Learning the System
Wednesday 10th and
Thursday 11th September 2014
For the next/last two days, of our first
week in the beginning of the Level 3 course, we were introduced to ‘the System’
created by Constantin Stanislavski.
Stanislavski was a Russian actor and director, who thought out to create
a, what is known as, (the) ‘System’ where they could make an actor’s stage
performance more convincing, and, in particularly, natural. As we learn the key factors to producing
Stanislavski’s System, we, as actors, would have to understand full relaxation,
to embody full concentration, and reflect our imaginations. But most importantly was the magic if… The magic if, is supposed to back up the
actor’s understanding of their given circumstances, to project their
imagination. Furthermore increasing the actor’s
realism in their performance, by using emotional memory to enhance their
solitude in public. All the more making
their main performance increasingly convincing and realistic.
After receiving a decent understanding of
what the ‘Stanislavski System’ consists of, it was now our turn to see if we
can gain the focus and concentration to embody characters in our given
circumstances.
At the beginning of Wednesday’s lesson our
lecturer constructed a warm up session.
In this warm up session, we as a class were told to pace around the
entire class room, without making contact with one another, and then our
lecturer would give us a scenario for us to physically present. An example would be; our lecturer told us to
picture the scenario of all of us being tourists and we’ve arrived in the
capital city, and we all looked in wonder and amazement. I, personally, really enjoyed this exercise,
as not only did we see what we were all capable of, performance wise, but I
could feel the sudden mood changes amongst us students. Going from a positive to a negative,
depending on the type of scenario we were given.
Another part of our physical exercises was
our lecturer setting us into pairs and our jobs this time was to improvise realistically. How this exercise worked was having one
member of the pair step out of the room, not knowing what scenario was going to
be, and another member sitting on stage knowing the scenario, and once both
pairs were on stage together, they had to perform the chosen scenario and make
it as realistic as possible. For me and
my partners scenario was that I was related to my partner in any way I chose, I
chose brothers. But it was my job to announce
to my partner that I was offered a job and I had to leave shortly. The end result was my partner embodying this
character that shared a close bond/friendship with my character, and he didn’t
take the news of my character leaving so well.
This I felt was an incredible experience. My reason being is because with our use of
silence, and slow talking, or delivery of our improvised lines, it increased
tension, in a way. That made my
characters pride and joy almost burst out, but was still held back thanks to
his worry and concern of what his closest/best friend would think.
As the practical side of our lesson came
to an end I did feel slightly refreshed, and pleased with what I learnt and
achieved in the exercises.
To end the first week, with taking part in
physical exercises to understand the process, if you will, into becoming a
character, understanding life from their point of view, etc., and making our
performances all the more convincing and realistic. But to wrap up this interesting
discovery/education into the ‘System’, we were introduced to another famous
historical playwright, named Anton Chekov.
Much like Stanislavski, Chekov was an actor turned director/playwright,
and he was one of the leaders in naturalistic drama writing. It shows within his famous plays that he
writes in a natural and realistic style of dialogue. It was Chekov who understood people and
characters, and in particular, how they would speak. He “mirrored real life, real people, and real
events”. Thus including an event changes
nothing, yet the characters are affected forever.
To end my first week in the Level 3 acting
course, I found to be an extraordinary experience. As not only was it a great introduction to
the course year, but a great beginning to the expansion of my education in
acting.
Stanislavski Quotes
Naturalism - for him, implied the indiscriminate reproduction of the surface of life.
Realism - while taking its material from the real world and from direct observation, selected only those elements which revealed the relationships and tendencies lying under the surface.
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