Yoga, Truth, Actioning

09.09.2014


We kicked off our lesson with a discussion about yoga, and why it is a key component in the Stanislavsky system. We contributed and came to the conclusion that it is important because of the relaxation that it allows us to have, helping us, as actors to access emotions easily due to how calm we are afterwards, as well as the fact that it helps us to focus in on our body and utilizing our physicality to become characters easily. The calmness and focus that yoga brings helps us as actors to bring our emotions from our inner being and to effortlessly project the outward to produce a truthful performance.

We then discussed what creates a truthful performance, we decided that when actors allow themselves to be vulnerable onstage assists a truthful performance as it means that they have disconnected themselves from trying to portray, or acting like themselves but rather be engrossed in what's happening and honestly become another person. Also when actors seem concerned more with the audience or just generally other things, it can cause an audience to believe that what's occurring on stage isn't truthful or honest as they see the disconnection with the actor and his or her character. Another key component of truthful performances is when the actor responds to others in the moment and lives the performance openly and instinctively allowing different things to occur within the play and to respond to what others are saying rather than just repeating lines robotically.

We then participated in a game called "I don't believe you" wherein an actor is given a scenario and is asked to step out and enter when they believe they are ready, stepping inside in character, allowing the audience to say out loud whether or not they believe the performance as they declare "I don't believe you". As one of those actors who were subject to the audiences opinion, this exercise displayed personally to me how stepping into the room as a character helped me become that character and allowed me the time to mull over my scenario, objectives and relate it to myself and how I would feel, working myself up into a state that I felt made me ready to enter the room, creating a potentially truthful performance. This game displayed, after feedback, that a truthful performance is subject to audiences interpretation, as a truthful performance means that we must relate and therefore anything we believe that we wouldn't do isn't truthful, because it doesn't directly display us or our actions, and therefore causes disbelief.

We were then asked to lay down and position ourselves into semi supine, and rethink our journey to school, recalling people we encountered on our journey. I remembered an elderly woman that acted superior to everyone around her and was dismissive of everyone else. We had to find the characters physically and we all felt tempted to change ourselves overly and almost melodramatically, we then were asked to find the natural physical nuances and habits as we discovered we couldn't change our height, but we could find the weight in their walk, and what they through forward as they walked. This helped us to escape our own mindset and delve into the other characters mindset as we became more concerned with why they may walk, what they are worried about and how they were in public. Our teacher then introduced some "What Ifs" into the exercise, such as "What if the character found a £20 note on the ground?" or "What if the character stepped in dog poo?" This additional exercise helped us to understand and explore the mindset of the role, as we questioned how the person may perform when faced with moral situations. Moreover it helped us to learn to just accept and say yes to scenarios, as becoming more open and believing the scenario didn't block or restrict your character and leads to a truthful performance.

Then we paired up with another character and were asked to create a scene using 4 lines each, within a scenario wherein both our characters interact. We decided his sluggish and slightly dopey character would encounter my pushy and arrogant one whilst serving me in a coffee shop. We played out the scene and were asked to develop it further by adding on the "when where and who". We had already realized the "who" and and "where" but we added detail, narrowing down which area and adding in that this was taking place at midday. This helped us enter the scene and relate it to a place we had previously been, assisting us in imagining atmosphere and location that our moment would've occurred in.

Next we were asked to involve the "Want" "Do" and "Feel". The "want" assists us in noticing the objective of the character, "what does he/she want to do?" it could be simplistic and basic, as we discovered in our scene that it was. However in plays there is a super objective, a want that is unchangeable throughout the play, and there is also many smaller objectives that naturally occur regularly throughout the scenes which adds on to the existing super objective make up of the character. There is also the "do" which is what the characters action is in relation to the objective or what action the character performs. Tension and conflict occurs often when different characters "wants" and "dos" juxtapose each other. We also had to explore how this made me feel, what it did to me emotionally as a result of the action, creating a full circle of direction and knowledge helping you to act easily as more than half of the objective work is complete, it should roll off of your tongue.

Additionally we discussed and identified "actioning", finding verbs that display what we are trying to impose upon the other character through our lines. It can help the actor to decide what he or shes motive is through analyzing what the character is trying to do to he other, often exposing the actors objective. We explored ambiguous texts in order to explicitly witness the idea of having several different options for interpretation. Watching Romy and Will's performance was incredibly eye-opening as we came to terms with how far fetched you can go with texts and how sub text can be displayed through use of "actioning". It showed to us as an audience how scripts can be performed and interpreted in an incredibly diverse manner. It helped me as an actor as it showed that without an objective an actor isn't able to perform effectively, illustrating how sub text can create a thinking script and exposes how vital it is to cut up and break down the script, analyzing the characters objectives and highlighting the importance of "actioning" to display your feelings. Helping me to explore the different paths it could take me down rather than just assuming, but rather exploring possible options, almost excessively.