, which showed just how frustrated her character was. 

Next time we do something like this, I hope to be able to use the space around me more, as the nature of the monologue I chose this time somewhat dictated that I had to be standing in an imaginary doorway for most of the time.

Monologue 1: "It's That Time Again"

Genre: Comedy
Character: Allie, a young girl
Link (click here)